Excerpt
LEO PP XIII.
Venerable Brethren, Health and Apostolic Benediction.
The work of a merciful God, the Church looks essentially, and from the very nature of her being, to the salvation of souls and the winning for them of happiness in heaven, nevertheless, she also secures even in this world, advantages so many and so great that she could not do more, even if she had been founded primarily and specially to secure prosperity in this life which is worked out upon earth. In truth, wherever the Church has set her foot she has at once changed the aspect of affairs, colored the manners of the people as with new virtues and a refinement unknown before—as many people as have accepted this have been distinguished for their gentleness, their justice, and the glory of their deeds. But the accusation is an old one, and not of recent date, that the Church is incompatible with the welfare of the commonwealth, and incapable of contributing to those things, whether useful or ornamental, which, naturally and of its own will, every rightly-constituted State eagerly strives for. We know that on this ground, in the very beginnings of the Church, the Christians, from the same perversity of view, were persecuted and constantly held up to hatred and contempt, so that they were styled the enemies of the Empire. And at that time it was generally popular to attribute to Christianity the responsibility for the evils beneath which the State was beaten down, when in reality, God, the avenger of crimes, was requiring a just punishment from the guilty. The wickedness of this calumny, not without cause, fired the genius and sharpened the pen of Augustine, who, especially in his Civitate Dei, set forth so clearly the efficacy of Christian wisdom, and the way in which it is bound up with well-being of States, that he seems not only to have pleaded the cause of the Christians of his own time, but to have triumphantly refuted these false charges for all time. But this unhappy inclination to complaints and false accusations was not laid to rest, and many have thought well to seek a system of civil life elsewhere than in the doctrines which the Church approves. And now in these latter times a new law, as they call it, has begun to prevail, which they describe as the outcome of a world now fully developed, and born of a growing liberty. But although many hazardous schemes have been propounded by many, it is clear that never has any better method been found for establishing and ruling the State than that which is the natural result of the teaching of the Gospel. We deem it, therefore, of the greatest moment, and especially suitable to our Apostolic function, to compare with Christian doctrine the new opinions concerning the State, by which method we trust that, truth being thus presented, the causes of error and doubt will be removed, so that each may easily see by those supreme commandments for living, what things he ought to follow, and whom he ought to obey.
It is not a very difficult matter to set forth what form and appearance the State should have if Christian philosophy governed the commonwealth....