But except in these instances, the American state is, we believe, true to the Christian principle on which it is based, as true, that is, as it can be in a mixed community of Catholics, Jews, and Protestants. The state has no spiritual competency, and cannot decide either for itself or for its citizens which is or is not the church that authoritatively represents the spiritual order. The responsibility of that decision it does and must leave to its citizens, who must decide for themselves, and answer to God for the rectitude of their decision. Their decision is law for the state, and it must respect and obey it in the case alike of majorities and minorities; for it recognizes the equal rights of all its citizens, and cannot discriminate between them. The church that represents for the state the spiritual order is the church adopted by its citizens; and as they adopt different churches, it can recognize and enforce, through the civil courts, the canons and decrees of each only on its own members, and on them only so far as they do not infringe on the equal rights of the others. This is not all the state would do or ought to do in a perfect Christian society, but it is all that it can do where these different churches exist, and exist for it with equal rights. It can only recognize them, and protect and vindicate the rights of each only in relation to those citizens who acknowledge its authority. This recognizes and protects the Catholic Church in her entire freedom and independence and in teaching her faith, and in governing and disciplining Catholics according to her own canons and decrees, which, unless we are greatly misinformed, is more than the state does for her, in any old Catholic nation in the world.
This is not tolerance or indifference; it only means that the state does not arrogate to itself the right to decide which is the true church, and holds itself bound to respect and protect equally the church or churches acknowledged as such by its citizens. The doctrine that a man is free before God to be of any religion, or of no religion as he pleases, or the liberty of conscience, as understood by the so-called liberals throughout the world, and which was condemned by Gregory XVI. of immortal memory, in his encyclical of August 15th, 1832, receives no countenance from the American state, and is repugnant to its fundamental constitution. Heretical and schismatic sects have, indeed, no rights; for they have no authority from God to represent the spiritual order, and their existence is, no doubt, repugnant to the real interests of society as well as destructive to souls; but in a community where they exist along with the true church, the state must respect and protect in them the rights of the spiritual order, not indeed because they claim to be the church, but because they are held to be such by its citizens, and all its citizens have equal rights in the civil order, and the equal right to have their conscience, if they have a conscience, respected and protected. The church of God exacts nothing more of it in this respect than to be protected in her freedom to combat and vanquish the adherents of false churches or false religions with her own spiritual weapons. More she might exact of the state in perfect Christian society; but this is all that she can exact in an imperfect and divided Christian society, as is the case in nearly all modern nations.