Protestants contend that the entire power of the Church consists in the right to teach and exhort, but not in the right to command, rule, or govern; whence they infer that she is not a perfect society or sovereign state.  This theory is false; for the Church, as was seen, is vested #Jure divino# with power, (1) to make laws; (2) to define and apply them #(potestas judicialis)#; (3) to punish those who violate her laws #(potestas coercitiva)#.

And this is not one scholar’s theory, but the formal and repeated proclamation of infallible popes.  Here is the “Syllabus of Errors”, issued by Pope Pius IX, Dec. 8th, 1864, declaring in substance that

     The state has not the right to leave every man free to
     profess and embrace whatever religion he shall deem true.

     It has not the right to enact that the ecclesiastical power
     shall require the permission of the civil power in order to
     the exercise of its authority.

Then in the same Syllabus the rights and powers of the Church are affirmed in substance: 

     She has the right to require the state not to leave every
     man free to profess his own religion.

     She has the right to exercise her power without the
     permission or consent of the state.

     She has the right of perpetuating the union of church and
     state.

     She has the right to require that the Catholic religion
     shall be the only religion of the state, to the exclusion of
     all others.

     She has the right to prevent the state from granting the
     public exercise of their own worship to persons immigrating
     from it.

     She has the power of requiring the state not to permit free
     expression of opinion.

You see, the Holy Office is unrepentant and unchastened.  You, who think that liberty of conscience is the basis of civilization, ought at least to know what the Catholic Church has to say about the matter.  Here is Mgr.  Segur, in his “Plain Talk About Protestantism of Today”, a book published in Boston and extensively circulated by American Catholics: 

Freedom of thought is the soul of Protestantism; it is likewise the soul of modern rationalism and philosophy.  It is one of those impossibilities which only the levity of a superficial reason can regard as admissable.  But a sound mind, that does not feed on empty words, looks upon this freedom of thought only as simply absurd, and, what is more, as sinful.

You take the liberty of thinking, nevertheless; you feel safe because the Law will protect you.  But do you imagine that this “Law” applies to your Catholic neighbors?  Do you imagine that they are bound by the restraints that bind #you#?  Here is Pope Leo XIII, in his Encyclical of 1890—­and please remember that Leo XIII was the #beau ideal# of our capitalist statesmen and editors, as wise and kind and gentle-souled a pope as ever roasted a heretic.  He says: