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The Alleged Rights of the Papacy

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Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Apr 4, 1912

FromReview and Herald, Vol. 89, No. 14.

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The Alleged Rights of the Papacy

By W. W. P.

A WRITER in an English Protestant paper has presented a summary of the rights and powers of the Roman Catholic Church as defined in the encyclical Quanta cura and the Syllabus of Errors promulgated by Pope Pius IX in 1864. It should be understood that this is not an exact translation of any of the paragraphs of these documents, but a statement of their provisions as interpreted by a Protestant writer. To quote:—
The Papacy has the right to interfere with the study of philosophy; and it is not her duty to tolerate errors in it, or to leave it to correct itself.
The Papacy has the right to require the state not to leave every man free to profess his own religion.
The Papacy has the right to be perfectly free.
The Papacy has the right to define her own rights, and to define the limits within which they shall be exercised.
The Papacy has the right to exercise her power without the permission or consent of the state.
The Papacy has the right to bind Catholic teachers and authors, even in matters additional to those which may have been decreed as articles of belief binding on all.
The Papacy has the right of requiring it to be believed by all that no pope ever exceeded the bounds of his power; also that no ecumenical council ever did so; and further, that neither the one nor the other ever usurped the rights of princes.
The Papacy has the right to employ force.
The Papacy has the right to maintain that whatever temporal power is found in the hands of a bishop, is not beyond what is inherent in his office, and has not come from the state; and, therefore, is not liable to be resumed by it.
The Papacy has the right to claim dominion in temporal things for the clergy and the Pope.
The Papacy has the right to make bishops promulgate the Pope’s decrees without consent of their rulers.
The Papacy has the right to require it to be believed by all that the immunity of the church and of ecclesiastical persons did not arise out of civil law.
The Papacy has the right to require that temporal causes, whether civil or criminal, to which clergymen are parties, should be tried by ecclesiastical tribunals.
The Papacy has the right to alter the conclusions of a national church council, and to reject the claim of the government of the country to have the matter decided in the terms adopted by such national council.
The Papacy has the right to prevent the foundation of any national church not subject to the authority of the Roman pontiff.
The Papacy has the right to reject any claim on the part of the state to either a direct and positive or an indirect and negative power in religious affairs, and more especially when the state is ruled by an unbelieving prince.
The Papacy has the right to reject the claim of the state to exercise a power of exequatur, or to allow appeals from ecclesiastical to civil tribunals.
The Papacy has the right to excludethe civil power from all interference in “matters which appertain to” religion, morals, or spiritual government. Hence she has the right of excluding it from pronouncing any judgment on “instructions” which may be issued by any pastor of the church for the guidance of conscience.
The Papacy has the right to deprive the civil authority of the entire government of public schools.
The Papacy has the right to refuse to show the plan of study in clerical seminaries to civil authorities.
The Papacy has the right to fix the age for taking monastic vows for both men and women, irrespective of the civil authority.
The Papacy has the right to uphold the laws of religious orders against the civil authority; the right to deprive the latter of power to aid any who, after having taken vows, should seek to escape from monasteries or nunneries; and the right to prevent it from taking the houses, churches, or funds of religious orders under secular management.
The Papacy has the right to require kings and princes in subjection to her jurisdiction, and of denying that their authority is superior to her own in determining questions of jurisdiction.
The Papacy has the right of perpetuating the union of church and state.
The Papacy has the right of subjecting the study of philosophy, moral science, and civil law to ecclesiastical authority.
The Papacy has the right to require the sacrament of marriage as essential to every contract of marriage.
The Papacy has the right to deprive the civil authority of power to sanction divorce in any case.
The Papacy has the right to enact impediments which invalidate marriage, the right to prevent the state from doing so, also the right to prevent it from annulling such impediments when existing.
The Papacy has the right to require all to receive the canons of Trent as of dogmatical authority; namely, those canons which anathematize such as deny her the power of setting up impediments which invalidate marriage.
The Papacy has the right of treating all marriages which are not solemnized according to the form of the Council of Trent as invalid, even those solemnized according to a form prescribed by the civil law.
The Papacy has the right of annulling all marriages among Christians solemnized only by civil contract.
The Papacy has the right of judging all matrimonial causes, and those arising out of betrothals, in ecclesiastical courts.
The Papacy has the right to require that the Catholic religion shall be the only religion of the state to the exclusion of all others.
The Papacy has the right to prevent the state from granting the public exercise of their own worship to persons immigrating into it.
The Papacy has the power of requiring the state not to permit free expression of opinion.
The Roman hierarchy has not repudiated a single one of these claims, and Pope Pius X by his recent Motu proprio and the Ne temere decree on marriage seems inclined to use the powers here asserted. W. W. P.