Свобода религиозной совести в Америке

(Essay on the relationship between church and state, historical development and current state, in the United States of America). “No qualification of religion shall ever be required as a determination of qualification to hold any office or public trust under the Government of the United States” (United States Constitution, Art. VI, § 3). “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof” (First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States). “The free exercise of religion and worship, without distinction or favor, shall be forever permitted in this State to all mankind; but the liberty of conscience herein secured, shall not be so understood as to excuse acts of license, or justify acts inconsistent with the peace and safety of the State” (Constitution of the State of New York, art. I, §3). The question of freedom of religious conscience is undoubtedly one of the most important public issues. It can even be said to be the most important of these questions, since it embraces an area of ​​human life that serves as the primary source of the moral strength of the people's body and the guiding principle in achieving the people's ideal. In view of this, it is quite natural that with any social movement along the path of renewal, such as that which is taking place in our country at the present time, the question of freedom of religious conscience inevitably arises before the public consciousness. But despite its importance, it is at the same time difficult to resolve, and this difficulty is determined not only by the philosophical principles that underlie it, but also by the very importance of those practical consequences that may be the result of one or another of its resolution. Our public consciousness on this issue is divided into two parties, which, according to the generally accepted, although imprecise nomenclature, can be called conservative and liberal. The latter insists on resolving this issue in the sense of completely granting freedom of religious conscience or declaring the separation of church and state. As an example of the actual implementation of such a resolution of the issue, they often point to America. But we doubt that this party has ever seriously examined the actual state of the question of freedom of religious conscience in the country which it holds up as an venerable example, notwithstanding the paramount importance and even the necessity of such an inquiry. In this article we bring to the attention of both sides some material that can serve to clarify the actual state of the issue that concerns us in the United States of North America, both in its current state and in its historical development. I. The Settlers of North America—Martyrs for the Rights of Religious Conscience. Religious exclusivity and intolerance of the Puritans. Their attitude towards Quakers and Catholics. State character of religion. Protestantism and Roman Catholicism. The lack of rights of the latter. Anti-Catholic legalizations. The Proclamation of Liberty in Mariland and its Consequences, Religious Intolerance of Congress. North America, within the present territory of the United States, owes its settlement chiefly to the Reformation. When a number of bold religious reformers proclaimed new principles in the field of religion, the right of religious conscience and personal responsibility, their voice thundered through the European peoples languishing under the despotic yoke of the papacy. The masses became agitated, new principles came into conflict with the old, and this collision produced the era of political and religious unrest that followed the Reformation. Horror-stricken Catholicism sought salvation from the flood of reformist ideas in an even greater adherence to the old principles; Protestantism, for its part, irresistibly went in the opposite direction and in its extreme sects fanatically rejected everything that could remind of Catholicism. The difference between the old and the new so deeply captured the social and religious life of mankind that there could be no middle reconciling principle between them. If, by virtue of the law of balance, this middle principle had to be formed, then it was not reconciling extremes, but hostile to them. This fact manifested itself with particular force in England, to which North America primarily owes its settlement. The Reformation in England found expression in a compromise between Catholicism and Protestantism, and was more of a state than a religious act. Henry VIII, having rejected the supremacy of the pope, remained at the same time a zealous Catholic, and believed that the whole significance of the reformation was to more fully subordinate the church to the state and make it the support of the throne. This view was fully developed in subsequent reigns. The Anglican Church became a completely state religion. But she could not find general acceptance among the population, among whom were both pure Catholics, who continued to consider the pope the head of the church, and pure Protestants, who rejected any connection with Catholicism. Both of these parties equally did not recognize the new church, and the latter, with the rights of the state religion, began to consider them equally harmful to the state. Hence the persecution that characterizes the attitude of the Anglican Episcopal Church and the state towards Catholics and Puritans, as two extreme expressions of opinions that disagree with the state religion. These persecutions served as a direct reason for the eviction of those persecuted to the soil of the New World. Catholics, Puritans and Quakers - the three main religious parties that were especially important in the historical fate of North America - moving to the New World, sought for themselves first of all the fatherland of free religion, and then the fatherland of earthly goods 160. Catholics settled in Maryland, Quakers in Pennsylvania, and Puritans in New England. Other parts of the continent were settled: the present state of New York by Dutch Protestants, Virginia by Anglicans, North Carolina by various Nonconformists, and South Carolina by Huguenots. Thus, the first settlers of the United States were martyrs for their religious beliefs, and when they moved to America, they sought countries where they could freely practice their faith. It is therefore natural to assume that they brought with them to the soil of the New World the principles of freedom of religious conscience and made them the basis of their mutual relations. Reality shows something completely different. Having themselves escaped persecution for their religious beliefs, the settlers at the first opportunity declared the spirit of the same intolerance from which they suffered and which they fought against in their homeland. The entire history of the colonial era of the United States presents such facts of religious intolerance that can hardly find a parallel even in the history of religious persecution in England. Particularly remarkable in this regard is the fact that the most intolerant of freedom of religious conscience were those who most endured and fought for the rights of conscience, namely the Puritans, while Catholics were the persecuted. Freedom of religious conscience, as it now exists in the United States, did not appear suddenly, but was gradually worked out through a slow process of historical development, and is rather a necessary result of historical and political circumstances than a voluntary act of consciousness of the justice of the principle of freedom of religious conscience. The most important role in the formation of the moral, religious, social and political life of the United States undoubtedly belonged to the Puritans, who settled in that part of the country that was called New England. They were exiles for the rights of conscience. But having found freedom themselves, they did not consider it the same right for others. In its inner essence, Puritanism turned out to be far from the breadth of views with which the right of free thought could be combined. Having rejected external forms, Puritanism entered into a dead narrow circle of ideas behind which everything was condemned as false and harmful. Gloomy, exclusive fanaticism became the basis of the entire political and social system. The Puritan colonies were not so much political communities as religious ones. To the commission appointed to develop and outline the laws of society, one of the main leaders of the Puritans, Cotton, declared that “the people of God should be governed by no other laws than those given by God to Moses,” and insisted on the establishment of a theocracy, “God’s government for God’s people” 162. This law was not adopted in such an exclusive form, but nevertheless the adopted code was only slightly inferior in its exceptional severity to the system of the Mosaic theocracy, and it excluded everything that deviated from the strict form of Puritanism. “The rock on which this community was based, says the historian, was religion; a common faith brought these people together and held them together. They were exceptional because they came to the edge of the world for the privilege of living on their own. And why did they need to open their refuge to their oppressors? Religious unity was made a bulwark for the exiles against expected attacks from the Anglican hierarchy. The vast continent of America beckoned colonization; They reserved their own property only for the brethren. Their religion was their life, they accepted only its followers; they could not tolerate a blasphemer, an infidel or a dissenter; and all the people gathered together in their congregations. Such was the system cherished as the bulwark of their freedom and their happiness. The order of churches and communities, Cotton wrote to his friends, is now, by common consent, so established in New England that it resembles a new heaven and a new earth. Due to such an organic connection between religion and society, recognition of religion as a state religion was inevitable. The Puritan form of religion became part of the civil institution; evasion of it began to be punished as a civil crime. “The state became the model of the kingdom of Christ on earth; a crime against civil government was a crime against Christ; and conversely, since the Gospel had equal right, blasphemy, or what the court might call blasphemy, was the greatest crime in the list of misdemeanors. Denying that any book of the Old or New Testament was the written and infallible word of God was punishable by fine or lashes, and, if persistent, by exile or death. Absence from the “service of the word” or church services was punishable by a fine” 164. Extreme intolerance became the atmosphere of the community. “God forbid us from such a cooling of our love for the truth that we begin to tolerate errors!” exclaimed the old leader of Puritanism, Dudley. “It is better to endure hypocrites and tares than thorns and briars,” affirmed Cotton. “Diversity (diversity of faith), echoed Ward, is the greatest wickedness in the world. To say that people should have freedom of conscience is an impious error." 165 The principles were soon put into action, and one of the first acts of the colonists was to expel two persons from the community because they could not agree with too severe a form of Puritanism 166 . But expelling from its midst those who disagreed with its principles, the Puritan community began to treat other external religious communities with even greater severity, and considered the appearance of any member of the latter worse than a harmful ulcer. To prevent the introduction of heretical plagues into the Puritan environment, in 1657 a special legalization was made against the Quakers. According to it, “every male Quaker for the first violation (of the law prohibiting them from appearing in the community of the Puritans) should have one ear cut off and he should be kept at work in the house of correction until he can be sent away at his own expense and for the second violation he should have the other ear cut off and he should be kept in the house of correction, as stated above. And every Quaker woman who comes under this law is to be severely flogged, and kept in a house of correction until she can be sent away at her own expense. And every Quaker (man or woman) who shall break the law a third time shall have his tongue pierced with a red-hot iron, and kept in a house of correction until he can be sent away at his own expense." But if the Puritans treated the Quakers with such fanatical intolerance, who in England together with them suffered persecution for the rights of personal religious conscience, then they were even more intolerant towards the Roman Catholics. Puritanism, more than any other Protestant sect, degenerated from a radical rejection of Catholicism and lived by hatred of it. The degree and power of bishops, the sign of the cross, the observance of saints' days, the use of musical instruments in church, and the ecclesiastical habit worn by the clergy, were all abhorrent to the Puritans, because they were all connected with Catholic worship, and the chief offenses of the Church of England in their eyes were that it retained some of the doctrines and practices of the Roman church. Religion and freedom, although peculiarly understood, were the dominant principles of the Puritans, and since the Catholic Church in their eyes was the mortal enemy of both religion and freedom, their fanaticism, no less than their love of independence, filled them with the deepest hatred of Catholics. They had the virtues and vices of the lower, uneducated classes of the English people, from which they mostly came. If they were moderate and thrifty, were content with little, were ready to endure difficulties and endure shortcomings, stubborn in the fight against circumstances, then at the same time they were narrow-minded, superstitious, angular and stern; and these qualities were even more hardened by the cold, gloomy and harsh system of religious worldview. They were superstitious to the point that they caught and hanged women for accusations of witchcraft, 168 and this at the same time led them to believe in the diabolism of Catholic priests. Although they did not completely deny the external expressions of their religiosity, they fasted, appointed special annual days of public prayer and, due to misdirected asceticism, renamed and changed Sunday into the Old Testament Saturday, nevertheless, Catholic fasts and holidays were in their eyes the superstition of idolaters, and although they retained the right to declare what is the true Christian teaching and force the acceptance of it, they At the same time, they indignantly rejected the authority of the church 169. As a result of all this, the Puritans treated Roman Catholics with particular intolerance and took all measures to prevent them from entering their midst. In 1631, eleven years after the arrival of the Pilgrims on the shores of America, they seized and expelled from their colony one member on the mere suspicion that he was a papist. In the same year a priest was accused of expressing the opinion that the Roman Church was the true Church. Three years later, the Puritan leader Roger William, famous for his struggle for freedom of conscience and subsequently expelled from the community for this 170. Together with the Puritans, they declared that the cross was “the remnant of the Antichrist, a papal symbol, reeking of superstition, and therefore should not be recognized by Christian people.” To prove the sincerity of their views, the Puritans threw out the cross from the English flag 171. This hatred of Catholicism found expression in direct legalizations intended to protect Puritan communities from Catholic invasion. The Legislative Assembly in Massachusetts decided in 1647 that Jesuits who came to the colony should be immediately expelled, and if they returned again, they should be promoted 172. The settlers of Connecticut passed laws that “no priest (Catholic) should live in this area; he must be expelled and upon his return suffer death. Priests can be arrested by anyone without any judicial authority” 173. The spirit of religious intolerance prevailed throughout the entire colonial era, not only in the Puritan population, exceptional in its harsh worldview, but also in all other colonies, with few exceptions. This spirit was legally expressed in the fact that most of the colonies before the start of the struggle for liberation had a state religion. The leading position in this regard was occupied by the Anglican Church, which was recognized by law in many colonies. “The clergy in America, says an English writer of the last century, do not receive tithes, but in most of the colonies before the Civil War (excepting the provinces of New England, where the Independents predominated) it was decreed to divide the colony into parishes and establish a religious profession there according to the rites and ceremonies of the Church of England; and also to collect an annual salary for the maintenance of each parish clergyman" 174. This law had particular force in Virginia, where the Anglican Episcopal Church, by a decree of 1662, was recognized as fully state. “Although there, says the historian, there were no clergy in more than a fifth of the parishes, nevertheless the laws required strict unity of faith, and everyone was obliged to make offerings for its maintenance. Twelve men were elected in each parish to collect parish taxes, with the power to fill all vacancies in their society. Control in church affairs passed from the parish to a special corporation, which the parish could no longer change and had no power over it. No nonconformist could teach, even privately on pain of expulsion; not a single reader could expound the catechism, or St. scriptures. The weakened severity of Queen Elizabeth's laws was renewed against the Quakers; for absence from the church they were punished with a fine of twenty pounds sterling” 175. In like manner the Church of England was "established" in the states of Georgia and North and South Carolina, as may be judged by the fact that in their post-independence constitutions they abolished the "establishment" of the church. The North Carolina Constitution of 1776, for example, prohibits the levying of a tax "for the purchase of land, or for the building of a house of worship, or for the maintenance of any priest or clergy." In Georgia, the Church of England was expressly established by the colonial statute of 1758 177 . These colonies were mostly populated by English settlers of the Episcopal faith, and therefore the establishment of the Anglican Church in them is not surprising, since the law establishing this church, which was in force in England itself, most likely could have been applied in them. Much more remarkable is the fact that a similar institution existed in other colonies inhabited by various nonconformists, although here the institution is not limited to the Church of England, but extends to all religious denominations of Protestantism. Thus, the charter of the colony of New Hampshire decreed that “freedom of conscience should be granted to all Protestants, but that religion which would be more consistent with the rites of the Anglican Church should be especially approved and protected,” and such a decree remained in force in this colony until the revolution 178. The Puritans in their colonies hastened to establish their own denomination as the state church. “In Connecticut all persons were required to pay both for the maintenance of the church and the congregation. Congregational churches were adopted and established by law." 179 In Massachusetts, the colonial statute of 1716 legitimized a compulsory religious institution, according to which the assembly took care of providing every settlement with a “priest, competent as recognized by law,” namely, “able, learned, faithful, of good behavior,” and made taxes for its maintenance. Of all the original thirteen colonies that made up the United States, only four did not have a more or less established church. In all others, religion was strictly state; the clergy were supplied by appointment of the government, as expressly legitimized by the Massachusetts Statute; compulsory taxes were levied for the maintenance of churches, and in general the law protected one confession and oppressed others. At first, when colonists of different faiths lived in separate settlements, the civil establishment of the church was limited to one strictly defined religion, to the exclusion of all others, at least in principle related to each other. But subsequently, with increased emigration, it was necessary, of necessity, to allow changes and relaxations in the principle of establishment. The settlers of different faiths mixed among themselves so much that the dominance of one confession over all the others turned out to be inconvenient and impossible. The consequence of this was that private sectarian differences began to be smoothed out, civil legislation expanded its horizons and, when “establishing” the church, it was not the private sectarian, but the general religious principle that was in mind, so that several sects could fit under it, which, despite their particular differences, were alike in their basic principles. Little by little, this principle expanded to the point that legislation began to divide all religions into two categories - Protestantism and Catholicism, as two opposite and incompatible principles. This was already a significant step towards freedom of religious conscience; but it could only be favorable for one side - Protestant or Catholic. The solution to the question of which side was to be in the dominant position completely depended on their comparative numerical strength; and since the overwhelming majority of the population was Protestant, Protestantism naturally became the established religion. Catholicism thereby found itself outside the “establishment” and did not receive the rights of religious conscience. Indeed, the charters that determined the religious attitude of the colonists limit the laws on freedom of conscience only to Protestants, while Catholics are either silent or outright excluded. New Hampshire's charter "grants freedom of conscience to all Protestants." The Charter of Massachusetts states: "For the greater convenience and encouragement of our living subjects inhabiting the provinces of Massachusetts Bay, and those who shall hereafter settle therein, we decree, that for ever hereafter freedom of conscience shall be allowed in the worship of God to all Christians, excepting Papists, inhabiting or having to inhabit the said province or territory." The charter of Georgia, which was in force until 1752, commands “that freedom of conscience should be allowed in the worship of God to all persons inhabiting or having to inhabit the said province, and that all such persons, with the exception of papists, should have the free exercise of religion” 181. More remarkable than any other in terms of the relationship between Protestantism and Catholicism is the charter of Rhode Island. It was granted to the colony as a result of a special petition in which the petitioners “freely declared that it was their heartfelt desire, if allowed, to make a living experience that civil society could exist and be in its most flourishing state with complete freedom in religious relations.” The charter indeed decrees that “each and every one shall freely and fully use his own judgment and conscience in matters of religious relations, throughout the entire strip of the said land, conducting himself peacefully and calmly, and not using this freedom for licentiousness and impiety, nor for civil harm, or disturbing others.” The meaning of this law provides complete freedom of conscience - without any restrictions on religious differences, but the colonial government, guided by the prevailing view, interpreted it in the sense of granting freedom of conscience only to Protestants, with the exception of Roman Catholics 182. A historian of the last century says: “Since the time of this charter the form of government has suffered very little change. In 1663, a decree was made that all men of sufficient wealth and good behavior who profess Christianity, with the exception of Roman Catholics, should be recognized as free. Thus, little by little, the population was legally divided into two categories, which included two opposing religious principles - Protestantism and Catholicism. As mutually exclusive, they could not agree on one point; a struggle was inevitable between them, and it now began all the more fiercely because Protestantism, without weakening itself by the disunity of private sects, concentrated all its energy to suppress the already weak in numbers of Catholicism. And so, in almost all the colonies, strict laws came into force, subjecting Catholics to merciless criminal prosecution. In New York, which was distinguished by comparative religious tolerance and had, according to the census of 1696, only seven papists or, at the most, seven Catholic families, in 1700, a decree was made that, by its very beginning, characteristically expresses the spirit of the attitude of Protestants towards Catholics. It begins with the words: “Since various Jesuits, priests and papal missionaries have lately come and had residence in the remote parts of this province and other neighboring colonies of His Majesty, by their evil and insidious slander they have tried to outrage, seduce and distract the Indians from their lawful obedience to his most sacred Majesty, to excite and lead them to rebellious rebellion and open hostility against the government,” it was decreed: that every a pastor coming into this province after November 1, 1700, or remaining in it after that date, was to be "considered a troublemaker and disturber of the public peace and safety, and an enemy to the true Christian religion, and to be sentenced to permanent imprisonment"; if he escapes from prison and is captured again, he must be punished by death; anyone who gave shelter to the pastor was subject to a fine of 200 pounds sterling and three days of standing in the pillory 184. In 1701, a law was passed according to which Catholics were excluded from holding public positions and were deprived of voting rights and voting rights 185. The following year, Queen Anne granted freedom of conscience to all residents of New York, “except the papists” 186. These laws were not a dead letter; they found correspondence in the attitude of the Protestant population towards Catholics, which was extremely hostile towards them, which was proven by the facts of barbaric violence. In 1741, the population of New York was gripped by panic due to frequent fires. A rumor spread throughout the city that the blacks were plotting to burn the city and exterminate the population. The people were in furious confusion, several blacks were captured and hanged, but no conspiracy was discovered on their part. Then suspicion turned to Catholics. “At first,” said the provincial governor, we thought that only blacks were involved here, but now it is clear that the hand of papism is here.” 187 And so a furious cry arose against the papists, the people were looking for someone to satisfy their bloodthirsty instincts, and finally attacked a certain John Uri, as the main culprit of all disasters and unrest. On suspicion that he was a Catholic priest, he was captured, put on trial, condemned to death and executed in a barbaric manner 188. Meanwhile, his guilt has not yet been proven and it has not even been proven that he was a Catholic priest, or a Catholic in general, although he was accused and tried mainly as a Catholic priest 189. Protestantism treated Catholicism in a similar way in other colonies. According to the legislation of Massachusetts, as mentioned above, the Jesuits were expelled from the colony, and if they returned, they were hanged. In Virginia, "papists" were deprived of the legal capacity to be witnesses in any case, could not own weapons and could not keep horses worth more than five pounds sterling 190. But their fate in Mariland was especially remarkable. This colony was inhabited almost exclusively by Catholics, under the patronage of the Catholic Lord Baltimore, who was granted possession of this land by royal charter. Lord Baltimore, who himself had converted to Catholicism as a result of the horrors of persecution against him in England, considered it his first duty in his colony to proclaim freedom of religious conscience, and with his own hand drew up a charter that granted freedom of conscience to all Christians and ensured the right to vote in the making of laws to all free people 191 . "The Roman Catholics, says the Protestant historian, oppressed by the laws of England, could confidently find a peaceful refuge in the quiet haven of Chisapeka, and there also the Protestants were sheltered from Protestant intolerance." 192 "The Puritan, expelled from Anglican Virginia, and the peaceful Quaker, whose ears were cut in Puritan New England, found refuge among the liberal and warm-hearted Catholics of Maryland," adds Catholic historian 193. But such religious tolerance of Catholics, with the general dominance of the spirit of intolerance, caused many troubles for them. Soon the Protestant population gained predominance in the colony, and at the same time, the hostility of Protestants to Catholics was not slow to emerge. In 1644, the Protestant population, led by an ambitious adventurer, rebelled against the Catholics, so that the Catholic missionaries and the ruler of the colony himself had to flee, and only two years later order was restored with the help of military force 194. Realizing the impossibility of withstanding the fight against Protestants by force, Catholics tried to legally protect themselves from Protestant violence, and at their insistence, mainly the general meeting in 1649 decided on an “act of toleration”, which granted complete freedom of conscience to all “who profess faith in Jesus Christ” 195. But this act only reconciled the warring parties for a short time. The execution of King Charles in England led to the rise of Cromwell, and in his person Puritanism felt power in its hands. This event instantly reverberated in America and the Puritans of Mariland again rebelled against the Catholics. In 1654 they formed an assembly from which the Catholics were excluded; canceled the “act of toleration” and adopted their own act, which affirmed freedom of conscience under the condition that freedom did not extend to “papacy, prelacy or licentiousness of opinion,” by which Catholicism was meant 196. Thanks to the efforts of Lord Baltimore, Catholics defended their rights for a time, but then one after another decree finally deprived them of freedom of conscience. In 1692, the assembly declared the Anglican Church to be the state church in the colony of Mariland and imposed taxes on citizens of all denominations, including Catholics, to support the Protestant clergy. In 1704, a new law, entitled: “an act to prevent the growth of the papacy in the province,” prohibited bishops and pastors from celebrating mass, performing religious services, or converting infidels; prohibited Catholics from teaching and gave the right to a Catholic child who converted to Protestantism to demand from his Catholic parents a part of the property belonging to him, as if they were not alive. They were allowed to celebrate Mass only in private families. In 1706, the act gave freedom to the Quakers to perform their worship, so that "in a colony founded by Catholics, the Catholics were the only victims of the intolerance of the dominant party" 197 . “In the following years, by a series of successive laws, they were deprived of voting rights, unless they swore to renounce their faith. The executive branch often arbitrarily issued decrees “to remove children from the evil influence of Catholic parents,” and the assembly voted that the papists pay the double tax levied on Protestants. Hostility towards Catholics finally increased to the point that they were even forbidden to appear in certain parts of the cities." 198 This was the legal position of Catholics until the revolution in all the colonies, with the exception of Pennsylvania, where peaceful Quakers easily got along with Catholics. The extent to which Protestantism was intolerant of Catholics can be seen from the fact that Protestants could not be indifferent to the freedom of Catholics outside their colonies. After the cession of Canada by France to the English government, the Act of Parliament of 1774, after several years of martial law, restored to the Catholics inhabiting this province the rights that they enjoyed under the French government: they were authorized to sit on the provincial council, restored the effect of French laws in civil matters, ensured the Catholic clergy the possession of their property and complete freedom in the matter of religion. There was indignation among Protestants at the granting of such extensive rights to Catholics, and the Massachusetts colony presented a protest to Congress in 1774, which stated: “that the last act of Parliament establishing the Roman Catholic religion and French laws in that extensive country (Canada), is extremely dangerous to the Protestant religion and to the civil rights and liberties of all America; and therefore we, as men and Protestant Christians, are necessarily obliged to take all due measures for our safety." 199 Congress, having considered “the rights and complaints of these colonies,” came to the conclusion: “that the following acts of parliament are encroachments and violations of the rights of the colonists, namely: the act of establishing the Roman Catholic religion in the province of Quebec (Canada), abolishing the just system of English laws, and establishing tyranny there to the great danger (from such complete dissimilarity in religion, law and government) of the neighboring British colonies, with the assistance of the blood and treasury of which the said country was conquered from France... Americans cannot submit to such grave acts and measures." 200 In an address to the British people of the same year, the Congress said: “We cannot suppress our surprise that the British Parliament could ever agree to establish in that country (Canada) a religion which has drowned your island in blood and spread impiety, fanaticism, persecution and murder to all parts of the world.”201 Such speeches of religious intolerance towards Catholics were heard from the lips of representatives of the colonies on the eve of a great event - the declaration of independence, which resulted in a law on complete freedom of conscience in matters of religion, to all without distinction of religion. Clarification of the question of how such a drastic revolution could have taken place thus acquires paramount importance in the sense of a clear understanding of the nature of the paragraph of the constitution regarding religion and the reasons that determined its appearance. II. The political crisis and its significance for the proclamation of freedom of religious conscience. The first sound of freedom. The revolution in the views of Congress and its causes. New constitutions and a paragraph in them on freedom of religious conscience. Limitation of civil rights of Catholics. Federal Constitution and the abolition of religious qualifications. Both of these arguments are discussed at conventions. Meaning of paragraph of the federal constitution. Separation of Church and State. The population of the thirteen colonies that later formed the confederacy of the United States was overwhelmingly Protestant before the outbreak of the Revolutionary War. The Catholic population was a tiny fraction of them, numbering only 25,000, and lived primarily in Mariland. Due to its weakness, it, as mentioned above, was constantly a victim of persecution and persecution by Protestants, who at the same time did not cease to quarrel with each other because of differences in religious teachings. The enmity over religious differences was so old and intense that it could not stop due to the mere consciousness of the inalienability of human rights to freedom of religious conscience, since, on the contrary, the consciousness of the dominant majority denied these rights. It could only end thanks to a general convulsive movement that would change the entire social and political system of the country, which gave food to the spirit of intolerance. Such a movement began in the country with the beginning of the struggle for independence. When the colonies in their relations with the metropolis saw the inevitable onset of a crisis, which required from them an extraordinary effort of all moral and physical forces, the very order of things forcibly called them to cohesion and unity in order to more successfully withstand the fight against a common enemy. Religious hostility between Protestantism and Catholicism was especially bitter in Mariland, the main colony of Catholics, and it was in this colony that the rights of religious conscience were destined to receive legal recognition for the first time. Already at the beginning of 1774, the relations of the colonies with England came to such tension that a crisis seemed inevitable. The discontent of the colonists developed and grew into an irreconcilable hatred of the metropolis and was only waiting for a reason to open hostile actions. The crisis was dangerous and to endure it, the friendly cooperation of all members was necessary. The people met in a convention, where they discussed their position with common forces, and at the convention and Mariland the following appeal was drawn up to the people: “As our opposition to the settled plan of the British Government to bring America into slavery can be strengthened by the union of all classes of people in this province, we most seriously recommend that all former differences in religion or politics, and all private disputes and enmities of every kind, should henceforth cease and be forever buried in oblivion and we ask, we conjure every person with his duty to God, country and posterity to unite heartily in defense of our common rights and freedom” 202. These were the first sounds that heralded the general freedom of religious conscience, which later became the fundamental law of the country, but its origin shows all the more clearly where the main reason that produced this law is. It consisted of political circumstances that required a common alliance of colonists of different faiths to fight England. The following story provides striking evidence of this. The Congress of 1774, in its address to the British people, as we have seen, took up arms with terrible indignation against the act of Parliament which gave the Catholics of Canada freedom of religious conscience. Circumstances then quickly changed, and there was a break with the metropolis. On May 10, 1775, another congress met. Blood had already been shed and it was clear that the sword had to decide the matter. Congress was looking for funds and allies to fight. All the colonies united for her. Canada remained on the sidelines. It was now very important for Congress to attract her to its side as an ally, and so it abruptly turned its front. He began to curry favor with Canada and, in a series of appeals to the Canadian people, asked them to unite with other colonies, declaring that “the fate of the Protestant and Catholic colonies must be strictly united” in this matter, and assuring them of the complete inviolability and security of their religious rights. The instructions given by Congress to the ambassadors for negotiations with the Canadians on November 8, 1775, among other things, said: “And you can and are hereby authorized to declare that we consider the rights of conscience sacred and will never restrict them in the free exercise of their religion” 203 . Such appeals were made twice in 1775, but without success. The following year, Congress attempted for the third time to make the same request in Canada, and again instructed its ambassadors on May 20, 1776: “You must declare that we consider sacred the rights of conscience, and you can promise to all the people, solemnly in our name, the free and inviolable exercise of their religion; and to the clergy complete, perfect and peaceful possession and enjoyment of all their estates; that the government of everything pertaining to religion and clergy should be left entirely in the hands of the good people of that province and such legislation as they themselves can make; subject, however, that all other denominations of Christians should be equally authorized to occupy public offices and enjoy civil privileges and the free exercise of their religion, and should be entirely exempt from the payment of tithes or taxes for the maintenance of any religion” 204 ​​. Considering these assurances insufficiently convincing, the Protestant-majority Congress even invited Jesuit John Carroll as an ambassador, hoping that he could better influence the Catholic clergy of Canada 205 . But this embassy also failed. Canada looked suspiciously at these assurances, considering them forced by political circumstances, and still remembered all too vividly the indignant protests of the same Congress against the law by which Parliament granted Canadian Catholics freedom of religious conscience. This distrust of Catholic Canada towards the Protestant colonies is the main reason why she remained aloof from the general movement towards independence and thus did not become part of the United States. A contemporary historian of the struggle for independence assures us that the Canadian masses were inclined in favor of union with the other colonies, but “the legal privileges possessed by the Roman Catholic clergy made them resist the change, as they feared for them from a closer connection with their Protestant neighbors 206 . The unsuccessful outcome of negotiations with Canada from the very first steps made it clear to the representatives of the colonies what a mistake they had made in allowing their Protestant prejudice against Catholics to be expressed so sharply in their protest against the Act of Parliament. This was an important lesson, which showed that differences in religion can be the greatest obstacle to uniting to fight a common enemy. And he turned out to be not infertile. When in 1776 When the “Declaration of Independence” was announced and the colonies gathered at private conventions to develop new constitutions, then the representatives of the people tried in every possible way to consolidate the body of the newly born state by eliminating from it the elements of discord, which were differences in religion, and as a result of this they raised religious issues outside the state, leaving religion to individual freedom. The constitutions of different colonies express this principle of freedom of religious conscience differently. The Virginia Constitution, dated July 5, 1776, declares that “religion, or the debts we owe to our Creator, and the manner of doing them, can only be governed by reason and persuasion, and not by force or compulsion; and therefore all men have the same right to the free exercise of religion, according to the dictates of conscience, and that it is the mutual duty of all to have Christian patience, love and mercy towards one another.”207 The New Jersey Constitution, dated July 2, 1776, defines not only freedom of religious conscience, but the separation of religion and state. She declares that "there shall be no establishment in this province of any religious sect in preference to another"; “no person shall be obliged to pay tithes, taxes or other dues for the purpose of building or improving a church or churches, a place or places of worship, or for the support of a priest or clergy, contrary to what he considers right, or will freely and voluntarily do so himself” 208. The Delaware Constitution, dated September 20, 1776, states: “No person shall be compelled to attend any religious service, or to pay for the building or maintenance of any place of worship, or for the maintenance of any clergy, against his free will and consent... And no preference shall be given by law to any religious society, creed, or mode of worship whatsoever.”209 The Constitution of North Carolina, dated December 18, 1776, provides: “That there shall be no establishment of any one religious church or denomination in this State in preference to others; and no person shall, under any pretext whatsoever, be compelled to attend any place of worship against his own faith or judgment, or be obliged to pay for the purchase of land or the building of a house of worship, or for the maintenance of a priest or clergy, contrary to what he considers right or has voluntarily and personally agreed to do.”210 The Constitution of Georgia, dated February 5th, 1777, says: “All persons shall have the free exercise of their religion, unless it be contrary to the peace and safety of the State; and shall not, except by consent, maintain a teacher or teachers, except from their own profession” 211 . The New York Constitution, dated April 20, 1777, repeals "all such parts of the public and state law, and acts of assembly, as establish any profession of Christians or their priests" 212 . The same principles formed the basis of the constitutions of other states, although some of them do not completely break the connection between religion and state. The Mariland Constitution, August 14, 1776, says: “As it is the duty of every man to worship God in such manner as he judges most favorable to Him, all persons professing the Christian religion are equally entitled to the protection of their religious conscience; Wherefore no person shall be offended by law in his person or condition, on account of his religious profession or belief, or on account of his religious practice, unless, under color of religion, any person shall disturb the good order, peace, or safety of the state, or violate the moral laws, or injure others in their natural, civil, or religious rights. And no person shall be compelled to attend, maintain, or pay, except by consent, any special place of worship: or any special clergy; but the legislature may, at its discretion, impose a general and equal tax for the maintenance of the Christian religion, giving to each person the right of assigning the payment of the money collected from him for the maintenance of a special place of worship or priest, either for the poor of his own religion, or for the poor generally of any particular district." The Constitution of South Carolina, dated March 19, 1778, says: “No person shall be obliged by law to pay for the support and maintenance of any religious worship which he does not freely join in, or voluntarily agree to maintain”; but the same member, decrees that "the Christian Protestant religion shall be considered, and hereby defined and declared, to be the established religion of this State," extending this definition to "all denominations of Christian Protestants in the State." The Massachusetts Constitution, dated March 2, 1780, says: “No subordination of one sect or denomination to another shall be established by law,” but taxes are allowed to be made for the maintenance of public, Protestant teachers of piety, religion and morals in all cases where this will not be done voluntarily,” with this condition, however, that “all money paid by subjects for the maintenance of public worship and said public teachers shall be, if they require it, they are uniformly turned to the maintenance of a public teacher, or teachers of his own religious sect or profession, if there is one, at whose edification he is present; otherwise, the payment may be made for the maintenance of the teacher or teachers of the parish or district in which the said money is collected” 215. The general principle of freedom of religious conscience thus found more or less complete recognition in the private constitutions of the hitherto intolerant colonies. The country was experiencing such an important and dangerous political crisis that to overcome it required the concerted cooperation of all moral and physical forces, and therefore the people unanimously decided to forget mutual disagreements due to religious differences and placed them outside the nascent state body, thus separating church and state. But no matter how strong the political need was for the complete equalization of the rights of religious conscience of the various confessions included in the state, even stronger were the historically inveterate prejudices of one confession towards another 216. They could not immediately yield to a new beginning, and if they could not hold on to the general principle, they continued to dominate in particulars, limiting the general principle of complete equality of religious rights. Prejudice made itself felt in the relations between extreme confessions - Protestantism and Catholicism, and since the former had actual dominance, it did not fail to consolidate it with legal dominance and various advantages. The same constitutions which, as shown above, seemed so decisively inclined to equalize the rights of religious conscience, to exclude religious questions from the sphere of state jurisdiction, could not completely free themselves from the spirit of religious intolerance, and in many of them it manifests itself as a tendency to retain certain advantages exclusively for Protestants. This was especially reflected in determining the legal capacity of persons to occupy public and government positions. Many constitutions determine this legal capacity by the religious faith of the persons, with full preference being given to Protestants. Thus, the above constitution of the State of New Jersey, dated July 2, 1776, together with the declaration of complete freedom in matters of religion, contains a resolution strongly colored by the Protestant spirit. It decrees: “that no Protestant inhabitant of this colony shall be denied the enjoyment of civil rights merely on account of his religious principles; but that all persons professing the faith of every Protestant sect, who shall conduct themselves peaceably under the government hereby established, shall be entitled to election to every office of profit or trust, or to be a member of every department of the legislature, and shall enjoy fully and freely every privilege and advantage enjoyed by their other fellow-subjects.”217 The constitution makes no mention of Catholics, but its meaning, which grants civil rights and benefits to “all professing the Protestant faith,” clearly excludes Catholics from the scope of these rights. Other constitutions state this even more clearly. The North Carolina Constitution, December 18, 1776, states: “That no person who shall deny the existence of God, or the truths of the Protestant religion, or the divine authority of both the Old and New Testaments, or shall contain religious principles inconsistent with the liberty and safety of the State, shall be qualified to hold any office or place, of trust or profit, in the civil department in this State.”218 The Constitution of the State of Georgia, dated February 5, 1777, states that members of the legislature "shall be of the Protestant religion" 219 . The Constitution of South Carolina, dated March 19, 1778, provides that "the Governor and Commander-in-Chief, the Lieutenant Governor and the Private Council shall all be of the Protestant religion"; that "no person shall be chosen to sit in the House of Representatives, unless he be of the Protestant religion"; and “that all denominations of Christian Protestants in this State, conducting themselves peacefully and faithfully, should enjoy equal religious and civil privileges.” In the same state, the governor was sworn to “to the utmost extent of his power to support and defend the laws of God, the Protestant religion and the freedom of America” 220 . The Constitution of New Hampshire, January 5, 1776, although it does not expressly define civil capacity by religious creed, does imply the same by a provision upholding the former colonial law, which required all members of the legislature to be of the Protestant religion 221 . This spirit of Protestant exclusiveness towards Catholics manifested itself with particular force at the convention assembled to draw up the New York Constitution of April 20, 1777. The meeting proposed for discussion an article on freedom of religious confession, which read as follows: “free tolerance of religious confession and worship should henceforth be forever permitted to all humanity” 222. This article was protested by a considerable number of the members of the convention, and one of them, namely John Jay, who was afterwards the first chief justice of the supreme court of the United States, proposed this addition to the article: “except those professing, the religion of the church of Rome, who shall not hold lands or be admitted to participate in the civil rights granted by the members of this state, until the said confessors shall appear in the supreme court of the state and there take the most solemn oath that they truly believe in their conscience that no pope, priest, or foreign power on earth has the power to remove the subjects of this state from their subjection to it; and further, that they reject and consider false and evil the dangerous and accursed doctrine that a master or any other earthly power has the power to absolve people from the sins indicated and prohibited by the holy Gospel of Jesus Christ, and especially that no master, priest or foreign power on earth has the power to absolve them from this oath.” This proposal caused a lengthy debate, and when it was put to a vote, 10 members voted in favor of it, and it was rejected by a majority of 9 (19 to 10) 223 . The spirit of Protestant intolerance towards Catholics was still so strong among the people. Of the thirteen colonies, five made Protestantism the dominant religion. Of the remaining eight, five proclaimed complete freedom of religious confession, and three, namely Maryland, Delaware and Pennsylvania, made the Christian religion generally dominant and determined the legal capacity of persons to occupy public positions 224. In 1787, a federal convention, composed of representatives from all the colonies, met to draw up a general constitution for the state of the United States. The religious question, the question of the relationship between religion and the state, was also presented for its resolution. This question was not new for the members of the federal convention, which included some of the members who made up the congresses that had met until then. On the contrary, they understood the importance of it, and they saw the bitter lesson from its incorrect resolution in the loss for the common cause of the colonies of the large province of Canada. Therefore, the federal convention, which by its very position and task had more general goals and a broader outlook, naturally had to take the religious question in its more general meaning than how it was taken at private conventions. Local conventions were composed of members of one colony, united by cohabitation; Meanwhile, the federal convention was made up of representatives of the colonies, who had hitherto lived completely separate lives and had nothing in common with each other, so that the connection between them was still very weak and could be broken at the slightest disagreement. Therefore, it was imperative to eliminate any reason for such dissent. Meanwhile, there was a reason. Catholics participated in the convention, and yet in many states their civil rights were denied. Consequently, the federal convention hastened to eliminate this inequality, and so it framed and unanimously adopted a regulation, which in its final form reads as follows: “No religious testimony shall ever be required as a determination of eligibility for any office or public trust in the United States.”225 This article completely placed civil rights independently of any dependence on religious faith and thus came into conflict not only with those private constitutions that conditioned the right to hold public office on the Protestant faith, but also with those that made it dependent in general on the Christian religion. Private constitutions therefore had to undergo modification in accordance with the beginning of the federal constitution. The debates that took place at private conventions about the adoption of this article provide important material for characterizing the views of the American people on the relationship of religion to the state and, mainly, Protestantism to Catholicism. When the federal constitution was proposed for approval by private conventions, the article on the abolition of restrictions on the rights to occupy public positions due to religious differences met with quite strong opposition, especially in those states where such a restriction existed. Many objected that, by virtue of such an article, even the Pope could become President of the United States, and even a pamphlet appeared supporting this objection 226. Particularly heated debates took place at the North Carolina convention. Convention member Abbott said: “The exclusion of religious tests is considered by many to be dangerous and unpolitical. It is assumed that if religious certificates are not required, then pagans, deists and Mohammedans can obtain positions with us, and that senators and representatives can all be pagans” 227. He was answered by Iredell, who, pointing out the deplorable results of religious testimony in all ages, said: “America has given mankind an example of thinking more modestly and thoroughly, that a man may be different from us in religious sentiments, without being a bad member of society... But it is objected that the people of America may elect representatives who have no religion at all, and that heathens and Mohammedans may be admitted to office. But how is it possible to exclude any class of people without taking away that principle of religious freedom for which we ourselves have so ardently fought... This morning I happened to come across a pamphlet in which the author points out the great danger that the Pope may be elected President. I confess that this had never occurred to me before; but if the author had read all the rules governing the election of the president, then perhaps his fears would have been calmed. Only a native or one who has lived in America for fourteen years can be elected president.” I do not know all the rules for electing a pope, but I think that he should be taken from the college of cardinals; and probably there are the preliminary steps necessary to achieve this dignity. That native of America must have too extraordinary a fortune who, after living fourteen years in his country, would go to Europe, enter the Roman order, be elevated to cardinal, then pope, and finally be so long in the confidence of his country that he would be elected president. It would be even more extraordinary if he renounced the papacy for our presidency. Sir, it is impossible to treat such concerns with any degree of seriousness... This country has already had the honor of setting an example of civil liberty, and I hope that it will equally have the honor of showing the rest of the world the way to religious liberty also. God grant that both will continue until the end of time" 228. Governor Johnson said: “When I heard fears expressed that the Pope might be President of the United States, I was greatly surprised. In this case, one could also say that the king of England or France, or the Sultan of Turkey could be elected to this position. It would be exactly the same argument... It is also feared that Jews, Mohammedans, pagans, etc., may be elected to the highest positions in the government of the United States. Those who are Mohammedans or others who do not profess the Christian religion can never be elected to the office of President or any other high office, except in one of two cases: first, this may happen if the people of America completely abandon the Christian religion. If this unfortunately happens, then the people will elect people like themselves. Another case is that if persons of this kind, regardless of their religion, acquire the confidence and respect of the American people by their good behavior and deeds of virtue, then they can be elected" 229. Member Caldwell said: “Here an invitation has been given to Jews and pagans of all kinds to come and settle among us. This could threaten the character of the United States in the future. I think that in political matters the gentlemen who drew up this constitution should not have given such an invitation to the Jews and pagans.” Spencer said: “Religious testimony has always been the cause of persecution in all countries. Persons with a strict conscience will not take the oath required by religious certificates, and will therefore be excluded from office, even if they were as capable of performing them as any member of society” 230. Speight, who was a representative at the federal convention, said: “No certification is required. All men of equal ability and integrity are equally eligible for election to office. Civil violence can make people angry, but never religious. Testimony would enable the dominant sect to persecute the rest.” But Wilson expressed a desire that “the constitution should exclude papal priests from office” 231 . Lancaster said: “As for religious testimony, if the article that excludes it, decreed only what was already in place in the states, then I would not object to it... For my part, considering the rules that determine the election of the president, I do not suppose that the pope could occupy the presidential chair. But we must remember that we are devising a government for millions who do not yet exist. I don't have the gift of providence. I don't know how it will work for four or five hundred years. But it is quite true that Papists can occupy this chair, and Mohammedans can take it. I don't see anything against it here. In every state of the union there are, I think, restrictions; this should be the case in this system” 232. Similar debates took place in other states. At the Massachusetts Convention, Member Singletary declared that the Constitution subverted all privileges, "for there was no provision in it for the people of government to have any religion"; he hoped to see Christians in positions, “while according to the constitution, a papist or an infidel is equally subject to election to them” 233. Many members of the convention said that such a resolution “was a deviation from the principles of our ancestors, who came here to preserve their religion; since it allows deists, atheists, etc. into the general government.” Such objections were answered by the Honorable Daniel Shute with an extensive speech, which seems remarkable in the mouth of a clergyman from the hitherto most intolerant colony and shows a great step in the popular consciousness towards the recognition of the rights of religious conscience. He said: “The establishment of a religious certificate as a condition of eligibility for office in the proposed federal convention would seem to me to entail harmful consequences to some persons, without any benefit to all... In this great and extensive country, there is and will be a great variety of sentiments in religion among its inhabitants. On the proposal of religious testimony, I think one must ask: who should be excluded from national trusts? Whatever answer fanaticism suggests, I think the instillation of frankness and equality will be no one. Far from restricting my favor and confidence in men of my own profession in religion, I suppose and think, sir, that there are worthy men among the adherents of every profession, among the Quakers, the Baptists, the Church of England, the Papists, and further among those who have no other guide to virtue and heaven than natural religion. I am therefore forced to think that the proposed plan of government is particularly wisely constructed in this regard; that as all have an equal right to the blessings of the government under which they live and which they support, so none should be excluded from office because they have a particular profession of religion. It is probable that the eyes of the people will be on the faithful of the land; and, in view of his own safety, he will choose as his rulers men of known ability, known integrity and good moral character. The Apostle Peter tells us that God does not respect personalities, but accepts in every nation the one who fears Him and practices righteousness. And I know no reason why men of this character, to whatever profession of religion they may belong, eaeteris paribus, with other natural qualities, should not be accepted by the people, and why they should not employ them with safety and advantage in the important offices of government. The exclusion of religious testimony in the proposed constitution therefore clearly seems to me to be accepted,” the speaker concluded his speech 234 . Major General Lincoln spoke in the same spirit. But Colonel Jones "thought that rulers ought to believe in God or Christ," and that, whatever the abuse of the religious testimony in England, he still thought that if "our public men were of those who have a good standing in the church, it would be a good thing for the United States." Major Lukes concluded his discussion of the abolition of religious testimony by saying that he "shudders at the thought that Roman Catholics, Papists, and Pagans could take office, and that the Papacy and the Inquisition could be established in America." The Venerable Baccus said: “I now beg leave to offer a few thoughts on certain points in the constitution proposed to us, and will begin with the exclusion of religious testimony. Many people seem to be very worried about him; but nothing is more obvious, both in reason and in St. Scripture, as that religion is always a matter between God and individuals; and therefore no one can establish a religious testimony without violating the essential prerogatives of our Lord Jesus Christ. The priests first seized this power under the Christian name, and Constantine then approved the practice when he adopted the profession of Christianity as the spring of public policy. And search the history of all nations from that day to this time, and it will be clear that the establishment of religious testimonies has been the greatest spring of tyranny in the world. And I rejoice to see so many gentlemen now giving up their rights of conscience in this great and important cause. Some serious-minded people see the danger that, if all religious evidence is excluded, the Congress may then establish the Papacy, or some other tyrannical mode of worship; but it may be quite certain that no such mode of worship can be established without any religious evidence." 237 - The same article was discussed, though more briefly, in the conventions of the states of Virginia and Connecticut and in the legislature of South Carolina, and after the final ratification of the constitution the principle of this article seems to have found general acceptance 238. During the discussion of the federal constitution at private conventions, the remarkable fact was discovered that the general constitution on the religious question took a different point of view compared with the private constitutions of the individual states. The latter, as we saw above, resolutely proclaimed freedom of religious conscience, the separation of religion from the state, but withheld religious certificates when occupying public positions. Meanwhile, the federal constitution abolished religious certificates and passed over in silence the general question of the state's attitude to religion. Moreover, Congress not only passed over this issue in silence, but directly rejected its positive solution. In discussing the relation of religion to the state, Member Pinckney proposed to insert into the Constitution of the United States a provision that "the Legislature of the United States shall make no law upon the subject of religion." This proposal was fully consistent with the spirit of the provisions of private constitutions regarding religion and meant the complete separation of religion from the jurisdiction of the state of the Union. But Congress rejected it and accepted the proposal of the same member to abolish religious certificates 239. Thus, the congress essentially eliminated only the external signs of inequality of various confessions before the state, but avoided giving a complete renunciation of interference in religious affairs, i.e., in other words, did not dare to completely separate the state from religion. Under this state of the Constitution, the power to make legislative regulations in the field of religion was not taken away from Congress; it could establish a state religion, and in view of the proposed possibility for the Pope to become president, even the Roman Catholic Church, hated by the population, could become such a state religion. Such a gap in the federal constitution was noticed by many private conventions, which were even embarrassed to recognize it in this form, and their ratification was accompanied by an expression of desire for a corresponding addition to the constitution. The conventions of New York, New Hampshire and Virginia, having recognized the constitution, insisted on the need to add to it an article on the complete separation of religion and state. The North Carolina Convention at its first session refused to accept the Constitution altogether, and subsequently supplied its ratification with an expression of desire for appropriate correction. Rhode Island Convention 240 did the same. The New York Convention recommended the following addition: “no religious sect or community shall be favored or established by law in preference to others 241 . Virginia, North Carolina, and Rhode Island also proposed that "no particular religious sect or community should be given preference by law over others." The Mariland Convention expressed the desire for such a resolution “that no national religion should be established by law” 243. New Hampshire recommended this amendment: "Congress shall make no law" respecting religion, or infringing upon the rights of conscience." 244 Both these statements of private conventions, and many internal social and political reasons, led Congress to decide to make an addition to the Constitution regarding the complete separation of religion and state, and this addition, approved in 1791, was in the following form: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.”245 Thus the federal government of the United States completely excluded religion from its purview, and the separation of church and state became the fundamental law of the land. By virtue of it, all religious confessions seemed to cease to exist for the state and thereby became equal before it. The state refused to have anything to do with them, and thereby abandoned both the preference for any of them and the persecution of others. Protestantism and Catholicism, which had hitherto been at odds with each other, and Protestantism, as a stronger opponent, oppressed Catholics by state laws, were now left to their own internal forces, and in the struggle between themselves they could rely only on their internal power and turn only to their own resources for means. Although the forces of the opponents remained unequal and Protestantism was immeasurably superior to Catholicism, it is nevertheless clear which side benefited from such legalization. They deprived Protestantism of the opportunity to rely on state power in the fight against Catholicism and thereby lost one of the most powerful means of struggle; Catholicism, on the contrary, freed itself from the possibility of external oppression on the part of its enemy and thereby gained as much as its enemy lost. The benefit, and an immeasurable benefit at that, was on the side of Catholicism; this addition to the constitution brought it out of its oppressed state, placed it on a level with all other creeds, removed the chains of slavery from it, and gave it complete freedom to grow and develop. Catholics highly value and fully understand the significance of this addition for themselves, and Catholic historians are even trying to prove that this addition was adopted by Congress mainly as a result of a memorial submitted to the Catholics to Congress with the assistance of Washington, who was allegedly on friendly terms with the Jesuit Carroll 246 . “The importance of this legislation,” says the Catholic historian, which owes its origin chiefly to the far-sighted wisdom and enlightened patriotism of some of the most eminent Catholics of the day, cannot even be exaggerated. It was the strongest barrier that could be placed against the revival of the spirit of persecution, with which almost all the colonies had disgraced themselves, and which would probably have reared its hydra head again, had not the States, in a solemn convention, rejected it as inconsistent with the essential character of the American government. Only an open field and an honest fight against error is all that Catholicism needs to develop its strength and march to victory” 247. American historians like to point to the articles of the constitution that separate religion from the state as an example of the generosity of Protestantism, which renounced its state advantage and thereby granted Catholicism equal rights. Catholic historians, on the contrary, deny this generosity and attribute the formation of the law to happy circumstances 248. And they are largely right. Various political, social and intellectual reasons acted towards the legal recognition of freedom of conscience, especially in relation to Catholics. We have already seen how significant the position of Canada was in this regard when the struggle for independence began, how, out of a desire to win her over to its side, the colonial congress turned sharply from its intolerance towards Catholics to promising them complete religious freedom. Losing her to the union was a harsh lesson. When, at the end of the war, Canada nevertheless refused to join the new republic and the Americans had to remove their troops from it, “they did this cleansing with great reluctance,” says a historian contemporary with the event. The Americans were not only distressed by the failure of their favorite plan to annex her as the fourteenth member of their confederacy, but also feared the most serious consequences from the restoration of British rule in this area." 249 Congress was very clearly aware that such a loss had been caused by its immoderate expressions regarding the Roman Catholic religion in 1774, and by granting real freedom to the Catholics they hastened to correct their grave mistake. Another reason operating in the same direction was the desire on the part of the statesmen of the United States to attract and ensure foreign emigration. As early as 1774, Congress observed that the population of Canada was "daily increased by Catholic emigrants from Europe"; and when, by the terms of the peace treaty of 1783, Canada was to remain under British rule, it was evident that to retain the anti-Catholic character of the United States government would be to give the growth of that province at the expense of the United States, and that only by granting complete both civil and religious freedom to all could the country hope to turn the tide of emigrants to its shores 250 . Finally, the significant assistance provided to the colonies in the struggle for independence by the Catholic powers France and Spain imposed an obligation to provide freedom for the religion they professed 251 . The persistent struggle for independence, which required the utmost effort of all forces, naturally united the colonists, forced them to forget their religious disagreements and thereby developed a spirit of tolerance. The complete proclamation and exercise of political independence, purchased at dear price and with the hard efforts of all without distinction of denominations, predisposed to the granting of complete freedom and equal rights to all of them as a reward for these efforts. Inspired by the benefits of political independence, the Americans developed a view of their country as a refuge for all oppressed under European despotism, and this again contributed to a favorable resolution of the question of religious freedom. The rapid increase in the number of sects was also important in terms of the reason for the separation of the state from the church, since their diversity made any religious legislation difficult, and, moreover, many of them directly rejected the intervention of civil authorities in religious affairs. Finally, the prevailing theory of the civil character of the state in the 18th century did not remain without influence, the most prominent representative of which in America was Jefferson, the famous author of the Declaration of Independence, who received his political views from the French philosophers of the last century. The state, according to this theory, is a purely political organism, and is in no way connected with religion. This theory, as we will see below, in a moderate form formed the basis of the American Constitution 252. Most of the stated reasons that led to the granting of freedom of religious conscience to Catholics were recognized by the latter in the last century, and one of them, namely the Jesuit Carrol, who was subsequently a faithful bishop of the Roman Catholic Church in the United States, upon his elevation to the bishopric, gave an important historical account of these reasons in 1790. Carrol first surveys the position of the Catholic Church in the colonies before the struggle for independence. “The laws in the colonies were, he says, the most severe against its administration. The priest was subject to death for simply entering their territory. Catholics were subjected to the most severe punishments for adherence to a religion that their conscience approved; and were not only excluded from any position in the government, but their very presence in any of these provinces would hardly have been tolerated if they had been known to profess the Roman faith. In this state of things, few Catholics settled in other states; and if they settled, they hid their religion, and/or joined another, or entered into marriage relations with Protestants and were forced to raise their children in error. Even in Maryland and Pennsylvania the condition of the Catholics was one of oppression. The few Jesuits that could be borrowed from the English mission were not sufficient even to supply the needs of the two provinces in which they first settled; and none of the other clergy had yet dared to undertake the dangerous task of bringing the true faith to other provinces. Such was the state of things when the general rebellion against England took place." He then proceeds to state the very reasons: “Having rejected the subjection of England, the American States found it necessary to form new constitutions for their future government, and, fortunately, the free toleration of religions was made the fundamental clause in all these new constitutions; and in many of them not only tolerance was allowed, but equality of civil rights for persons of every Christian confession. In some, however, the unextinguished spirit of prejudice and intolerance excluded Catholics from this equality. Many reasons converged for the creation of this happy and just member in new constitutions. Firstly. Some of the leading persons in the direction of the American councils were, on principle, against all religious oppression, and, being well acquainted with the customs and teachings of the Roman Catholics, strongly argued the injustice of excluding them from any civil law. Secondly. The Catholics were alike and with equal zeal united in repudiating that oppression which first produced enmity with Great Britain; and it would be impolitic, as well as unjust, to deprive them of a common share in the benefits purchased by common danger and united efforts. Thirdly. Canada's assistance, or at least neutrality, was considered essential to the success of the United States, and granting equal rights to Roman Catholics may have placed Canadians favorably toward the American cause. Finally, France began to show a friendly disposition towards the United States, so it was considered very impolitic to offend that powerful state by unfair severity against the religion it professes.”253 The enormous importance of the clause of the federal constitution and its supplement, separating the state from the church and equalizing the civil rights of all denominations, is thus certain for the fate and growth of the Roman Catholic church in the United States and is recognized by Catholics themselves. But a correct understanding of this meaning can only be established by an understanding of those theoretical principles which formed the basis of legislation and constantly influence its practical application, and also by determining the relation of the federal constitution to the private conventions of the individual states. We now turn to consideration of these questions. III. General principles of relations between church and state. Parallel of soul and body. The basis of the American state and its relationship to the religious principle. The origin of all rights according to the Declaration of Independence. The connection between state and religion. The attitude of the state towards religious differences. The relationship of church and state in the federal constitution of the United States was expressed by their legal separation from each other. The state abandoned legislative power in the field of religion, giving this power exclusively to itself. But legal separation does not determine actual separation, since in reality the foundations of church and state converge so closely that they constitute one organic whole, which cannot be broken in any way without harm to the very purpose of the state. So the question naturally arises, what is the meaning of this legal separation of church and state? In other words, what relation did the state have to the church by virtue of this legal separation? To answer this question clearly, it is necessary to first determine the beginning of the relationship between church and state in general. The existence of church and state is determined by two separate aspects in human life, spiritual and material. In a Christian society, the representative of the spiritual side is the church and the representative of the material side is the state. These two orders already exist at the lower stages of development of human society, but are not clearly understood as two separate orders, or as having their own separate and unique representation. Only in Christian society do these two orders receive due distinction and each in its own representative becomes in normal relation to the other. The prototype and the very basis of this distinction between two orders in society lies in the dual nature of man, or in the fact that man exists only as soul and body and needs the care of both. The Church, representing the spiritual order, cares for souls, has concern for the inner life of human society and takes care of the satisfaction of internal spiritual needs and requirements; the state, representing the material order, naturally takes care of satisfying the material needs and requirements of individuals and society. But a person lives not only with one soul, or one body, but with the unity of both, in their mutual relationship. Soul and body are different, but not separate. They have their own distinctive properties and purposes, and one cannot replace the other; but their separation is death, death for the body only, and not for the soul, which is immortal. The body is material and, separated from the soul, is dust and ashes, the simple earth from which it is formed. The same thing in moral terms applies to society, which is not only the state, or only the church, but the unity of both in mutual relationship. They are different, each has its own distinctive nature, its own laws and functions, and one cannot fulfill the functions of the other, or replace it. But although they are different, in the normal state of society they cannot be separated from each other. The separation of state from church in the moral order would be the same as the separation of body from soul in the physical order. This is death, the death of the state, of course, and not the church, which, like the soul, is immortal. The complete separation of the state from the church destroys its moral life and exposes society to moral corruption and corruption. The soul is then the formative or vital principle of the body. The Church in the moral order is the formative, vital principle of the state, or civil society, which does not have moral life in itself, since all moral life, by its very essence, comes from the spiritual order. In the physical order, life is possible only from God, through the creative act; and in civil society; the moral life can only proceed from the spiritual order, which is established by the Supreme Lawgiver and is represented by the church, the guardian and judge of both natural and revealed law. The soul is the noblest and highest part of man, and it is not intended to eliminate the body or seize its functions, but to guide and control it in accordance with the highest law; it is not natural for the body to gain dominance over the soul in order to bring the law of the spirit into submission to the law of the members. Likewise, the church, as representing the spiritual order and having care for souls, is the noblest and highest part of society and it has the governing power over all human society. In the moral order, it belongs to her to direct and control civil society, through the proclamation and application of the laws of God, for which she serves as guardian and interpreter and by which she is obliged, as the Supreme Lawgiver, to subordinate all her activities and life. This is the ideal relationship between church and state. By virtue of it, it is equally abnormal, and both the absorption of the state by the church and the absorption of the church by the state are condemned; each must remain distinct from the other, each with its own organization, with its own members, abilities, rights and sphere of activity. He equally condemns both the clericalism of the papal system, which seeks to seize the functions of the state that are unusual for the church, and secularism, according to which the state seeks to seize supremacy over the church, as was the case in all states of the pagan world and was expressed in the persecution of Christians by pagan emperors. But the church, in its leadership position, does not itself make laws; it only proclaims, announces and applies them, and itself is also bound by them, like the state. The law itself is prescribed to the government of all people and nations by God, as the Supreme Legislator or the purpose and final cause of creation, and is obligatory equally for individuals and for peoples, for sovereigns and subjects, for church and state. This should be the relationship between these two orders, spiritual and material, church and state; but in reality it has never achieved complete and perfect realization, and history, on the contrary, presents facts of constant deviation in the area of ​​this relationship from the ideal state. The chronic state of these two orders in society, instead of unity and cooperation or mutual correlation, was a state of mutual distrust or even undisguised hostility. During the first three centuries of Christianity, the relationship between them was one of open antagonism and the state persecuted the church. The pagan emperor of the Roman Empire had the claim to unite both of these orders and was at the same time imperator, pontifex maximus u divus or god. For its part, the church, having received one-sided development on the ruins of this very civilization, adopted in Roman Catholicism the tendency to invade an area of ​​purely state life that was unusual for it, to completely subordinate the state to its power, to seize exclusively the functions of the Roman Catholic pontifex maximus, having appropriated the title of Vicar of Christ, and began to strive to be like an imperator. The Middle Ages represent a sharp and actual manifestation of this tendency, and signs of it make themselves felt in the relation of Roman Catholicism to the states of Europe to the present day. Protestantism, on the contrary, degenerated from the influence of the beginnings of the Greco-Roman pagan civilization on the mental makeup of European society, brought with it a pagan view into the relationship between church and state, was a reaction against increased clericalism and, in turn, gave an unusual predominance to the state over the church, which was especially sharply expressed in England, where the church became a simple instrument of the state. How does the American system relate to the ideal theory of the relationship between church and state? Its essence is determined by the historical data on the basis of which it grew, and by those philosophical principles that were legally expressed both in the “Declaration of Independence” and in the federal Constitution. The first settlers of the American colonies were predominantly deeply religious people, and when organizing society on the new land, they had in mind not only to avoid the oppression of conscience, of which they were victims in their former fatherland, but to found a truly Christian, in their concepts, republic. And they really founded such a republic, with such perfection as was only possible given their imperfect Christian views. The New England colonies were undoubtedly inclined towards the establishment of a theocracy, a modified but still more intense form of clericalism, of which Roman Catholicism was the representative in Europe, and thus tended to absorb the state into the church. In the southern colonies, on the contrary, as in England, there was a tendency to establish the supremacy of the civil order and thus make the church a function of the state. These two opposing trends during the formation of American society met each other and, balancing one another, produced the result by which the unity and difference of the two orders was established under the supremacy of the Christian idea. In principle, each order in American society exists and stands in its normal relation to another, and, moreover, in its integrity, with its own distinctive nature, its own laws and administrations; and thus the material order is in due subordination to the spiritual. The developed theory of the American system of relations between church and state does not agree with the widespread view of it as a system according to which the state is supposedly completely independent of religion, separated from it in the full sense of the word. But it draws strictly logical conclusions from the philosophical principles underlying American public life. In view of the prevalence of this erroneous view, especially here in Russia, we consider it necessary to dwell in more detail on the presentation of these principles 254. The basis of the American state is what are called the natural and inalienable rights of man. These rights, among which are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, 255 constitute the highest, supreme law for civil society, which the state is obliged to recognize and obey. They deny the absolutism of the state, define its sphere, limit its power and enjoin its duty. But where do these rights come from and how can they oblige the state and assign it its duty? According to one view, these rights flow from the very essence of man as an individual and constitute his essential part. But the rights of one person in this case must oblige the rights of another person, and yet both of them are equal, just as all persons are equal. How can one person bind or morally oblige another? If things are equal, there can be no superiority of one over the other. According to another view, these rights lie in our human nature, are given to us by nature, and therefore they constitute natural and inalienable human rights. Nature is understood in a double sense: as a physical order or physical laws entering into the physical world, and as a moral law to which all beings are subject by the Creator, endowed with reason and free will, and which is known by the natural reason or common sense of all people. In the first sense, these rights are not contained in our human nature, and cannot be contained in it or flow from it, since they are not physical. Physical rights are an internal contradiction. They can be contained in human nature only in the second sense, and can only be in our moral nature, and therefore must be contained under that law which grounds and maintains moral nature, or the moral order as distinct from the physical order. But the moral law that grounds and supports the moral order, the order of law and justice, is not a law founded or prescribed by nature, but the law of the moral government of nature, to which the Creator of nature, as the Supreme Legislator, subordinated all moral beings. Thus, the moral law of nature is the law of God, and all the rights that it grounds or that only follow from it are the rights of God, and they are ours only because they are His. My rights towards you constitute your duty, that which God ordains as a law or rule of our conduct or treatment towards me; and your rights in relation to me constitute my duty, or what God prescribes as the rule of my conduct in relation to you. And what God prescribes, He has the right to prescribe and therefore can equally command me not to respect those rights in you, and you those rights in me, which are not His rights; and civil society, being his society, is bound by these rights, and cannot alienate or deny them without violating His law and depriving him of His rights. Hence, he who insults another does injustice not only against himself, but does injustice against his Creator, his Chief and his Judge. Of the rights listed above, let’s take the right to life. All people and civil society itself must consider this right sacred and inviolable. But all people are created equal and have equal rights before the law of nature. How can equals bind one another? Mutual agreement, but Rousseau's theories. But where does the binding nature of the contract come from? Why am I obliged to keep my word? Of course, not by virtue of the word itself, but because I would deprive the one to whom I gave this word of the right that belongs to him. But I gave my word to help commit the murder. Am I obligated to keep it? Not at all. Why? Because I gave guarantee to commit a crime, to do an injustice or an unjust act. It is obvious, therefore, that contracts or guarantees do not create, do not create justice, they presuppose it. The contracts themselves are binding only by virtue of the supreme law of justice, and no contracts inconsistent with this law can bind anyone. Why am I obliged to respect our lives? You cannot oblige me to this, because you and I are equal, and no one in your own name can oblige the other. To take your life would be to commit an unjust act, that is, to deprive justice of its right to your life. The right of life is in this case the right of justice. But justice is not just an abstraction; she is not just a mental idea, but reality, and therefore God. Hence, my or your right to life is the right of the One who created us and to whom we entirely belong. Hence, further, the right to life is inalienable even for myself, I myself cannot even take it away from myself, and therefore suicide is a crime, and not only a crime against society, but also a sin before God, because every right to life belongs to God. Therefore, He has the right to command all people to consider the right of life in every person as sacred and inalienable, and it can never be taken away by other people or even by civil society, but only by His command. The same applies to all other human rights 256. These principles found legal and clear expression in the “Declaration of Independence,” the document that proclaimed the independence of the American people as a separate state and defined both the foundations of this independence and the beginning of the subsequent development of the new state. In the first clause of the Declaration of Independence, Congress states that the people of the United States "have deemed it necessary to assume among the nations of the earth the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature's God authorize them." Proceeding then to state the basis of the act itself, the representatives of the people say: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that between them stand life, freedom and the pursuit of happiness; that to secure these rights governments are established between men.” The document further states that those governments that deviate from this goal and pursue another goal by invading and violating these rights thereby lose their power. By applying this principle to the particular relationship of the American people to England, Congress makes it a casus belli and considers it a sufficient basis for the declaration of independence 257. So, at the most critical moment, in the midst, so to speak, of the very pangs of the birth of a new state, the people of the United States solemnly declared that the origin of every right, every law, every political organization, every government, and especially that which makes the United States a separate state people, is to be sought in the eternal law, in the law of God. If human rights come from God and are His rights over man as His creation, which they are and are above any denial, then they lie in the realm of the spiritual order, and not the material, they are spiritual, and not material. The American state thus, recognizing the independence, primacy and inviolability of human rights, recognizes in principle the independence, primacy and inviolability of the spiritual order, its own subordination to it and the duty to conform to it. It thus recognizes the church as a divine institution, endowed with authority from God to represent the law of God and to apply it to the government of the people as a state, no less than to the people as individuals. This is a necessary consequence. If God has made a supernatural revelation, then we are obliged by natural law to believe in it; and if He founded the church to represent the spiritual order, or embodied the spiritual order in a visible organism, with authority to proclaim His word to all men and to all nations, to declare and apply this law in the government of human affairs, then we are bound to accept it and obey it. This shows that the true church, if such exists, is sacred and inviolable, and what it declares to be the law of God is His law, which is binding on every conscience. Whoever refuses to obey her refuses to obey God, and whoever deprives her of any of her rights deprives God. Inevitable and formidable punishment inevitably follows evasion of this obedience, and in relation to the state and society it appears in the form of moral weakness, corruption, decay and death. Thus, the state finds itself subordinate to the church and, by this very attitude towards it, is obliged in its life and activities to comply with its law. But what exactly is the church that can be the true and immutable interpreter of the principles of the spiritual order? If there is only one church, and in the historical life of the people it was the moral-creating principle, the basis of moral and mental development, and answered the moral needs of the people, then it is the true, in a relative sense, interpreter for the people of the principles of the spiritual order, it is the soul of the people’s body, and the state must comply with its law, as the voice of the people’s conscience. In this case, the church, of necessity, becomes a state church and, like the soul for the body, serves as a morally driving, vital principle for the state. Every movement in it receives a corresponding reflex in the state organism, just as every mental movement is reflected in the bodily organism. This is soul and body, and their organic unity is their natural and normal relationship. But the state of the United States is faced with a completely different fact. It has no historical church with which it was connected by organic growth. It does not have a single, powerful, integral religious consciousness, which, based on one central principle, could serve for the state as a holistic voice of conscience that is unchanged to the last detail in the interpretation of the principles of the spiritual order. Here the state meets with a motley variety of churches that do not agree with each other not only in the particular application of the principles of the spiritual order, but also in the interpretation of the very principles. The people's religious consciousness has fragmented into private independent centers that do not recognize each other and strive to be independent interpreters of the spiritual order. It is clear that it is impossible for the state, as an external organism, to listen to the voice of all these individual consciousnesses and obey them all together, since with the contradiction and disagreement of these voices, the very action of the state organism would become paralyzed. The state could get out of this difficulty in two ways: either recognize only one of the many churches as the true interpreter of the spiritual order and conform exclusively to its voice, or conform only to that common voice, which inevitably appears with diversity as the resultant of all of them. In the first case, the difficulty would not be eliminated and would lead to new innumerable difficulties. Each of the numerous churches and sects considers only itself to be true, with the rejection of every other as erroneous, and therefore the recognition of one of them by the state as true would be tantamount to the recognition by the guiding voice of the people's conscience of that voice that is considered false by the majority of private consciences and is rejected as such. Moreover, the state does not have the right to decide which of the churches is true and which is false, just as the body does not have the right and cannot decide what is true and what is false in the soul. Thus, another outcome remains, and it is suggested to the state by the very nature of things. Its acceptance determines the very essence of the state's relationship to the church in the United States. When several forces collide, acting in different directions, according to the necessary physical law, one resultant force is generated, which gains dominance over all other forces and gives one general direction to all their actions. The same process is observed in mental life. Different ideas, colliding with each other, develop one general concept, which regulates the action of the organism. The same resultant is produced in the collision of many moral or religious forces, and in this respect it is the same general principle, which constitutes the driving principle and the final goal of all of them. The state, as an organism to which the action of all these particular forces is directed, naturally had to submit only to this resultant, and only it could receive guiding significance in the direction of its actions. This is indeed how it turns out in reality. The resultant of the various moral and religious forces can only be a common moral or religious principle, and this serves as the guiding principle of public life in the United States. The state recognizes a certain general moral code, to which it itself submits in its activities and uses coercive force to bring members who disagree with it into submission. All churches, sects or societies, which contain within themselves this common moral code or this common state religion, enjoy complete equality and complete freedom before the civil law. But if any of them, under the pretext of their teaching, their church law, freedom of conscience, or even divine revelation, openly violates the code of moral obligation adopted by the state, then it will come into conflict with the state, and the latter will resort to external force to force them to obey this code. The resultant always takes more or less the direction that belongs to the overwhelming majority of quotients. In the United States, if not all, then the overwhelming majority of churches and sects, with their particular differences, converge on one general principle and have one common foundation in the Christian religion; therefore, their resultant could only be the general Christian principle, and it really serves as the moral code that is adopted by the state. As far as this common Christian moral principle, accepted by the state as the basis of its activities, is concerned, all churches and sects that recognize it are in vital unity with the state, they are state churches and sects. Even Jews, who, together with Christians, recognize the Decalogue as a general moral code, and societies based on a purely natural religion and recognizing the natural law of conscience, are in this respect in the same vital unity with the state. But if a religious sect appeared that considered it a duty of conscience to make human sacrifices, or a community of Hindus settled in the state, considering it the sacred duty of every wife to bury herself alive along with her deceased husband, and began to actually implement their religious teachings in practice, then the state would not only not recognize these sects as having the right of conscience equal to all others, but would also hasten to prohibit them from fulfilling the dictates of conscience in this regard, since they contradict the religious and moral code adopted by the state. By virtue of the same code, the state cannot tolerate, for example. a sect that recognizes and practices polygamy as violating the moral Christian principle of family life and desecrating the purity of marriage. Proof of this is the long-standing and persistent struggle of the United States government against polygamy, recognized and practiced by the Mormon sect 258. The connection between the state and the church in the field of general Christian principle is not limited on the part of the former to prohibitive measures to suppress actions contrary to that principle, but is also expressed in positive facts in which the state provides positive assistance to the church for the implementation of its moral teaching. Recognizing religion as the soul of social and state life, the source of moral strength of the national body, the state, in order to provide it with the best possible convenience in carrying out its line, gives it advantages and privileges that do not extend to other organs of mental and literary life. For this purpose, the state exempts all places of worship and prayer meetings from all taxes, which privilege is not given to any other places of meeting 259. The religion preaches love and mercy for all those who suffer and conducts extensive charitable activities. The state not only does not prohibit this activity, not only does it not ignore it, but in every possible way facilitates it and promotes it, making huge donations from state sums to support various church charitable institutions. Religion then preaches the sanctity of Sunday, and the state again comes to assist it and legally prohibits all actions that in one way or another lead to an insult to the sanctity of Sunday. For this purpose, all shopping, drinking and entertainment establishments are closed, under penalty of liability in court for violating Resolution 260. The state recognizes religion as the highest moral principle of people's life when it requires its officials and witnesses in court to swear an oath in the name of Almighty God as the Supreme Judge, thereby giving religious sanction to judicial testimony and the performance of public office. Finally the state recognizes its internal connection with religion and solemn facts, when e.g. establishes by law a solemn national celebration, in a manner called “Thanksgiving Day” 261. If there were only one church, then the state would necessarily have to carry out its subordination to it down to more specific details; but since there are many churches and religious communities and, moreover, diverging from each other in the details of their teaching, the state limits its connection with religion and its assistance to it only by the principle that is common to all of them, although in this general principle it acts more according to the inspiration of the dominant religion than others; for example, it promotes Christianity more than Judaism, and legally protects the sanctity of Sunday rather than Saturday. But how does the state treat private churches and communities, as diverse expressions of one common religious and moral principle? It specifically refers to them as merely diverse expressions of this common principle recognized by it. Each church or community considers itself true, but the state does not have spiritual competence and cannot decide either for itself or for its citizens which church or community is the true exponent of the spiritual order. Responsibility for this decision, therefore, it gives and should give to the citizens themselves, who must decide for themselves and answer before God for the correctness of their decision. Their decision is the law of the state, and it must respect and obey it, whether this decision is made by a majority or a minority, since the state recognizes equal rights to all its citizens and cannot discriminate between them. The Church, which represents the spiritual order for the state, is the Church that is adopted by its citizens; and, since they accept different churches, it can recognize and give effect to the canons and decrees of each of them only in relation to its own members, and moreover, only to the extent that they do not violate the equal rights of others. In a perfect Christian society such a relationship between the state and the church would not be enough; but this is all that it can do where different churches exist and, moreover, exist with equal rights before it. Since the state recognizes them all as diverse expressions of one common moral-Christian principle recognized by itself, but does not have the competence to decide which of them is really the fullest and truest exponent and interpreter of this principle, then it recognizes equal rights for all of them, equally protects each of them and gives force to its laws and regulations, but only in relation to those citizens who recognize its authority. It is eg. protects the order and unhindered performance of worship in all churches of any confession, and anyone who violates the service is subject to arrest. This does not mean the state is indifferent to religion; it only means that the state does not claim the right to decide what the true church is, and considers it its duty to respect and patronize any church recognized as such by its citizens. The doctrine that a person is completely free before God to choose any religion or remain in complete unbelief, in principle, does not find recognition from the American state and is contrary to its fundamental constitution. Therefore, atheistic or false sects, in essence, in themselves have no rights before the state, since they do not serve as exponents and interpreters of the spiritual order, and are contrary to the true interests of society. But in a society where they exist alongside more true churches, the state must respect the rights of a spiritual order in them, not because, of course, they consider themselves true, but because they are considered as such by a certain part of its citizens, and all its citizens have equal rights in the civil order, and therefore an equal right to the protection of their conscience. By equally protecting all churches and communities, equally protecting the rights of all of them to complete freedom of action and the full development of their powers, the state reserves for itself only the hope that the truth will triumph by itself, and for error this freedom itself will only serve to completely reveal its inner weakness and inconsistency. These are the general principles of the American system of relations between religion and state. According to its meaning, the Roman Catholic Church receives equal rights with all other churches and confessions, and enjoys the same protection and respect from the state. But for her, these rights did not immediately find practical significance after they were proclaimed in principle. Owing to the prevailing hostile prejudice against it during the colonial era, the general rights of religious conscience, as applied to it, were opposed by the still living prejudice, and were extended to it only by a slow process, as prejudice weakened and the idea of ​​freedom of religious conscience gained greater citizenship. The slow progress of the general principle of freedom of religious conscience among Catholics is due to the relation of the federal constitution of the Union to the private constitutions of the individual states. IV. Relation of the States to the Government of the Union. The Federal Constitution and its relation to the constitutions of the individual states. The jurisdiction of religious issues to the private governments of individual states. The significance of this fact for the development of religious equality. Slow development of the principle of freedom of religious conscience in the states. Current state of the issue. The position of Catholics. The inevitable privilege of the strongest religious forms. Public charity. Final conclusions. Before the declaration of independence, the colonies that became part of the United States lived a completely separate life from each other and had nothing in common with each other except external subordination to English rule. They were inhabited by emigrants of different nationalities, different religions, customs and morals, and different political views. When the struggle with England began, their common interest required them to unite their forces for self-defense, and they formed a united Union, which found legal expression in the federal constitution. But by entering this Union, they did not want to thereby lose their local independence, and therefore tried to limit the jurisdiction of the federal government only to those general subjects and relations that equally concern them all, and to exclude from it everything that constitutes the internal life of each colony. In a word, they entered the Union as completely separate and independent states, as the very name of the United States shows - United States, which means United States. Each state is a completely separate and independent state, having its own special ruler, its own Senate, its own legislative assembly, its own constitution. The Federal Constitution limits its jurisdiction only to the general interests of the united states, just as the federal government is in charge only of the general relations of the Union, without any right to interfere in the internal affairs of individual states. The States were very jealous of the preservation of their own independence, and excluded from the authority of the Federal Constitution everything that went beyond the general interests of the Union. They took the same position in the legal definition of the issue of freedom of religious conscience. Before the declaration of independence, the colonies, as we saw above, were permeated with such religious intolerance, especially towards Catholics, that even their common political interest in liberation from English rule could not suppress this spirit of mutual intolerance in them, and when drawing up new constitutions, it was clearly expressed in many of them by the exclusion of Catholics from certain civil rights and advantages, for example, when elected to public office. The Federal Constitution overcame this injustice, and 3 par. Article VI abolished any religious determination of legal capacity to hold public office. “No religious testimony shall be required as a qualification for any office or public trust under the Government of the United States,” this article reads. This article apparently equalizes the rights of all religious denominations, and therefore of Catholics, but its true meaning is determined only by the relation of the federal constitution to private constitutions. In view of the above system of relation of the individual States to the Union, the Federal Constitution deals only with the Federal Government, and its jurisdiction therefore extends only over the activities of the latter. Hence, the article on the abolition of religious certificates is valid only within the jurisdiction of the federal government, and has no significance outside these limits, that is, it does not extend to individual states as independent units. Therefore, by virtue of this article, Catholics were equal in their civil rights and advantages only before the federal government and could be elected to positions only under the jurisdiction of this government. She thus did not repeal the provisions of private constitutions which excluded Catholics from public office, but only created a new one which gave Catholics civil rights on an equal basis with all other professions in a completely different area, outside the individual states. This is how the states understood this article, as is especially clear from the history of the origin of the famous addition to it, according to which “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” This law, as we saw above, was proposed to Congress for consideration even earlier than the article on the abolition of religious certificates, but it rejected it and adopted the last article. When this article was proposed to the local conventions of individual states for approval, the lack of precision in determining its jurisdiction for many conventions seemed dangerous for local independence, since, with a certain interpretation, its effect could extend to the states as separate, independent units. They wished to reserve the right to conduct religious affairs for themselves, and therefore many of them conditioned the ratification of the federal constitution by their proposal to make the above-mentioned addition to the article on religious matters. These proposals were so persistent that Congress was forced to adopt a resolution that it had once rejected and adopted an addition, according to which they should not make a law regarding the establishment of religion or the prohibition of the free exercise of it.” This addition has a double meaning. Firstly, it proclaims the complete separation of the federal state from religion, and secondly, it limits its right in relation to the government of individual states, abolishes its right of jurisdiction in the field of religion, the jurisdiction of which is thus completely left to the jurisdiction of individual states. The addition was only a formal renunciation of the federal government's right to interfere in the religious affairs of the individual states, and its actual exclusion from this right was already implied by the states. When they approved the federal constitution, they approved it as binding only within the federal government, and not the individual state governments. Therefore, its article, denying any religious certificate for election to public office, having full significance for the federal government, was completely unnecessary in a legal sense for the government of individual states. This is exactly what it turned out to be. The private conventions of the states, while recognizing the religious abolition clause in the federal constitution, did not consider it binding on their private constitutions, and the clauses in them excluding Catholics from the right to be elected to public office continued to exist as before. Thus, in a legal sense, the federal constitution established freedom of religious conscience only in a limited form, equalized the civil rights of religious confessions only before the federal government, which, while the federal government itself was completely dependent on the electoral will of individual states, made freedom of religious conscience almost fictitious. Thus, a Catholic, in this order of things, could never achieve the presidency, since election to it is determined not by the federal government, but by the electoral will of individual states. But without legal significance, the federal constitution had enormous moral significance for the legislation of individual states. It was, so to speak, the highest expression of the collective meaning of the entire people and in this respect involuntarily influenced individual legislation, morally inducing them to conform their regulations to the basic spirit of this supreme national law. And indeed some states, soon after the approval of the federal constitution, hastened to conform their private constitutions to it and, like it, abolished religious certificates in the election to public office. Thus the constitution of the state of Georgia, dated May 6, 1789, the first new local constitution adopted after the approval of the federal constitution, excluded the clause according to which members of the general assembly must be of the Protestant religion. The Constitution of South Carolina, June 3, 1790, the second new constitution, excluded the same provision, as well as all other provisions making Protestantism the state religion, and declared that "the free enjoyment and exercise of religious profession and worship, without any discrimination or preference, shall hereafter be forever permitted in this state to all mankind." But other constitutions for a long time retained articles excluding Catholics from the right to be elected to public office, and only little by little, over time, yielded to the moral influence of the federal constitution. Thus, in the state of New York, only in 1806, the article was repealed according to which Catholic emigrants, when elected to public positions, were obliged to solemnly renounce all obedience to foreign church authorities, that is, from the pope” 263. The same article was contained in the constitution of the state of Massachusetts, and it was repealed only in 1821, thus providing Catholics with the opportunity to occupy public positions 264. In the state of Virginia, complete freedom of conscience was granted only in 1830, when religious certificates were abolished 265. Under the North Carolina State Constitution, an oath of affirmation of the truth of the Protestant religion was required when electing to office. “Any person who denies the existence of God, or the truths of the Protestant religion, or the divine authority of the Old and New Testaments, shall not hold any office in the State. In 1835, this article was modified, and instead of the Protestant religion, the Christian religion was put in place 266, which made Catholics equal to Protestants. In the New Jersey State Constitution, the Protestant clause, according to which “no Protestant inhabitant shall be deprived of his civil and political rights,” was repealed only in 1844 267 . Finally, in the State of New Hampshire, the article excluding Catholics from the right to hold public office survived even the centenary of American independence, celebrated in 1876, and this solemn holiday of national freedom saw in the constitution of this state the following articles: “every member of the House of Representatives shall be of the Protestant religion”; “no person shall be eligible to be elected senator who is not of the Protestant religion”; “no person should be elected to the position of ruler if he is not of the Protestant religion” 268. Thus, only by a slow and gradual process did the idea of ​​freedom of religious conscience and religious equality before civil law make its gains in individual states, despite the fact that it was adopted and proclaimed by the federal constitution at the very dawn of the state independence of the American people. Only with the passage of time and due to the constant moral pressure of the federal constitution did the sectarian intolerance of Protestantism towards Catholicism gradually weaken and recede, and at the present time the idea of ​​​​freedom of religious conscience has actually received full citizenship rights. But this freedom is not equivalent to complete licentiousness. To this day, in many states it is a legal and, moreover, strict restriction that even conditions the exercise of civil rights. Thus, according to the constitution of the state of Mariland, for election to office, a declaration of recognition of the Christian religion is required, and for a Jew, a declaration of his belief in a future state of reward and punishment 269 . The Vermont Constitution does not require a religious certificate, but nevertheless "every sect or denomination of Christians shall keep the Sabbath or Lord's day, and have some mode of worship which shall seem to them most consonant with the revealed will of God." According to the Pennsylvania Constitution, "no man who believes in God and a future state of reward and punishment, shall, on account of his religious views, be disqualified from office or the public trust of this republic." According to the Constitution of the State of Tennessee, "no man who denies the existence of God, or the future state of reward and punishment, shall hold any office in the civil department of this State" 272 . Finally, according to the constitution of the state of North Carolina, "no person who shall deny the existence of God, or the truths of the Christian religion, or the divine authority of the Old or New Testament, or shall contain religious principles inconsistent with the liberty or safety of the state, shall be eligible to hold any office or place of public trust in the civil department of this state." Other states make no legal determinations regarding religion. But this does not mean that the state in them completely ignores religion and breaks all connections with it. If this connection is not expressed by written law, as in the states mentioned above, then it nevertheless exists, is recognized by the state and is expressed in unwritten customary law. This connection is constantly asserted in trials concerning religion. Both the court and individual lawyers are always guided by this customary law and their decisions confirm the connection of the state not only with religion in general, but even with Christianity in particular. Thus, the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania, whose constitution deals only indirectly with religion, affirmatively recognizes the inseparable connection of the state with Christianity when it declared in one trial: “Christianity is a part of the common law of this state... Its foundations are broad, strong and deep; they underlie the power, interests and feelings of the people. Having abstracted all particular issues from it, it is the purest system of morality, the firmest helper and the only stable support of all human laws. It is impossible to implement (administer) laws without the adopted St. Scriptures as their basis... An oath, in the usual form, before a discredited book, would be the most idle ceremony" 274. But even more remarkable in this regard are the statements of the Supreme Court in the State of New York, whose constitution does not at all define the legal ties between the state and religion. “Christianity,” he said in the person of his chancellor Kent, “in its broad sense, as a religion, open and TOC \o “1-5” \h \z taught in the Bible, is not unknown to our legislation. The Statute for the Prevention and Prohibition of Immorality sanctifies the first day of the week as a holy time, and the violation of it is considered immoral... The Act relating to the Oath recognizes the usual way of administering the oath by the laying on of the hand and kissing the Gospel.” “What undermines Christianity clearly strives to destroy the civil government,” he already quite clearly states the inseparability of the state with Christianity as a common church. And then he says: “Blasphemy, according to the most precise definition, consists of malicious defamation of God or religion ... in defamation of Christianity through Its Founder ... Such crimes have always been considered independent of religious institution or the rights of the church. They are considered as actions concerning significant interests of civil society. “Blasphemy against God,” he says in another place, and slander and profane mockery of Christ or the Holy Scriptures, which are considered on a par with blasphemy, are crimes punishable by the general law, whether expressed in words or in writing. “But we are not at all obliged to punish similar attacks on the religion of Mohammed or the great Lama, and this on the simple ground that we are a Christian people, and the morality of the country is deeply rooted in Christianity, and not in the teachings or worship of these impostors (impostors)” 275. It is clear that the State of New York not only recognizes its internal connection with Christianity as a church, but at the same time denies its connection with all other religions. The effect of this general, unwritten law is felt in all states. – The general meaning of these constitutions is obviously that freedom of religious conscience is granted only to the extent that it remains truly freedom of religious or even Christian conscience, and ceases where it turns into the denial of any religious or Christian conscience. This must be firmly remembered by all advocates of freedom of conscience, and especially by those who like to refer to America. And so it was only towards the end of the century of American political independence that the Roman Catholic Church became legally and practically equal in its rights with all other denominations in America. At the present time, it, along with all other confessions and communities, is recognized as inalienable those rights that were proclaimed as such a hundred years ago in the historical testimony of freedom of the American people, in the “Declaration of Independence,” namely, the rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, and the provision of the same declaration that government is established for the purpose of securing the enjoyment of these rights and protecting the free exercise of them has also received full significance for it. “The right of liberty,” explains the Catholic author of the Declaration of Independence as applied to the Roman Catholic Church, 276 includes liberty to maintain the commandments of God, to observe the law of His church, to use all the means bestowed upon us to obtain favor, to acquire virtue, and to accomplish the end of our existence. The right to happiness includes the unhindered enjoyment of all the benefits of our religion, which alone can make us truly happy in this world and enable us to achieve eternal bliss. The right to freedom and happiness gives full opportunity to all who wish to devote themselves to the sacred duties of the altar and the monastery. It gives freedom to perform all the rites and ceremonies of religious worship, to devote our wealth to the service of God and our neighbors, to organize and govern our churches according to our canon law, to found and hold colleges, seminaries, monasteries and charitable institutions, to educate our children, to profess and practice the Catholic religion fully and whole. The purpose of government is to secure these rights, so that if it does not give actual protection to the free and peaceful enjoyment of them, it is negligent in the performance of its duty; and if it invades or violates these rights by any tyrannical legislation, it commits a positive act of injustice and usurpation. The government, the supreme power in the state from which the government derives its powers, is as responsible to the eternal law as the individual citizens, and may violate it by neglect of provision and protection, or by direct outrage of the rights of conscience bestowed by the Creator. It is necessary, therefore, to strictly guard these rights, to loudly proclaim and defend them when they are in danger of being violated, and to resist by all lawful means any attempt to interfere with their enjoyment by unjust legislation or the tyrannical exercise of power on the part of the government and its official agents. The supreme power in a state has a general and constant tendency to seize unjust power and violate the rights of its subjects. The freedom of the individual or of the governed class is always in danger, and therefore eternal vigilance is the price of freedom. This is equally true where the supreme power is entrusted to a monarch or aristocracy, as where the people retain it. It would be a great mistake to suppose that the popular form of government and republican institutions constitute a perfect and complete guarantee of freedom in general, or of freedom of conscience in particular. A political majority or ruling party can rule tyrannically over a minority or weaker party and over private citizens. Magistrates, elected by popular vote, can abuse their power and oppress those they should protect. Legislative assemblies, elected by the people, can make the most unjust and despotic laws. The Athenian democracy expelled Aristides the Just and poisoned Socrates, the wisest man of pagan antiquity, the father and founder of philosophy. In our own time we have seen the most treacherous violation of guaranteed rights, and the most tyrannical oppression of the religious freedom of Catholics, committed by the Swiss Republic. Catholics are always oppressed, where they form the weakest party, and never have sufficient security for the acquisition and maintenance of their religious freedom, except in their own numbers and strength, which receives value from energetic activity in favor of their cause” 277 . “According to the principles and spirit of our laws and political institutions,” continues the same author, the Catholic Church has in the United States a greater degree of freedom belonging to it by divine right than in most other countries. And in practice this freedom was largely secured to her, thanks to the justice of the people in general and the fidelity of those to whom the administration of the law was entrusted. However, we cannot and must not be content with anything less than or less than the full and perfect liberty and equality which rightfully belong to us, and which are not in the least degree violated in those who profess a different religion. There are things in which we are obliged, both by our duty and by right, to demand a greater degree of justice than has hitherto been accorded to us, and to try to prevent any further diminution of our rights as Catholic citizens.”278 From the above tirade of the best, by general and official recognition, exponent of Roman Catholicism in America, it is clear that Catholics recognize their equality before the civil law with all other confessions and communities legally and actually established, but that in the state there is still a tendency to curtail these rights, which Catholics are called upon to defend. This tendency finds justification in actual facts and follows from the very conditions of the position of Roman Catholicism in the state. The state of the United States, in its history and composition of the population, is essentially a Protestant state. Its Catholic population constitutes a weak minority, one-seventh of the total population. In republican states, where the composition and character of government is determined by popular vote, government power is necessarily in the hands of the majority. Since this majority in the United States is on the side of the Protestant population, it is natural that the composition of the government is predominantly Protestant. "Protestant government" is essentially a logical and internal contradiction in a state where government and church, state and religion are legally separated from each other. But such is the organic essence of man that he cannot isolate and remove the soul from his being, when even the question concerns only his body. Likewise, the Protestant representatives of the people, to whom the government of the country is entrusted, involuntarily and out of necessity bring their Protestant views with them into government. This is an inevitable fact and it is confirmed by reality. The state of the United States undoubtedly bears a predominantly Protestant character, and this is primarily noticeable in the very way it relates to religion or church. The essence of the principle of the relationship between the state and the church in the country, as we saw above, is a strict delimitation of the spheres of their relative activity, so that the church has complete knowledge of the spiritual order of phenomena in human life, and the state has knowledge of the material order. When determining the scope of these orders, Catholicism and Protestantism appear as two opposing and irreconcilable principles. According to the view of the first, the area of ​​spiritual order essentially extends to the entire spiritual life of a person - religious, moral and mental, and therefore the church exclusively belongs to know not only religious conscience, but also the facts of marriage and family life, raising children and even literature 279. On the contrary, according to the view of Protestantism, the jurisdiction of the church extends only to the religious conscience, and all other phenomena of human life, as not having significant significance for the main goal of the church - the salvation of souls, according to the principle of justification by faith alone, are naturally subject to the jurisdiction of the state. According to the basic principle, the state of the United States legally could not take the side exclusively of one of these opposing views, and therefore, by necessity, chose a middle position between them, which, however, is recognized by Catholics themselves as the most normal in comparison with the attitude towards the Catholic Church of most European states. This relationship, however, from a Catholic point of view is already Protestant because it does not realize the Catholic ideal of the relationship between church and state, according to which the state should be only a simple instrument of the church. But besides the deviation of the state from the extremes of the Catholic view, it manifests a Protestant tendency in more significant respects, so that it not only stands in the middle of two opposing views, but clearly leans towards the side of Protestantism. This is especially noticeable in his attitude to the issue of marriage and public education. According to the Catholic view, the management of marriage relations and public education belongs to the church, 280 but according to the Protestant these are social facts and therefore belong to the domain of the state. What position has the state taken in relation to these issues? It completely leaned towards the Protestant view and made both marriage relations and public education purely state functions, independent of the church. It recognized marriage as a social act, allowing so-called civil marriage and wide freedom for divorce, and made public education one of its functions. Since Catholicism considers these functions to be essential functions of the church, the state, having taken them under its jurisdiction, thereby deprived the Roman Catholic Church of its rights and thus took the side of the opposite view - the Protestant one. This naturally led to a clash between the state and Roman Catholicism, and on the issue of public education the clash turned into an open struggle, which is persistently waged to this day. Catholicism denies the state any right to raise children, since it considers it a matter for parents and the church 281 ; But the fierceness of the struggle was given even more by the fact that the state of the United States, in order to avoid the possibility of a narrow-confessional education in the spirit of the teachings and beliefs of any one church or community, secularized the public school, which again coincides with the Protestant view and contradicts the Catholic one. Here the state even does positive injustice to Catholics. Having taken public education under its jurisdiction, for its maintenance it levies a tax on the entire population, without distinction of religion, and consequently on Catholics. Meanwhile, Catholics cannot use this state school, since their conscience and the church prohibit them from using it, and therefore they are forced by the state to pay for such an item, which for them is at least useless, and from a strictly Catholic point of view - directly harmful, since a secularized school from this point of view is a negation of the true school, is a product of Protestantism and is therefore hostile to Catholicism. Not recognizing the state school, Catholics are forced to found and maintain their own parish schools, and thus bear a double tax compared to Protestants, which is already a direct state injustice. In addition to the field of public education, the state, willingly or unwillingly, takes the Protestant side in many other respects. It has under its jurisdiction many different institutions, the existence of which is caused and conditioned by social reasons, but the achievement of the goal of which is unthinkable without religion, according to the consciousness of the state itself. These are institutions - prisons, correctional homes, institutions for juvenile delinquents, shelters for homeless children and similar institutions. They contain persons of various confessions, both Protestants and Catholics. The state, not only not denying them the right to the free exercise of their religious duties, but considering even religion an essential element for achieving the very purpose of these institutions, took care of supplying them with religious attributes and priests, whom it supported on government salaries. In order to avoid favoring any one confession at the expense of others, the state everywhere adheres to the so-called non-sectarian system, according to which religion is recognized and practiced only in its general Christian characteristics, without denominational differences. It adheres to the same system when introducing religion into its institutions, and therefore contains priests who, in essence, do not belong to any religion, but are preachers of “general Christianity.” Catholic priests, as representatives of a strict, specific religious system, requiring complete and unwavering observance of all its parts and details, naturally do not fit into the state view, and therefore Protestant priests enter these institutions, preach in prisons and teach this “general Christianity” in correctional houses. For Catholicism in this regard, it is already disadvantageous that Protestant priests enter these institutions, and then the very “general Christianity” preached by them, for Catholicism is nothing more than pure Protestantism. Catholicism does not recognize any other Christianity than that which is embodied in a specific historical form, and considers any deviation from it to be Protestantism, and even more so such a distraction from any specific church form, such as “general Christianity,” which the Catholic publicist directly calls humbug, 282, that is, a deception that takes one’s eyes away from the true essence of the subject. To force Catholic inmates of public institutions to be present at the celebration of this “common Christianity”, according to the Catholic view, means to violate their conscience. Meanwhile, this is what happens in most institutions. New York State, for example, has three state prisons and “none of them have government facilities to meet the spiritual needs of Catholic prisoners.”283 The state has seven penitentiaries, and of these only three offer Catholic Mass; “it is also proud of four correctional institutions, and of them only one celebrates mass and celebrates the sacraments 284. In the rest, all prisoners, without exception, are obliged to attend services according to the system of “general Christianity”, which “for Catholic prisoners, in the opinion of a Catholic publicist, is beyond all doubt the most severe violation of conscience, since the worst Catholic in this world would never want to voluntarily take part in any service other than his own” 285. Recently, a Catholic priest was allowed to visit one of the state prisons, confess and preach on Sunday afternoons, but Catholic prisoners were also obliged to attend Protestant services 286. In the entire country, according to a Catholic publicist, only in one state, Minnesota, are “freedom of conscience and equal rights in religious matters for those held in state institutions” fully guaranteed, and then only by the most recent act, dated March 5, 1874 287 . This is what the state does not only in relation to criminals, who, although most of all others need the consolation of religion, but by their very way of action have led themselves to the deprivation and limitation of their freedom, but also in relation to those unfortunate people who are taken into state care in view of the fact that no one cares about them, such as homeless, abandoned, homeless children. For them, the state appears not as a punisher for evil deeds, but as a trustee and takes the place of parents, so to speak. It also takes care of supplying these institutions with religious attributes, but here again it introduces its favorite “general Christianity,” which, as we have seen, is completely denied by Catholicism. One of the most ancient and famous such institutions in New York State is the Society for the Correction of Young Offenders, which has an educational and charitable nature. According to the 1875 report, it had consisted of 15,791 people over the past fifty years, of whom at least half were children of Catholic parents. Meanwhile, his priest was always a Protestant chaplain who preached “common Christianity,” and there was never a Catholic one. The average age of these children, according to statistics, was thirteen years and eight months. “Consequently, explains the Catholic publicist, the children were just at the age when they could already distinguish one religion from another, and six years older than the average age appointed by the Catholic Church for receiving the sacraments of confession and communion, for preparing for confirmation and hearing mass on Sundays and holidays, under pain of mortal sin” 288. The natural consequence of such exclusion of Catholic children from the rites and beliefs of their church could of course only be a complete weakening, if not eradication, of the Catholic spirit in them, and thus these institutions acquire a directly proselytizing character in favor of Protestantism. In view of this, the following tirade of a Catholic publicist does not seem to be an exaggeration: “In our public institutions, in relation to Catholics, there is a constant violation of the state constitution regarding freedom of religious confession and worship 289. In these institutions there is a stereotypical system of religious confession and worship, which all those contained in them, whatever their profession, are obliged to accept and observe. They have no freedom of choice in this regard. They cannot have intercourse with the pastors of their church except in impossible instances according to that stereotypical plan. In practice, they cannot have such intercourse at all. Once they become members of these institutions, the freedom of religious profession and worship which they enjoyed or might have enjoyed before joining them is completely destroyed, and a new form of religious profession and practice is introduced, which they are bound to accept and observe as their religion until they leave the institution, whether they like it or not, whether they believe in it or not. Whatever name may be given to this form of worship and edification, whether it be called "non-sectarian" or not, it is a monstrous violation of the human conscience, not to mention the letter and spirit of the constitution of this state. Its real name would be: church established in public institutions. From the day a Catholic child enters such an institution until he leaves it, he is, in most cases, not even allowed to see a Catholic priest; he is absolutely not allowed to practice his religion; he is not allowed to hear Mass or receive the sacraments. His religion is completely taken away and barred from him, and his soul is left dry and barren. The injustice does not end even here, because all the time he is exposed not to Catholic influences, but to a direct system of anti-Catholic education and worship. He is forced to bow and believe in the established church of the institution” 290. Thus, even with the legal equality of Catholicism with Protestantism, the latter has many advantages over the former, solely due to its numerical superiority, which necessarily influences the direction and spirit of the government and state, inclining them to the side of Protestantism. The Protestant tendency of the state is so strong that Catholicism has to constantly fight for its legal rights and constantly defend them from the encroachment of Protestant authorities. But this position of Catholicism among the Protestant state, on the other hand, taught him to be wise like a serpent, and he took advantage of this wisdom in those relations where the state, due to social necessity, had to recognize his equal rights with Protestantism. Catholicism achieved especially important results in the field of monetary relations with the state. One of the areas of public life in which the state cannot actually separate from the church, despite the most complete legal separation, is charitable activity. Conditioned by the internal state of social life, it equally concerns both the church and the state. The first is called to charitable activities by the very essence of Christianity, one of the most important principles of which is the relief of disasters and suffering of destitute and unfortunate humanity. The state is called to do the same by the very essence of the state idea, according to which the state is founded as a collective defense against private evils, the fight against which would be beyond the power of individuals. But if for the church neglect of charitable activities would only be a violation of the Christian principle, then for the state it would be expressed in innumerable social disasters, since the inevitable social evil, not paralyzed by charitable activities, in the form of homeless children, fallen women, people disadvantaged by nature and similar creatures, would be a formidable scourge for society itself and would undermine the very foundations of the state. Therefore, both the church and the state are equally interested in charitable activities, and, moreover, in such a proportion as generally determine the relationship between the church and the state, as a principle and a fact, soul and body. The Church in this regard acts as the driving principle, and the state as the one who actually implements this principle. This is the relationship between church and state in the field of charitable activities in the United States. Charitable activities owe their origin to the church or various private religious societies, which, out of purely religious and Christian motives of love for humanity, founded charitable institutions to help distressed humanity. The state soon realized their useful activities for society and, in order to maintain and develop their activities, began to give them subsidies from public funds collected through ordinary state taxes 291. At present, these relations between the church and the state towards charitable activities have reached such a complete development that the budget of charitable institutions is mostly taken over by the state, and the church or private religious societies are left with only administrative power to manage them. Charitable institutions are divided into Catholic, Protestant and municipal. The latter are supported exclusively by public funds, while the former only benefit from subsidies. To ensure an even distribution of public funds between them, a rule has been adopted according to which the number of subsidies is determined by the number of persons detained in charitable institutions. The Roman Catholic Church took advantage of this rule in the best possible way. For the Roman Catholic Church, charitable work is one of the manifestations of its general ecclesiastical principle, according to which the conduct of the church extends to the entire area of ​​​​human life. Therefore, charity is considered one of the essential functions of church life, is under the direct supervision of the church organization and is carried out by the direct servants of the church - brothers and sisters of various monastic orders. Currently, in the United States, an entire army of Catholic brothers and sisters, numbering 18,000 people, is working in the field of charitable (and at the same time educational) activities 292 . Such a mass of free, or at least cheap, workers made it possible for the Roman Catholic Church to develop its charitable activities to an unusually wide scale. If not in numbers, then in the harmony of their organization and the breadth of their activities, Catholic charitable institutions surpass similar institutions of all other confessions combined. In New York, the largest charitable institutions are owned by Catholics. Their social activities are so obvious and important that the government of the New York state could not help but recognize their national importance and they began to be given government subsidies earlier than any other Protestant charitable institutions. The subsidy consists partly of state and public lands allocated by the government for charitable institutions, partly of direct cash sums. The Roman Catholic Church has taken advantage of both types of subsidies better than any other denomination. At present it holds for its charitable establishments in New York more lands than all other Protestant denominations put together, 293 and in the best and most expensive parts of the city. The lands she occupies are valued at their present value at a huge sum - three and a half million (3,500,000) dollars, and all these plots were given to her either for permanent possession, or for ninety-nine years with an annual annuity of one dollar 294. But the Roman Catholic Church achieved even greater results in monetary terms. Thanks to the free or cheap labor of her brothers and sisters, she could put her charitable institutions on a broader footing than all Protestant ones, which, not having gifted workers, could in no case compete with her in this regard. From here its charitable institutions received greater dimensions and could contain a larger number of benefactors than all Protestant denominations. Having the opportunity to support a larger number of charitable people on a more economic basis, it at the same time received from the government larger subsidies compared to the Protestant confessions. The size of this proportion in the division of government subsidies between Roman Catholic and Protestant charitable institutions can be judged by the fact that already in 1866, when the Roman Catholic Church did not yet have the political weight that it now acquired in New York, out of the sum of $129,025 allocated by the government for special religious charitable institutions, the Roman Catholic Church received $124,174 for its own institutions. The following year, this subsidy reached $200,000 295. In 1869, the New York government appropriated $528,742.47 for “sectoral institutions.” Of this sum the Roman Catholic Church received for its institutions $412,062.26. The remainder was distributed among the other denominations as follows: the Episcopal Church received $29,335.9c; Jewish establishments received 14,404 d. 49 ts.; reformats - $12,630.86; Presbyterians - 8,863 d. 44 c.; Baptists - 2,760 d. 34 c.; Methodists - 3,073 d. 63 c.; evangelical establishments – 2,027 d. 24 c.; mixed - 44.085 d. 12 cents 296. Public subsidies to the Roman Catholic Church continued at this level in the following years, and their total amount for some institutions is currently determined by millions of dollars. Thus, one Roman Catholic “House of the Good Shepherd” received government subsidies in the amount of $406,552 during its existence (20 years). The Catholic Foundling Asylum received a huge sum of $1,252,713 during its eight years of existence. The Catholic Protectory from 1863 to 1877 received public grants amounting to $2,030,454, etc. 297 . According to the report for 1880, the Catholic patronage received $110 per person during the past year, which makes a total of $294,253; The Catholic Foundlings' Home received $236,014 298 from the city government that same year. The magnitude of this subsidy will be even more clearly visible from the fact that all the expenses for running these charitable institutions in their reports are shown for the first to be 6,000 dollars, and for the second to be 8,000 dollars more than subsidies 299, so that in essence they are completely maintained at the public expense, constituting at the same time an organic part of the Roman Catholic Church and being under the direct supervision of its hierarchy. Thus, the Roman Catholic Church, while somewhat oppressed by Protestantism in the field of religious confession, was more than able to reward itself at the expense of the state in material terms. Here, in comparison with the Protestant confessions, it is, as it were, a completely “established” state church, maintained by state funds collected through taxes evenly from all residents without distinction of religion 300. The main reason for its success in this regard is the system by which public and government positions are seized into the hands of Catholics. Currently, this system has reached the peak of development in New York, since on November 2, 1880, Catholics seized into their own hands, despite the fierce protest of the Protestant population, the supreme position in city government and a devoted Catholic was elected mayor of the city, which, of course, the Roman Catholic Church will not fail to take advantage of for its own purposes - ad majorem Dei gloriam 301. These are the lines in which the relations of church and state in a country are presented, which is usually pointed to as having realized the principle of perfect separation of these two orders and an example of unlimited freedom of religious conscience. Leaving the readers themselves to draw their own conclusions, we, for our part, will summarize only the material presented in the article, in the following provisions: I. The early period of the history of the United States, before the declaration of independence, is a period of extreme religious intolerance, both among different Protestant sects among themselves, and especially among all Protestantism towards Catholicism. II. The subsequently proclaimed principle of freedom of religious conscience is more likely the result of political necessity than of the consciousness of the justice of the principle itself. III. The principle of freedom of religious conscience was expressed in the legal separation of church and state; but legal separation does not mean actual separation, and it does not define a break, but only a certain modus vivendi. IV. The principle of freedom of conscience does not mean unlimited freedom, and on the contrary, it is recognized only within those limits while freedom remains truly only a free religious or even Christian conscience, and is punished as a crime when it goes beyond these limits. Finally, The use of the granted rights of conscience is determined not by a dead law, but by the dominant principles of life, so that even with absolute legal equality in the rights of conscience of all religions, the weaker of the latter actually suffer restrictions and violations of their rights on the part of stronger religious communities, and are forced to defend them with their own internal energy and enterprise. See Inquiry into the Moral and Religious Character of the American Government. N.Y. 1838 pp. 39–72. Ramsay, History of the U.S. Vol. I. 79. “They emigrated not for the benefits of trade, but for religion and for the enjoyment of freedom of conscience.” Inquiry, Section II. Settlement of country. Bancroft, History of the United States of America, Vol. Chapter I IX, p. 292. Centenary edition, Boston, 1876. Bancroft, History p. 293. Bancroft, History p. 363.of U.S. Vol. I.p. 81. 2-d edition, Philadelphia 1818. Bancroft, History p. 362. Bancroft, History IX, 273. Colonial “Blue Laws,” quoted in Murray, History of the Catholic Church in the United States, pp. 159–160 Bancroft, History Vol. II ch. XXX, 259–266. Catholic World, Vol. XXIII, Art. "Catholic Church in the U. States 1766–1876." Bancroft, History Vol. I ch. XXX, 286–299. Catholic World, Vol. XXIII, p. 438. Murray, History of the Catholic Church, 159. Murray, p.159 in note. Stokes, A View of the Constitution of the British Colonies in North America, London ed. 1783 - Catholic World, Vol. XXIII, p. 722. Bancroft, History Vol. I, p. 533. Catholic World, Vol. ХХШ, p. 722. Catholic World, Vol. XXIII, p. 723. Ramsay, History of the U.S. Vol. I, p. 178. “Rhode Island, Pennsylvania, Delaware and New Jersey never had an established religion,” says Ramsay, a contemporary revolutionary historian. Catholic World, Vol. XXIII, r. 723. But this must be understood in a limited sense. Catholic World, Vol. XXIII p. 728. Catholic World, Vol. XXIII, p. 728 Ramsay History of the U.S. Vol. I p. 181. Shea, History of Catholic Church in U.S. p. 330, 331, Murray, History, p. 152. Shea, History p. 131; Murray,153, Shea, p. 131; Murray, p. 153. U.S. Catholic Magazine. Vol. V, p. 678 Shea, History, pp. 332–335. Catholic historian Murray directly denies that Uri was a Catholic. “From the facts at hand,” he says, “I have no doubt that Uri was not a Catholic priest or even a Catholic at all. Murray, p.154 Bancroft, History, Vol, I ch. VII, p. 187. This important act in the history of the development of freedom of conscience reads thus: “As the compulsion of conscience in matters of religion has often had injurious consequences in those communities where it has been practiced, and for the more tranquil and peaceful government of this province, and in order the better to preserve mutual love and friendship among the inhabitants, no person in this province professing faith in Jesus Christ shall in any way be insulted or despised for his or her faith, or disturbed in free movement thereof." Bancroft, History of the U.S. Vol. I, ch. VII, p. 194. There is still a dispute between Protestant and Catholic historians about who owes its origin more to this act; Protestants or Catholics? Catholic historians claim that the act belonged to Catholics, since the “general assembly” that passed it consisted of a Catholic majority, eleven Catholics and three Protestants (Murray, p. 140; Shea, p. 32). But the head of the Protestant historians, Bancroft, says that the assembly consisted of six members, of whom three were Protestants and three Catholics, and of representatives of the Maryland population, of whom five were Catholics, the main mover of this matter being the Protestant governor of the province of Stone (Bancroft, Vol. I, Chapter VII, p. 193). But the facts lean the conclusion rather towards the Catholic side. Bancroft, History Vol. I ch. XXX, b. 199 Shea, History, 33 Bancroft describes this Protestant intolerance in less harsh terms. History, ch. XXI, vol. II Journals of the American Congress from 1774 to 1788. 4 Vols Washington 1823. Vol.I p. 11, § 10. Journals of the American Congress, Vol. I, pp. 20–22, Catholic World, Vol, XX.III, p. 730; Shea, History, p. 43, The Address to the people of Great Britain, see Journals of American Congress, Vol. I, pp. 26–31. Shea, History of Catholicism. Church p. 36 Journals of American Congress, Vol. I, p. 110. Wash 1823. Journals of A.S. vol. I, p. 290.g) Bamsay, History; Catholic World, Vol. XXIII, p. 733 16th member of the Virginia State Constitution. See The Constitutions of the Thirteen states, Philadelphia, 1783. 18th and 19th members of the New Jersey constitution. Ibidem pp. 101–102, 1 member of the Delaware constitution, 1 section, 1 article. The Constitutions of the Thirteen states, p. 121. Philadelphia 1783. 34 member of the Constitution of S. Carolina, b. 178. 56 member of the Georgian constitution; ibidem, p, 724. The Constitution of the same State, dated May 30, 1798, more fully defines the same principle: “No person in this State shall, under any pretext whatsoever, be deprived of the inestimable privilege of worshiping God in such a manner as is most agreeable to his own conscience, or be compelled to attend a place of worship contrary to his faith or judgment, and never be obliged to pay tithes, taxes, or any other duties for the building or amendment of any place of worship, contrary to what it considers right or voluntarily agreed to do. And no religious society shall be established in this State in preference to another; and no person shall be deprived of the enjoyment of his civil rights merely because of his religious principles, See Constitutions of the Thirteen States. Constitution of Georgia, IV art., 10 section, p. 207. This edition of the original thirteen state constitutions is labeled 1783 in the Mercantile Library catalogue. But it is obviously later. The title page is lost. 35 art., Const., of New-York. See Constitutions of the Thirteen states, p. 94. Constitution of Maryland, Art. XXXIII. The Constitutions, p. 145. 38th member of the South Carolina Constitution. Cath. World, Vol, XXIII. 724 The very text of this article is remarkable: “Since the happiness of the people, good order and the preservation of civil government essentially depend on piety, religion and morality; and as these can only be propagated in a community by the institution of the public worship of God, and the public edification in piety, the religion of morality: therefore, to promote their happiness, and ensure the good order and preservation of their government, the people of this republic have the right to vest in their legislature the power to authorize and require, and the legislature shall from time to time authorize and require, that the various cities, parishes, counties, and other political communities or religious societies have made due provision, at their own expense, for the establishment of public worship, and for the maintenance and support of public Protestant teachers of piety, religion and morals, in all cases where such will not be voluntarily adopted., Massachusetts Constitution of March 2, 1780. I part, 3.The Constitutions of the Thirteen states, p. 34–35. The extent to which the hostility of Protestants towards Catholicism was strong and long-standing is shown by the remarkable fact that even during the struggle for independence itself, the custom of publicly burning an effigy of the Pope was carried out. On November 5, 1775, Washington issued the following order to the troops: “Having learned of the intention to commit the ridiculous and childish custom of burning an effigy of the Pope, the Commander-in-Chief cannot help expressing his surprise that in this army there were officers and soldiers so devoid of common sense as not to see the obscenity of such an act... It is so monstrous that it cannot be tolerated or excused. Instead of causing even the remotest insult, we have a duty to publicly thank our brothers (Catholics), since to them we owe our last success over the common enemy in Canada.” Murray, History, p. 196. 19th member of the New Jersey Constitution. The Constitutions, p. 102. 32nd member of the S. Carolina Constitution. The Constitutions, p. 178 6 member of the constitution of Georgia, S. W. r. 733. Inquiry into the Moral and Religious character of the American Government, p. 83. 3, 13 and 38 members of the South Carolina Constitution. S. W, r. 733. Inquiery, p, 80. The Constitution of South Carolina has also made an interesting provision regarding what kind of society can be considered religious and entitled to the benefits accorded to religion. According to this decree, all religious societies, in order to be entitled to the benefits granted to religion, had to “accept and sign in the book the following five articles: i) that there is one eternal God and there is a future state of reward and punishment; 2) that God must be publicly worshiped; 3) that the Christian religion is the true religion; 4) that the sacred writings of the Old and New Testaments of Divine inspiration are the rule of faith and life and 5) that it is the legal duty and duty of every person, called to this by those who govern, to bear witness to the truth. Inquiry into the Moral and Religious character of American Government, p. 81. Catholic World, Yol. XXIII, 734. Murray, History of Catholic church, p. 180 in note Catholic World, Vol XXIII p. 734; Murray, History of Catholic church, p. 180–181. The Catholic historian notes in this regard: “Jay was narrow-minded, a man whose broad imagination constantly evoked the terrible shadows of priests and popes.” Murray, ibidem, b. 181. Nevertheless, an article remained in the constitution according to which every foreigner “had to renounce and renounce all connection and subordination to any and all foreign king, prince, sovereign or state, in all matters ecclesiastical and civil, so that Catholics, in view of their subordination to the pope, were in any case excluded from the rights of citizenship in the state. Shea, History p. 337. The Mariland Constitution of August 14, 1776, stipulates that "a declaration of faith in the Christian religion" shall be a qualification for office; and that every person appointed to any office, profitable or trustful, must, before entering into office, sign a declaration of his belief in the Christian religion (35 member of the Declaration of Rights and 55 member of the const.). The Delaware Constitution of September 11, 1776, established the following oath, which all members of the legislature were required to take: “I, A. W., profess faith in God the Father, and in Jesus Christ his only begotten Son, and in the Holy Spirit, one God blessed forever; and I acknowledge that the Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments were given by divine inspiration” (22nd member of the constitution). The Pennsylvania Constitution of September 28, 1776, required members of the general assembly and civil officials to sign "a declaration of faith in one God, the Creator and Ruler of the world, the Rewarder of the good and the Punisher of the wicked" and to make "an acknowledgment that the writings of the Old and New Testaments are given by divine inspiration." The Catholic World, vol. XXIII, p. 734. See The Constitutions of the Thirteen states, p. 141, 162; 114. Inquiry p. 80–83. In the original, this article reads like this: No religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States. United States Constitution, Article VI, Section 3. The brevity of the formula makes it difficult to accurately translate this article into Russian, See The Constitutions of the several states of the Union and United States. New York, 1806, p, 19. Elliot, The Debates in the several state conventions on the adoption of the Federal Constitution. 2-d edition. Vol. IV, p. 195. Elliot, Debates, Vol. II, p. 44. Elliot, Debates, Vol.II, p.118. Elliot, Debates, Vol.II, p.119 Elliot, Debates, Vol. II, p. 148. Elliot, Debates, Vol. II, p. 149. Elliot, Debates, Vol. I, p. 312; vol. II, p. 202; vol. III, p. 204. Catholic World, Vol. XXIII, r. 726. Elliot, Debates, Vol.I, p.334 Journals of Congress 1782–8, Appendix, Vol, IV, p. 55. Elliot, Debates, Vol.II, p.553 Journals of Congress, Appendix, Vol, IV, p. 52.1782–8 Original text: Congress shall make no law concerning the establishment, of a religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof. First Amendment to the United States Constitution. The Constitutions of the several states of the Union and of United States N. Y., 1866, p. 20. White, Sketch of the origin and progress of the Catholic Church in the United states of America. Appendix to Dorras, History of the Catholic Church, Vol, I, p. 611. Shea, History p.p. 41, 5. Ramsay, History; Catholic World, Vol. XXIII, p. 738. Catholic World, Vol, XXIII, p. 738, 739. Shea, History, p. 40, 41; Catholic World Vol. XXIII, p.739–741. This theory gained particular predominance in the Democratic Party, of which Jefferson was the recognized leader. This partly, according to the Catholic author, explains the fact why the large mass of Catholics in the United States cling so tightly to this party and always cast their vote for it. Catholic World, July 1876 pp. 440–441. Copy of Bishop Carroll's handwritten statement regarding the origin and condition of Catholicism in the United States. White. Sketch, b. 605. The theory presented is dominant in American literature and is recognized even by Roman Catholic literature, although with a peculiar coloring. See eg. Art. in the leading Catholic magazine, Catholic World; "Independence of Church" (Vol. IV); "Church and State. (Vol. V); "Church and state" (Vol. XI); “Religion and State in the U, S.” (Vol. XX), etc. The same theory in relation to the United States is also recognized by the famous German historian Leo in the introduction to his Universalgeschichte. Introduction to “The declaration of Independence”, signed. July 4, 1776. See The Constitutions of the several states of Union and United States, New-York. 1866, p. 5. The full development of this theory was made by the Italian author Cantu, in his work Chiesa e state. Volume XI of Catholic World contains a critical summary of this work. But both the essay and the critical presentation fully betray an extreme Roman Catholic tendency, and therefore evade the strictological development of this in itself correct theory. The Declaration of Independence, July 4, 1776. See The Constitutions of United States, p. 7. To suppress polygamy, a number of laws were issued, which, however, have so far been successfully circumvented by the “latter-day saints.” In his last official message to Congress, dated December 6, 1880, President Gayes expressed the need for new measures to put these laws into effect. “It is the avowed duty and purpose of the people of the United States,” he says, to suppress polygamy, where it exists in our territories, and to prevent its spread. The United States authorities in Utah made zealous and commendable efforts to enforce laws against her. Experience has shown that legislation on this subject, in order to be valid, requires significant modification and correction. The longer action is delayed, the more difficult it will be to achieve the desired goal. Swift and decisive action is needed. The Mormon sectarian organization, which supports polygamy, holds in its hands all the administrative and executive powers of the local and legislative assembly in the territory. By its control of the grand and petit juries, it exerts an enormous influence on the administration of justice. Having in their hands the local political power of the territory, the heads of this sect are able to exercise their hostility to the law of Congress on the subject of polygamy, and actually eliminate its application. Polygamy will not be abolished if the enforcement of the law against it depends on those who practice and support this crime. It can only be destroyed by taking away political power from the sect that instills and supports it. The power of Congress to enact laws for the protection of territory is obvious. There should be no room for half measures. The political power of the Mormon sect is increasing; it now controls one of our richest and most populated territories. It is constantly spreading to other territories. Wherever she goes, polygamy and sectarian political power are established. The sanctity of marriage and family relationships constitute the cornerstone of our American society and civilization. Religious liberty and the separation of church and state are the elementary ideas of free institutions. To restore the interests and principles disturbed by polygamy and Mormonism, and to fully open to intelligent and virtuous emigrants all the creeds of that portion of our dominions which for the most part have been closed to public emigration by intolerant and immoral institutions, a reorganization of the government of the Territory of Utah is recommended." Hayes' Message, imprint. in N.Y. Times of December 7, 1880 In the same way, the New York Constitution exempts ministers of religion from civil or military service, "so as not to distract them from the great duties of service." New York Constitution Art. XXXIX. See Constitutions of the Thirteen states, p. 95. The Constitution of Pennsylvania has no express provision in this regard, but the Supreme Court, in one case where a Methodist preacher refused public office, decided the matter in the same sense and declared that "those persons who devote their lives to the service of God and the religious edification of their brethren, should be free from the burdens of temporal offices." See Inquiry into the moral and religious character of the American Government, p. 108. New York, 1838. But as explained by the Supreme Court in the State of New York, Sunday is recognized as a completely civil institution, and its violation is therefore punishable as a civil crime. See Christian statesman, April 7, 1881. In Cincinnati, by ordinance of 1881, a fee was charged for the opening of drinking establishments on Sunday. a fine of 50 dollars, and for the opening of theaters, circuses, etc. establishments - 100 dollars. The Advance, 18 air. 1881 “Thanksgiving Day” is a national, religious and political holiday in America, celebrated annually on the last Thursday of November. The day of its celebration is annually appointed by the President of the United States by a special manifesto, officially published with the application of the state seal. The nature of these manifestos can be judged from the following manifesto of President Gayes, issued in 1880: “At no period of their history, since independence, have the people of the United States had so many and common grounds for joy and thanksgiving for the mercy of Almighty God, or been so deeply obliged to thank Him for loving goodness, and humbly ask for the continuance of His care and protection. Health, wealth and prosperity throughout our borders; peace, honor and friendship with the whole world; the strong and faithful attachment of your people to the great principles of liberty and justice which created our national greatness, to the wise institutions and strong organization of government and society which perpetuate it—for all this may the thanks of a happy and united people, as with one voice, rise in reverent flight to the Giver of all good things. “I therefore recommend that on Thursday the 25th day of this month of November the people should assemble in their respective places of worship to express their gratitude to Almighty God for His bounties and benefits and to offer up supplication to Him for their continuation. “In witness of this I have set my hand thereto, and have caused the seal of the United States to be affixed. "Given in the city of Washington, this first day of November, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and eightieth, and of the independence of the United States one hundred and five." (Seal) •President R.B. Gayes”, "Secretary of State William M. Evarts." From The New-York Times, November 1, 1880, telegraphed. Similar manifestos are issued by the rulers of individual states. In the latter, and besides “Thanksgiving,” there are occasions when rulers issue solemn proclamations to the people to perform some extraordinary religious acts. In the state of Vermont, for example, Governor Farnham issued a manifesto this spring, which designated Friday, April 8, as a day of general fasting and prayer - to ask for Divine mercy for the growth of the crops. See Christian statesman, April 14, 1881. The Congress, as the supreme representative of the people, also issued manifestos calling the people to prayer on special historical occasions. For a similar manifesto issued regarding the War of 1812, see Inqniery. into Moral and Religious Character of American Government p. 116. Catholic World, Vol. XXIII, p. 738. Constitutions of the thirteen states South Carolina. Murray, History of Catholic church, p. 183 Cp. 1 note on page 141 Shea, History of the Catholic Church p. 45; Murray, p. 183. The Constitutions of the several states. North Carolina Constitution. Cp. pp. 259 and 265. Murray, History, p. 184. These articles, if we are not mistaken, still exist. At least we did not find notice of their cancellation in such a careful spokesman and strict zealot for the interests of the Roman Catholic Church in America as the Catholic World magazine. True, they exist more like a “dead letter” than living, active legislation, but even such their existence represents a characteristic fact. The proposal to abolish them was made several times in the state legislature and found unanimous approval, but was constantly lost in paperwork. See The Constitutions of several states. New Hampshire Constitution, pp. 54, 57, 59. The Constitutions of the several states. Mariland Constitution, Declaration of Rights, Art. 34, r. 324. The Constitutions, p. 70. – The meaning of this article is obviously that only a truly religious society can enjoy certain privileges that do not extend to purely civil societies, such as the exemption of churches or places of worship from taxes. The Constitutions, p. 194. The Constitutions, Tennessee Constitution, art. IX, sec. 2, r. 270–271. The Constitutions of the several states, New-York 1866. constitution of North Carolina, Amendments to the Constitution art. IV, p. 265. North American Review, March 1881, pp. 217–218. Wed. Inquiry into the moral and religious Character of the American Government pp. 99–102. Several cases of blasphemy in the same state led to the state legislature passing a positive law against blasphemy as a civil crime, which in the statute of 1860 reads as follows: “If any person shall freely, willfully and persistently blaspheme, or speak lasciviously and profanely of Almighty God, Christ Jesus, the Holy Ghost, or the Scriptures of Truth, such person shall, upon conviction thereof, be condemned to pay a fine not exceeding $100 and imprisonment not exceeding three months, or both as determined by the court.” Christian statesman, May 12, 1881, p. 424. Ibidem, pp. 216–230. Wed Inquiery, p. 97–98. Catholic World. Vol. XVI, p.728 Catholic World. Vol. XVI, p.729 Catholic World. Vol. XI art. The Church and State, p. 146 Catholic World. Vol. XI, op. article. Catholic World, Vol. XIV, p. 437 etc. Catholic World, Vol. XXI, r. 11. Catholic World. Vol. XXI, r. 4. Catholic World. Vol. XXI, r. 3. While reviewing the religious issue in prisons in European countries, the American Catholic publicist, among other things, points to Russia, where priests of different confessions, “even Jewish and Mohammedan,” are also allowed into prisons. Ibidem, r. 5 and 6. Catholic World, Vol. XXI, r. 6. Catholic World, Vol. XXI, r. 17. 3 pairs Article I of the New York State Constitution reads: The free exercise of religion and worship, without distinction or favor, shall be forever permitted in this State to all mankind; but the liberty of conscience thereby secured shall not be so construed as to excuse acts of license, or to justify acts inconsistent with the peace and safety of this State.” The Constitutions of the several states, p. 143. Catholic World, Vol. XXI, p.8. The size of charitable activities can be judged by the fact that in one state of New York, as can be seen from the official report of the governor of the state, Corneille, dated January 5, 1881, the amount of expenses for the maintenance of charitable institutions last year reached eight million (8,000,000) dollars, and the total value of property serving for charitable purposes in the state was determined to be thirty-five million (35,000,000) dollars. Gov. Cornell's Message, The New-York Times, Jan. 5. 1881. Murray, History of Catholic church. in U.S. p. 578 “Eighteen thousand persons, many of them of the highest education, labor for nothing for the good and progress of the United States,” exclaims the Catholic publicist-historian. “Calculate their price, O you political economists, who mainly strive to achieve great results with the slightest expense!” Ibidem. The Catholic establishments occupy eighty-six lots in the city, while all other Protestant denominations hold only about seventy lots. See cat. Private Charites, Public lands and Public Money brochure. 1880. New York. Putnam's Magazine, July 1869. Atlantic Monthly, 1880. Putnam's Magazine, July 1869 p. 43. Putnam's Magazine, March 1870 p. 359. Catholic brochure Private Charities, Public lands and Public Money, pp. 26–30. New York, 1880. The Times, 6 Feb. 1881. On March 11, Protectoria submitted a petition to the state legislature for an increase in subsidies in the amount of $60,000. This will more than satisfy the deficiency. N.Y. Herald, March 12, 1881 Putnam's Magazine for July 1869 published an article, "Our Established Church," which presented the Roman Catholic Church as the state church. The article made a strong impression on society and caused fierce controversy between Protestant and Catholic publicists. Newly elected mayor Mr. Grace was brought up in the Catholic College of Mangatan, which contains Catholics. Order of the Christian Brothers, and is under the strong influence of Cardinal Man-Klossky. The controller of the public sums for the past few years has been John Kelly, not only a devout Catholic, but also a nephew by nature of the same Cardinal McClossky. You might be interested in: