Reaction Paper: Injustice from Intervention
Should the Church be separated from the State? Why?
INJUSTICE FROM INTERVENTION
In a society man needs the company of other men to be self sufficient and to be able to live a good life in the end. Every man belonging to its own household is a part of a state governed by one or more men. These rulers are entrusted with power to guide the state to its end which is the good life and being at peace.
Church is a religious community headed by Priests, Bishops, a Pope and other ministers. The Church ministers are given the power to lead men to its supernatural end.
Church once intervened in the governance of monarchies. Up until now although of no full control, the Church can still be seen affecting government’s decisions. Before, the realm caused disputes whether the Church must be separated from the state or not.
For men form a group for the purpose of living well together, a thing which the individual man living alone could not attain, and good life is the virtuous life. Therefore, virtuous life is the end for which men gather together… Yet through virtuous living man is further ordained to a higher end, which consists in the enjoyment of God… Consequently, since society must have the same end as the individual man, it is not the ultimate end of an assembled multitude to live virtuously, but through virtuous living to attain to the possession of God. [1]
Based on this idea of Saint Thomas Aquinas’, I may say that the Church can take control on the secular community in the sole purpose of achieving men’s end which is the possession of God since it is the ministers of the Church and that of the Pope who can guide people to it and not the Kings whose power is bounded on this temporal world only. And as what Saint Aquinas also stated, achieving this end does not pertain to human government but to divine government… entrusted to the Roman Pontiff.[2]