Immortal Dei

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With the encyclical Immortale Dei (The immortal [work] of God; ASS XVIII, p. 161 ff.) Of November 1st (All Saints' Day) 1885 Pope Leo XIII. the doctrine of the "True State" summarized in a condensed form.

About the Christian constitution

Already with the encyclical Diuturnum illud of June 29, 1881 Leo XIII. the "highest dignity in the area of ​​the state" comes from the natural law . He continued the series of papal condemnation judgments on religious freedom in his encyclical Immortale Dei with undiminished violence.

Subject areas

  • The Church - educator of the peoples
  • The Church - not the enemy of the state
  • Gospel - the best state teaching
  • Authority and the state have God as author
  • It is not the form of government that decides, but obedience to God
  • Obedience to the authorities is required in every form of government
  • State and society obliged to worship God
  • True, God-given religion can only be found in the church
  • Church represents perfect society
  • Church exists and acts in its own right
  • Two powers instituted by God
  • There must be harmony between the powers
  • The heyday of the state was the heyday of the church
  • The Renaissance and the Enlightenment created confusion
  • Church hostile nature of such a state
  • Doctrine of popular sovereignty is to be condemned
  • Freedom of expression and freedom of the press source of evil
  • Liberal state wrong

On the question of tolerance

Although the teaching of the Church in recent times has modified this position in some respects, it has never abandoned it in principle. Pope Leo XIII. In his encyclical condemned the doctrine of the freedom of religion as a natural right and spoke of the tolerance of other religions as an evil that one has to (compulsorily) accept, but only under certain given circumstances. The church could not bear freedom of conscience , freedom of opinion and freedom of religion as “perverse violations of Christian law and natural law ”. It is about "rampant liberal theories".

The social grades and the rights of the state

In view of this organic interaction for law and order, Catholic doctrine ascribes to the state the dignity and authority of a vigilant and far-sighted defender of the divine and human rights so often emphasized by Scripture and by the Church Fathers. In his circular, Leo XIII. especially that about the state authority and that about the Christian state constitution. Here the Catholic finds the clear principles of reason and faith which are supposed to enable him to protect himself against the erroneous and dangerous of the communist conception of the state. The Creator himself has regulated this mutual relationship in his principles, and it is an unjust presumption when communism takes it upon itself to take the place of the divine law, which is based on the unchanging principles of truth and love.

Leo XIII. and the modern

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The term modern is usually understood to mean the so-called "Declarations of Principles of 1789" with the political ideologies derived from them: socialism, secularism, democracy and liberalism. On closer inspection, however, two periods can be distinguished: one during which modernity predominantly appears in a cultural and therefore still quite elitist form, only to then become a mass phenomenon in a second period. At the center of the transition between the two epochs of modernity is the industrialization process, which led to "apostasy" (apostasy) or "licentiousness", as some intransigent contemporary documents put it, among the previously "Christian" masses grabbed.

An encyclical between modernity and industrialization

Leo XIII. It now got to do with the “massive apostasy from the church”, since in the last third of the 19th century the industrialization process shook the old equilibrium and gathered large masses of militant groups on the periphery of the industrial cities under the banners of socialism or anarchism.

the industrialization

The church could limit itself to negotiations with the states. However, since the Industrial Revolution called peasants from the fields to urban factories and modern ideologies offered beliefs and ways of life contrary to traditional religion, modernity took on an increasingly threatening appearance. This modernism saw Leo XIII. opposite: It was modernity that was not only announced, but became a real reality; about which was not only theorized, but had taken concrete form; modernity, which was not only presented in books, discussed in discussion circles and taken into account in some laws, but was also present in factories and on the streets and squares.

Church dispute

Leo XIII. did not spare the church the argument. Gradually, he took it up, not just in a negative way, but gradually in a positive way, and led the church in a difficult change of direction: from condemnation to offer, from indignant retreat to staunch commitment, from enduring events to hers Management. In the encyclical one recognizes the commitment and the incentive for a “Christian modernity”.

literature

  • Rudolf Fischer-Wolpert: Do you know - Lexicon of religious and ideological questions. 3rd edition, Verlag Friedrich Pustet, Regensburg, 1982, ISBN 3-7917-0738-8
  • Carl Andresen , Georg Denzler : dtv dictionary of church history. Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, Munich, 1982, ISBN 3-423-03245-6
  • Werner Stein: Timetable of world history. FA Herbig Verlagsbuchhandlung, Berlin, 1990, ISBN 3-7766-1476-5
  • Bruno Moser (ed.): The papacy - epochs and shapes. Südwest Verlag, Munich, 1983

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