Jacques Maritain
Each of us belongs to two States—a terrestrial State whose end is the common temporal good, and the universal State of the Church whose end is eternal life.
The Primacy of the Spiritual, by Jacques Maritain (Cluny Media, 254 pages)
1. Nothing is more important for the freedom of souls and the good of mankind than properly to distinguish between these two powers: nothing, in the language of the day, has so great a cultural It is common knowledge that the distinction is the achievement of the Christian centuries and their glory.
The pagan City, which claimed to be the absolute whole of the human being, absorbed the spiritual in the temporal power and at the same time apotheosized the State. Its ultimate worship of the Emperors was the sure consequence of an infallible internal logic. “Even the Christian Emperors and Constantine, the first of them, did not immediately repudiate certain symbols of divine honor, such as the building of temples and the celebration of games in their honor. The iconoclasts destroyed the images of Christ and the Saints at Byzantium, but respected the images of the Emperor. It was not until the fourth century that the Emperor Gratian gave up using the title of Pontifex Maximus. And to avoid running down the whole subsequent course of history, it will be sufficient to observe that by the blasphemous beast ‘come up out of the sea’ and the other beast ‘come up out of the earth,’ ‘that did great signs,’ both securing the adoration denied to the Lamb, the Apocalypse intends to symbolize the profaning and usurping civilization of all times and all countries”.
The Lord Christ said: Render therefore to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God, the things that are God’s. He thereby distinguished the two powers and so doing emancipated the souls of men. » Read More
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