Joseph Cardinal Höffner CHRISTIAN SOCIAL ... - Ordo Socialis

sesses „no autonomous structural and functional principle for economy and society.“ In view
of this situation, the concern of the „corporate order,“ as it was described in Quadragesimo
anno and is also heard in Mater et magistra, is gaining a new and topical importance, namely,
the formation of „well-ordered members of the social organism,“ which can be designated as
a „natural furnishing“ of society.
c) Whether the integration of interest groups within the developed industrial society succeeds
depends decisively on those men who exercise power in the associations. In earlier centuries,
it was usual to give the individual states and professions Christian models in, for example, the
princes’ code, the artisans’ code, the farmers’ code, and the merchants’ code. Today, credible
models of the industrial worker, the entrepreneur, the member of parliament, and not least the
association official are lacking to a large extent. An essential feature in the model of the association
official must be that attitude which recognizes the common good of the whole nation
as the supreme norm in program and praxis while representing particular interests.
CHAPTER FOUR: CHURCH AND STATE
§ 1 Distinctness and Autonomy of Church and State
l. „The Almighty...has appointed the charge of the human race between two powers, the ecclesiastical
and the civil, the one being set over divine, and the other over human, things. Each
in its kind is supreme, each has fixed limits within which it is contained, limits which are defined
by the nature and special object of the province of each“ (Leo XIII, Immortale Dei).
State and Church are distinct in origin, end, and constitution. Whereas the state is a naturallaw
institution, the Church belongs to the supernatural order: „The divine Redeemer began to
build the mystical temple of his Church when he was preaching and giving his commandments;
he completed it when he hung in glory upon the Cross; he manifested and promulgated
it by the visible mission of the Paraclete, the Holy Spirit, upon his disciples“ (Mystici Corporis,
26). The end of the state is the realization of the earthly common good; the end of the
Church is the supernatural salvation of man. The state constitution and form of government
are subject to historical change; a hierarchical constitution has, however, been established by
divine right for the Church.
2. Church and state are each autonomous in their own realm and not subordinate to one another,
neither the Church to the state, nor the state to the Church. As the Church „through
God’s will and grace possesses in and through herself the means necessary to her integrity and
activity“ („Immortale Dei“), so the state is also autonomous in the ordering of its affairs, so
that, as Francisco de Vitoria writes, one „must obey governmental authority more than ecclesiastical
authority in those things that belong to the common good of the state.“ „The
Church,“ it also says in the encyclical Quadragesimo anno, „holds that it is unlawful for her to
mix without cause in these temporal concerns“ (n.41). It is not „bound to any political system“
(Gaudium et spes, 76).
§ 2 The Relatedness of Church and State
l. In spite of all distinctness, Church and state are related to one another in manifold ways, so
that it would be erroneous to deny „every bond between the two societies“ and to see „the
cool and separating atmosphere of mutual ignorance and indifference“ as the normal relation
between Church and state (Pius XII, October 29, l947). A threefold relatedness can be distinguished:
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