p. 63Our Duties to the State

From a Catholic point of view, a twofold authority under God rules the world—Church and State. Having dealt in our previous lecture with the duties we owe to the Church, we now proceed to speak of those we owe the State. Both have a mission from God, viz., to aid and guide us in working out our destiny in this world. The aim of the Church is mainly spiritual, that of the State, material. Both have claims to our allegiance; and to each, in its sphere, we owe certain duties, binding in conscience, “Render, therefore, to Cæsar the things that are Cæsar’s; and to God, the things that are God’s.” Men are, by nature, gregarious and social; and instinctively form themselves into ordered groups, a circumstance that brings with it rights and claims on the one hand, and duties on the other. Indeed, it is only in society, based on the recognition of mutual rights and duties, that man can develop the intellectual, moral and religious endowments, that raise him to such a dizzy height above the other creatures of the earth. Isolated, he could never protect himself against beasts of prey, or the forces of nature, arrayed against him. Some form of combined union, therefore, is a necessity. But any union for a common purpose needs rules or laws, thus implying duty, on the part of its members, to keep those laws. Without civil government, another term for an ordered state, violence and anarchy would reign supreme. And just as any kind of law is better than no law, so any kind of fixed and ordered state rule is better than none. So necessary is compliance with the duties, justly imposed by the State, that in cases where appeal to conscience and a sense of duty fails, resort must be had to violence and force. Sad, indeed, is the condition of a community where “No king reigns and each man does what seems right in his own eyes.”

Any kind of social body living under fixed rules, customs or laws is a State, or the nucleus of a State. The oldest form of community or State was, presumably, the family, or a group of families, forming themselves into clans, tribes or nations, for mutual protection and help, under the oldest, wisest or strongest members as heads or rulers. In the patriarchal State, so often alluded to in the Bible, the head of the family was often king, priest and law-giver in one. The family, therefore, is the original germ or unit of the State, howsoever complex and extended it may afterward grow into.

Hence, the fourth commandment of God, in laying down the love, respect and obedience we owe to our parents, is the source of all codes of law for the government of men in all departments of life. Our duties to the State, therefore, are rooted in our duty to God, who must will ordered life, and, consequently, some form of State. There can be neither peace, progress nor reform, social, moral or religious, unless in a community, bound together by law, inspiring a sense of duty. Hence, St. Paul says, “Let every soul be subject to higher powers, for there is no power but from God. . . . Therefore, he that resisteth the power resisteth the ordinance of God. Princes are not a terror to the good, but to the evil” (Rom. xiii, 1, 2, 3). Whatever, therefore, the actual form of a government, whether monarchical, imperial or democratic, whether it be a republic, a kingdom or an empire, whether vested in one or many, it is in its ultimate source and present right to rule “of God.” That there are bad, tyrannical, unjust and corrupt governments is no more an argument against all government, than the existence of bad parents, husbands and priests is a proof against the divine origin of the family and the Church. Hence, all efforts to replace, destroy or radically change what we call “the State” are doomed to failure. Anarchy is not only a crime, it is absurd and impossible. If possible at all, it would be “hell let loose.” Outside of prisons and madhouses men, as a body, believe in law, and the duty of obeying it both in rulers and ruled, i. e., they believe in “the State.”

I. Now, in what does our duty to the State precisely consist? As this duty resembles that which we owe our parents, because the State is but an extension or enlargement of the family, it may be summed up under three headings: loyalty, respect and obedience. Loyalty to the State is somewhat akin to the duty of filial love. It may be loosely described as enlightened patriotism. The land we live in as citizens, either by birth or adoption, should be dear to us, as house and home. God has, so to say, parcelled the world out amongst His children; and just as we set a special value on the house, land or other property we rightly call our own, improve it, turn it to account and otherwise take a deep interest in it, so should we of the country God has given us as our common inheritance. Our membership of it is part and parcel of the talent entrusted to our care, and of which as being a duty we must render an account. The love of country, the unselfish use of any political power we possess for her benefit, is a distinguishing feature of every generous mind. Nay, more, it is a duty. Some may boastfully call themselves “citizens of the world,” but surely none can be so dead to human feeling as not to have a special corner in his heart for the land that gave him a name; as well forget in one’s love for the race at large one’s own home and fireside and the faces that shine there. The man who is no lover of his country, i. e., who fails in his duty of loyalty, who is ever ready for gold or title to corrupt, sell or enslave her, is rightly branded as a traitor and a parricide.

Though this duty of loyalty, regarded as patriotism, mainly regards one’s country, rather than the government actually in power, still we must not forget that both together form “the State,” to which we owe allegiance. Even when power passes into usurping, corrupt, weak or incompetent hands the duty of loyalty does not cease. It binds us to do our best to reform, change or otherwise aid in “mending or ending” without violence or lawlessness, standing abuse of power or hopeless disorder. For “the State,” which claims our loyalty as a duty, is, in its fundamental aspect, a more permanent entity than any fleeting party in power. Democrats and Republicans may both be deeply loyal to the State, even when striving for mutual overthrow.

This duty of loyalty is rooted, as I observed, in the love we ought to have for our motherland, and is, therefore, placed on the same footing as filial piety to parents. Now love is the great motive-power, the strongest stimulant to duty, and what more natural than to love one’s country. What duty, consequently, can be easier than loyalty to her, inasmuch as it is the form that true love of country assumes.

II. The next duty we owe to the State is that of respect. To use this word nowadays, in relation to government of any kind, is “crying in the wilderness,” so rampant everywhere is disrespect for all authority. It is an age of irreverence and criticism. The duty of the modern citizen toward all “clad in authority” would seem rather to be one of studied hostility, disrespect and contempt. The State, in his eyes, is often a mere butt for slander and ridicule. Now, this surely is a wrong, if not a sinful, attitude. We must be governed in some way or other and by some form of State. As a semblance, at least, of respect must be shown to authority outwardly, why not make it an inward tribute to duty as well. Systematic abuse, obloquy and unfair criticism do no good, and may do much harm.

To us Catholics respect for authority is a matter of principle, for it is founded on respect to God, the source and fountain-head of all authority. It is the embodiment and representation of His almighty will and power. Hence, there is a divine element or sanction in every duly authorized governing body, inasmuch as it shadows forth this authority of God. This respect that authority engenders begins in early years in the home, and thence by easy transitions passes to other and wider forms of it than parental. This respect, if duly fostered, becomes a duty. The accidental defects inherent in all things human can no more destroy the essential respect we owe the State than the well-known and often glaring defects of many parents can rob them of their rights to the respect due to them by us, as bestowed on them by the fourth commandment of the law of God.

Lack of due respect to authority is a marked sign of shallowness and ignorance. The very words, law, order and ability to enforce them, should inspire and command respect. Life, property and honor are in the keeping of the State. Respect for the State is their safeguard. It is for the criminal and the law-breaker to vilify the State, not the free, law-abiding citizen. Indeed, respect for the State is but an enlarged form of self-respect, without which, as we know, a life of high principle is impossible. The State is a magnified mirror of ourselves. To despise and infringe the laws that regulate our own bodily and spiritual well-being is sinful. An abuse of self-authority is an offense against God; so, too, is an abuse of the outer and larger self or State authority.

III. The third main duty we owe the State is that of submission or obedience in letter at least to the law of the land. God’s right to our submission is shadowed forth in parental or any other legitimate form of human authority. What we call free service is simply willing obedience to almighty God who rules and guides us not directly and in person, but indirectly through the authority vested in parents, the Church or the State. God is, therefore, the source of, and gives sanction to, all authority, law and duty. They who scout the very name and idea of obedience, who, in their hollow egotism boast they will serve no master, are but repeating the motto of the first rebel, “I will not serve,” and thereby refusing to march under the banner of Him “who was obedient unto death.” Law rules life in all its phases, and, therefore, implies obedience, forced or free. People can neither live, work nor combine together for a common purpose without rules or laws which are made to be kept, not to be broken. The very words, law, lawful and lawless, point out the need and sacred character of obedience.

Even liberty needs law, and its enforced observance as its best and surest defense. A truly free country is one wherein law is freely respected and obeyed. Amongst a people that disrespect, disobey or defy the law there can be no security for personal liberty.

It may be objected that State laws and their administration are often cruel, partial, one-sided and unjust. True, human law at the best is but a blurred copy of the divine, from which it derives its true force and sanction; still it is well to remember that we cannot mend even an image of the divine by breaking it. Not to obey the law because faulty is as illogical and unwarrantable as to say with the agnostics that, because our idea of God falls infinitely short of the reality, therefore we need not worship Him at all. We cannot surely stop breathing because the atmosphere we live in is foul and foggy.

So with human law. The State, it is true, has no guarantee against error or injustice in framing its laws, and it is, therefore, wrong to make an idol or a fetish of any law not divine, withal, as “no man is judge in his own case,” the law must be obeyed unless obviously unjust and against the law of God. Disobedience is an extreme proceeding, to be used, as we shall see, with great caution and under great reserve.

Law, even in its lowest and rudest form, is meant to be justice embodied in practical rules of action. It is the dim vision of the “eternal law” of God, as recognized and displayed by us in our natural love of justice. The essence and first condition of a law, therefore, is that it should be just, rooted and founded in justice. This it is that makes obedience safe. An unjust law is a misnomer, it can hardly be called a law at all any more than a crooked stick can be called a straight ruler. The well-head of all law, imposing just obedience, is the eternal law of God. He, as supremely just and rational, can only elect to bind His rational creatures to certain lines of conduct or action, not arbitrarily or tyrannically, but in conformity with and for the perfecting of their nature. Hence, in so far are human laws just and worthy of the name of law, inasmuch as they follow the moral law or law of God. Man is ethical, or moral, and such also must be his law. Wo to the country where the fountain-head of law, the source of social order, is poisoned or corrupt. There is positive danger, therefore, to true liberty and enlightened progress in a godless State. For above the State, and regulating its code of law, is the moral law and its unerring expounder, the Church. Can we wonder that certain peoples and nations, under unfair treatment, hate the sacred name of law, seeing that it was never to them an instrument of order and progress, but a scourge and disaster. Ireland and Poland bear witness to this.

Hence, we find the Church so often in conflict with the world and its rulers. Her vision of eternal law and justice and true righteousness is keener than theirs. Though ever a bulwark against lawlessness and every form of sedition and disobedience, yet, as her history proves, she does not hesitate to stand up in defense of the weak and oppressed, “against principalities and powers and the rulers of darkness in high places.” Like her Lord, she ever proclaims with no uncertain voice, that whilst “rendering to Cæsar the things that are Cæsar’s,” we must not overlook God’s rights in “rendering to God to things that are God’s.”

May we then resist the law with a safe conscience, you will perhaps ask? Have people, who deem themselves unjustly ruled, the right to secede? Is there such a thing as the sacred right of rebellion? Can we hasten the certain dissolution of a corrupt and decaying power? We may, perhaps, best answer this set of questions by asking another. May a man legally commit suicide when in danger of death? May children strike, rebel against or disobey their parents? May we kill those we cannot cure? Remember, that obedience to the State is an extension of the duties we owe our parents. And just as there are extreme cases wherein we may disobey and even raise our hands in self-defense against father and mother, so with kindred forms of authority. There is, and ever has been, such a thing as gross abuse of authority. Those who wield it may turn bad or mad, and, as a consequence, need putting under restraint. Nevertheless, disobedience or rebellion is an extreme and odious remedy that is never to be resorted to except as a sort of forlorn hope. Poison may, on occasions, act medicinally, but it ever remains a poison.

The ideal remedy, when natural reason and justice fail, would be appeal to the great central spiritual court of Rome, where alone brute force and animal passion get no hearing. Failing this, however, we must muddle on, through strife and hate, to a mere “vision of peace.”

To justify rebellion against a State, four conditions are required seldom found united, and, in constitutionally ruled States, perhaps never.

(1) When the government of a country is hopelessly and incurably corrupt, pursuing only selfish and personal ends to the neglect or abolition of the civil and religious rights of the people.

(2) When all legal and constitutional means of redress have been tried and failed.

(3) There must also be some reasonable hope of success, else the movement may end in slaughter and disaster. What can an untrained or unarmed mob do against a trained soldiery?

(4) When the need of reform and resort to violence for securing it are proposed not by a small and hotheaded, but by the larger, better and more intelligent section of the community.

In a free country, however, disobedience to the law, much less rebellion, is hardly, if ever, justifiable. The people have the government they wish for and deserve. Besides, in most cases, it is the administration, and not the law, that is at fault; and this, a free people, by their votes can mend or end. In ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, revolution, or even disobedience, spells disaster, and is, therefore, a breach of duty. Constitutional methods, now within the reach of most people, are by far the safest, and, in the long run, the most effectual, means of redressing grievances.

Happily, God, though transcendant, is yet immanent in His own world, and guiding all to some great infinitely just and good end. Justice, therefore, is ever the mightiest force in the world. Its march may be slow, but, like all great and true growth, it is sure. To force the pace of divine justice by violent means is but to uproot and weaken it. We can only hope that as nations advance in self-conscious and self-governing life, under the kindly rays of “the sun of justice,” they will dispense with war and all forms of violence, and both initiate and carry out reforms solely because, like God, our supreme Ruler, “they love justice and hate iniquity.”

In conclusion, therefore, let us obey, respect and be loyal to the State and its laws. In their origin they come from God, no matter through what muddy channels they may have been strained or passed. Let us specifically ever respect and carry out the law by ready obedience. It is part of the great debt of duty we owe to almighty God, and the whole of the duty we owe to the society we call “the State,” which, whatever its defects, shelters, protects and defends us. We shall thus show by example that, whilst ever remaining true and loyal members of holy Church, the kingdom of God, we are none the less, rather all the more, good, peaceful and law-abiding citizens of the State.