The State as Daughter, Bride and Mother of the Church
The New Digest is pleased to present a guest post by Michaël Bauwens (Ph.D. KU Leuven, 2018). Dr. Bauwens is a researcher at the University of Antwerp and the ETF Leuven. His academic work is at michaelbauwens.net and his substack at marystead.substack.com.
Introduction
The question of what the proper relationship between Church and state ought to be is not a new one, and its importance hardly needs an argument. But just in case, back in 2017 Pope Benedict XVI noted the following:
“The contrast between the concepts of the radically atheistic state and the creation of the radically theocratic state by Muslim movements creates a dangerous situation for our age, one whose effects we experience each day. These radical ideologies require us to urgently develop a convincing concept of the state that will stand up to the confrontation between these challenges and help to overcome it.”1
However, 19th-century popes like Leo XIII already had a pretty clear ‘convincing concept of the state.’ Pope Leo repeatedly endorsed a soul-body analogy for Church-state relationships – a hierarchical model for which the Pope referred back to Suarez, but with roots stretching at least as far back as Gregory of Nazianzen. The 1925 encyclical Quas Primas by Pius XI on the social kingship of Christ likewise endorsed a clear hierarchical conception whereby Christ is also king in the full social and political sense of the word, because of his divinity. So why was Benedict calling to develop a convincing concept of the state in 2017?
Going back a little further, in 2012 he wrote that we had witnessed “developments in philosophical thought” and “ways of understanding the modern State”2 that had modified certain traditional conceptions on the relationship between Church and state. He was writing this in relation to the issue of religious liberty at Vatican II, as particularly requested by the American bishops. Going back even further, in his 2005 Christmas address, discussing the same topic, he had drawn a contrast between the American and French revolutions, whereby “the American Revolution was offering a model of a modern State that differed from the theoretical model with radical tendencies that had emerged during the second phase of the French Revolution.”3
Based on these remarks, a picture starts to emerge. In a simple scheme, we could see both the theocratic state as well as the radically atheistic state as endorsing a vertical, hierarchical conception of Church-state relations, whereby the theocratic state suppresses the autonomy of the civil political order, and the atheistic state suppresses the Church. In contrast to that vertical model would be the horizontal conception of a benign liberalism, whereby the two orders peacefully live alongside each other. The developments in ways of understanding the modern state as referred to by Benedict would then have spurred on a growing insight within the Church that her older (e.g. Leonine) model of state-Church relations was tending too much in the vertical, theocratic direction. However, as the norms and values of the modern liberal state are increasingly diverging from that of the Church on fundamental issues like life, death, personhood and the family, concerns have been growing about exactly how benign and how indifferent that horizontal conception of Church-state relations really is in the long run. Hence, the need to think about a convincing concept of the state arguably returns once more on the scene.
Given these tensions, this essay seeks to develop a subtle yet robust balance – as Catholicism is wont to do – between these opposing tendencies of a vertical conception of Church-state relations versus a horizontal conception. In fact, the goal will not be to develop a ‘convincing concept’, but to look at a concrete person for inspiration – a person who is fully and merely human, but at the same time Queen of heaven and of earth. That is, this essay seeks to develop a convincing concept of the state as daughter, bride and mother of the Church – in parallel to the Virgin Mary’s relationship to the three divine persons.
Daughter of the Church
Mary is first of all the daughter of God the Father, so by analogy the state would be the daughter of the Church. It is an analogy which expresses the same truth as the Leonine soul-body analogy – the body receives life from the soul, the daughter receives life from the father. There is a clear hierarchical, vertical order in that sense – secular authority receives her life (i.e. her authority) from elsewhere, since all authority comes from God (Rom. 13, 1). The Church directly represents divine authority, but the state does not, for she has received it from elsewhere. Claiming that all authority comes from ‘the people’ or from ‘the nation’ or from ‘individuals’ is plainly wrong – or only kicking the explanatory can down the road. The government can of course be appointed through a popular vote, but the ultimate source of all authority (be it of the government or of the people or of individuals) is God – as Leo XIII nicely explained in Immortale Dei.
But a daughter receives her life from her father in a significantly different way than how a body receives life from the soul. The daughter receives a life of her own, distinct from that of her father. In the Leonine soul-body analogy, a body without a soul is a corpse without life or personhood. Such a strict vertical relation does not reflect the sense of mutual reciprocity involved in the very concept of personhood. So Mary as a model for secular authority gives us both a clear hierarchical conception, but with a much stronger kind of personal autonomy vis-à-vis Church authority, in virtue of being another person.
So on the one hand, precisely by being a daughter, secular authority has her relative autonomy, blocking the road towards a theocratic state. A daughter is not a hand puppet of her father, but in virtue of being a daughter enjoys equal status qua person. As a child, a daughter is under the authority of her father, but she is not acting on behalf of her father, she is not a mere agent of her father as a certain reading of the Gelasian two swords theory could imply. There is a personal relationship between father and daughter, just like the very distinction between Creator and a creature ‘made in the image and likeness of the Creator’ necessarily implies personal autonomy for the creature as a limited degree of aseity in his or her personal choices. The father-daughter relationship thereby respects the hierarchy and unity of the Leonine or Gelasian models, while introducing a degree of personal responsibility and creaturely autonomy not found in those models but stressed by the modern conception.
Moreover, the essential role of a father vis-à-vis his daughter, the very telos of his authority over her, is to emancipate her. A parent is a parent precisely in being responsible that the child will one day become responsible for him- or herself. The inequality is there precisely in order to make itself superfluous. That doesn’t mean that we can or should expect ‘the state’ to become independent at some point in time, rather it characterises the structure of their relationship. It is not a domineering relationship, but one aimed at “that they may have life, and may have it more abundantly” (John 10:10).
Practically, kings being crowned by the Church, or oaths being sworn on the Bible, symbolically indicate that civil authority is derived from and relies upon a higher (divine) authority which is represented by the Church.
Bride of the Church
Although it is common to map Mary’s relations to the Trinity on the Trinitarian order of Father-Son-Spirit as Daughter-Mother-Bride, here we deliberately follow Mary’s chronological order of Daughter-Bride-Mother. She was a bride before becoming a mother. Hence, the next part of the analogy is Mary as bride of God the Spirit – hence the state as bride of the Church. On the one hand, a spousal union strengthens the unifying aspects of a hierarchical, vertical conception – the two become one flesh – but at the same time its fundamental structure is horizontal. Two equals are coming together in a shared life, which is itself life-giving – instead of the benign indifference of living alongside each other in the liberal model.
Although there is a functional distinction between husbands and wives in their respective roles, the importance of the word ‘bride’ is that it refers specifically to the situation preceding that functional differentiation. The bride is free to say yes or no. The bride is not the hand puppet of the bridegroom. The bridegroom is not the soul, the bride is not the body, yet the two can become one flesh – indicating hierarchy next to equality, personal distinctness next to a deep and life-giving unity.
States can say ‘yes’ or ‘no’ to countless international and supranational projects and bodies (UN, EU, WTO, WHO, etc.) that try, or claim to try, to establish a common good that surpasses their individual territories and competences. The Church as bridegroom can and should lead that dance, having the two authorities work together to solve the countless problems facing fallen humanity – engendering Christendom together, by restoring all things in Christ, which automatically leads to the next section on the state as the mother of the Church.
It is on this equal, spousal level that the state acts most directly vis-à-vis the hierarchical Church authorities. This can happen in a lot of concrete ways, guided by the social teaching of the Church, aimed at restoring and building up the common good, but its ultimate summit would be the formal recognition of Mary as sovereign Queen, expressing its total allegiance to her, and through her, to God. Not only states, but families, villages, cities and regions can do so, slowly establishing a grassroots Marian commonwealth, formed by all kinds of public bodies recognising Mary as their sovereign Queen and bride of God. Since Mary is a mere human person, it would block the theocratic threat, while establishing perfect receptivity for God, through the Church. States would no longer see their nation, people or territory as ‘first’, but as one among many other local bodies, taking responsibility for the reign of Mary – without claiming ultimate ownership or sovereignty because that has been entrusted to Mary.
Mother of the Church
Finally, and logically following up on the role of bride, secular authority is in a sense also the mother of the Church – but this time not in the strict sense of the visible hierarchy of the Church, but in the wider sense of Christendom. It is arguably the sense in which Hillaire Belloc wrote that ‘Europe is the Church, and the Church is Europe’ – Europe as the continent where the social incarnation of Christianity has the longest history and the strongest fruits. As mother, secular authority provides the structures of shared life as the womb that enables and protects, but does not enforce, the conception and birth of her citizens as future inhabitants of the city of God, enabling them to grow up as children of the Church in the ‘safe space’ of Christendom. These shared social and institutional structures provided for by secular authority, for example on issues pertaining to marriage law, beginning and end of life, or the recognition of public holidays, shape the shared social life of its citizens in a certain fashion.
Christendom as a womb or safe space implies a caring and listening heart for the ecology of human nature, which can be connected to the remarks made by Benedict XVI in his 2011 address to the German Reichstag.4 He keenly noted how the very idea of natural law, as a seemingly a-religious concept based on mere nature, has nowadays become closely linked to Catholicism. A womb also serves to protect the fragile life inside from an inimical world outside. Just like the ecological system of the earth needs protection, so too human nature, also in its social dimensions, needs protection as it relies on specific anthropological ideas that are not self-standing.
Although a mother can and should protect her children, a mother cannot enforce life – she has no power to do so – so the model can again mitigate the concerns about theocracy. The sacramental life of the Church uniquely infuses the supernatural life of grace in the souls of its citizens, but just as the sacrament of marriage involves a lot of secular work (building a house, getting a job, feeding children, and so on), the state plays an indispensable role in that common work. In serving that higher common good, secular authorities act neither as slave nor as master, but as the earthly authority enabling the Church to become fruitful in the shared social and institutional life of its citizens.
The hierarchical roles are now inversed, but the exercise of authority is for the good of another – the generation of saved souls, the growth of Christendom, which is ultimately a work of the Holy Spirit beyond the instrumental control of the state. Christendom is the Church as ‘Christus prolongatus’, the extension of the incarnation in the living tapestry of countless social life-forms, infusing the political and legal framework of a state with a Christian spirit, making it hospitable for the life of grace that only the Church in her strict sacramental sense can bring, but which should come to life and fruition in a way that is crucially nurtured and protected by the state.
Conclusion
This all too brief sketch is not an ecclesiology. Mary as the type of the Church implies that she herself is daughter, bride and mother, but the goal is definitely not to substitute the state for the Church or vice-versa. On the contrary, this model would enable a clearer grasp of the distinctness and differentiated roles of Church and state, as well as their relationship. Where the Church is daughter, bride and mother of God, the state is daughter, bride and mother of the Church. The feminine position of the Church vis-à-vis God becomes a masculine position of the Church vis-à-vis the state. Honoring the principle of subsidiarity, one could explore further implications for this view in relation to the respective role of the family as the smallest social unit, and ultimately to individual persons.