# Synodical Conference Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1916_S20
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

20 Proceedings of the twenty-sixth convention

power are subject according to God's ordinance, nor can they be deposed, directly or indirectly, by the keys' authority [*Schlüſſelgewalt*] of the Church, nor their subjects be released from fidelity and obedience and absolved from the oath of allegiance they have taken; and that this doctrine is to be maintained as one that is necessary for public tranquility, no less useful to the Church than to the state, and in accord with God's Word, the tradition of the Fathers and the examples of the saints." Gregory XVI declares the doctrine that freedom of conscience is to be granted to every man to be an "absurd and erroneous opinion, or rather madness" (absurda ac erronea sententia seu potius deliramentum). (Encyclical "Mirari vos arbitramur," 1832.) Pius IX rejects this proposition as an impious one (impium): "that the highest good of human society and civil progress indeed require that human society be constituted and governed without regard to religion, as if it did not exist at all, or at least without making any distinction between true and false religions"; likewise this proposition: "that it is the best condition of society when the secular government (imperium) is not recognized as having the office of coercing, by solemnly enacted penalties (sancitis poenis), the violators of the Roman religion, unless public peace requires it." Pius X [as printed; *Quanta cura* and the Syllabus are Pius IX's], after approvingly citing the pronouncement of his predecessor Gregory XVI just heard, then inveighs further against the proposition: "that freedom of conscience and of worship is every man's own right, which in every rightly constituted society should be proclaimed and confirmed by law, and that citizens must rightfully have complete freedom to express their thoughts publicly, whatever they may be, by word or print or in any other way, and that they should not be restricted in this by any ecclesiastical or civil authority." (Encyclical "Quanta cura," 1864.) In his notorious "Syllabus" of the year 1864 the same Pope rejects the following propositions as false: "24. The Church has no power to use force, nor any secular power, direct or indirect." "27. The sacred ministers of the Church and the Roman Pontiff are to be excluded from all power and dominion over worldly things." "47. The public schools erected by the state should be removed from the authority of the Church." "55. The Church is to be separated from the state and the state from the Church." "77. In the present time it is not expedient that the Catholic religion should be the only religion of the state, to the exclusion of other forms of worship." In particular the successor of this Pope, Leo XIII, also expressed himself on the relation between Church and state. Only a few of his numerous pronouncements shall be cited here: "But not merely the will of God himself, but also the common welfare of human society absolutely demand that the secular power