The Catholic Church and politics concerns the interplay of Catholicism with religious, and later secular, politics. The Catholic Church's views and teachings have evolved over its history and have at times been significant political influences within nations.
Overview
Historically, the Church followed the policy of strict neutrality, with Catholic thinkers such as Eusebius of Caesarea believing that the Church should not concern itself with political matters. However, Saint Augustine, one of the Doctors of the Church, influenced the Church with his theory of minimal involvement in politics, according to which the Church "accepted the legitimacy of even pagan governments that maintained a social order useful to Christians as well, and to the extent that the freedom of the Church to carry out its evangelical task was allowed." In the 13th century, Thomas Aquinas discussed the concept of political legitimacy and the moral issues of using political power, concluding that explicit limitations to governmental power are necessary. Later Thomists such as Saint Cajetan, Francisco Suárez and Robert Bellarmine introduced the idea of early Christian democracy, according to which political power was granted by God to each community, and every political official was to obey the community's determination in his political decisions; according to this concept, the community could transfer the authority from one official to another as well.
In the early Church, the biblical passage Matthew 22:21 ("Render to Ceasar, the things that are Ceasar's, and to God, the things that are God's") was a source of discussion regarding the role of the Church and its relations with secular governments, defining the dualism of Catholic political thinking - unlike earlier religions, the Catholic Church became a separate, independent institution that was not a part of any ethnic or political structures of already existing communities. The Church's doctrine considered Christian communities to be the "recipients of divine grace and inspiration", along with the clergy. Paul E. Sigmund argues that democratic thinking was already present in the early Church, as early Catholics "acted as communities to make decisions about common affairs, becoming almost independent self-governing entities in periods of persecution".
The High Middle Ages was the heyday of monarchism. In the Church, this meant the rise of papal authority under popes such as Gregory VIII and Innocent III, who exerted wide influence over the Christian states of Europe and claimed supremacy over all of Europe's kings, engaging in major political battles such as the Investiture Controversy. However, medieval Catholic thinkers also pioneered ideas of democracy: John of Salisbury spoke of a conceptual democracy based on the ideals of Christian corporatism, comparing the organisation of society to the structure of the human body, with each social class having its role in the society and democratic right to participate in politics. The Church's tradition taught that government and laws originally emerged from the people, and were justified with their consent (consensus). Catholic thinkers believed that government authority was to be limited by natural and customary laws, as well as independent institutions such as the Church. Even papal authority should be balanced by the secular nobility (episcopalism) and the Church hierarchy (election of the Pope by the conclave, and the conciliar movement). According to Walter Ullmann, medieval Catholic scholars came close to envisioning and endorsing democracy in its modern form, with Saint Thomas writing that the law should be formulated by "the whole community or the person who represents it" and describing a regime in which "all participate in the election of those who rule" as the best form of governance, formulating the concept of universal suffrage. He also recognised limits to papal authority, writing that the pope can only intervene in affairs "in which the temporal power is subject to him".