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7 J. Church & St. 18 (1965)
Contemporary Conservative Roman Catholic Church-State Thought

handle is hein.journals/jchs7 and id is 26 raw text is: Contemporary Conservative Roman Catholic Church-State Thought* THomAs T. LovE The sessions of Vatican II exhibit the uniquely contemporary controversy between Roman Catholic thinkers. So-called lib- eral or progressive Catholics contend against their more con- servative brethren. To select only a single item which Vatican II has yet to consider on its agenda, the conservative or tra- ditionalist .viewpoint on the proper Church-state relationship is rejected by liberal Catholics. What is the conservative Cath- olic's position on Church-state relations which the liberal Cath- olic must call into question and, if possible, discredit? It is the purpose of this article to answer this question with specific ref- erence to contemporary Roman Catholic Church-state thought on the American scene. The basic principles underlying the Church-state doctrine in American Roman Catholic thought in the present day are vari- ously formulated in the writings of outstanding conservative and liberal Catholic thinkers. We need to state rather clearly what we mean by the terms conservative and liberal Cath- olic views. Essentially by conservative we mean the views of those writers who tend primarily to preserve established tradi- tions, institutions, and papal pronouncements in presenting these to the modem world. By liberal or progressive we mean the views of those Catholic writers who also wish to preserve what is considered to be essential in Catholic thought, practice, and pronouncement but who are fundamentally concerned to re-pre- sent this in a more Vital way for the contemporary world. Both groups wish to remain true to what they take to be the authentic tradition of the Catholic Church; both wish to present the truth of this heritage to the modem world. One way of illustrating this distinction between the two groups is to consider the attitude and method of each with regard to papal utterances. The conservative cites a past papal utterance and then draws conclusions from this to solve some situation *This article is a slightly revised chapter from the forthcoming book, John Courtney Murray: Contemporary Church-State Theory, by Thomas T. Love, to be published by Doubleday an$d Co, Inc., in April 1965.

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