Immortale Dei - The Church's Temporal Jurisdiction

The Church's Temporal Jurisdiction

The pope then briefly describes the advantages which would follow from the establishment of this Christian scheme of society if both powers were content to keep within their legitimate sphere. Human nature, however, is prone to go wrong and many and bitter have been the conflicts between the two powers. While no Catholic would maintain that in these struggles the Church was always in the right, modern historians of the scientific school freely admit that the civil power was generally the aggressor. One cause of conflict was the jurisdiction over many merely temporal matters which the Christian emperors of Rome granted to the popes and to bishops. During the Middle Ages bishops continued to claim and to exercise this jurisdiction, which was sometimes enlarged, sometimes curtailed, by local customs and laws. In various ways the pope became paramount lord of whole kingdoms during the same period. Thus, by the voluntary act of King John and his barons, England was made a fief of the Holy See and became for a time tributary to it. When the Church had once lawfully acquired such rights as these, it was natural that she should wish to retain them; indeed, no churchman could lawfully surrender the justly acquired rights of his church, even in temporal matters, without just cause and the leave of the Holy See. Still, the double jurisdiction led to strife between the two powers, and by degrees the State in most European countries not only deprived the Church of the jurisdiction in temporal matters which she once possessed, but made large inroads into the spiritual domain which belongs exclusively to the Church. Conflicts also arose over mixed causes, such as legitimacy, which belonged to both jurisdictions, and in consequence of the claim of the Church to an indirect and incidental jurisdiction in matters temporal. Thus the Church claims authority over the education of her children even in subjects which do not pertain directly to religion, and in all probability in the same way she obtained in England the power which she once enjoyed over testamentary dispositions. This is a matter of the greatest importance in the history of English law. Owing to it the English law of property at the present day is divided into halves, that of reality and that of personalty. The division is because the Church, on account of her authority over pious causes and legacies to charitable purposes, early obtained jurisdiction over all testmentary dispositions of personalty, while the realty was left to the civil courts. There was a controversy among theologians and jurists as to the extent of the Church's power over temporal affairs. All admit that her authority does in some way extend to temporal affairs; indeed the proposition that she has no direct or indirect temporal authority was condemned by Pius IX in the Syllabus of Errors. To explain the nature of that power three systems have been devised by theologians and jurists.