Duo Sunt

It is often thought that the separation of Church and State arose out of the Enlightenment ideals. However, it is not so. This concept of the separation of Church and State was an idea that was born much earlier in history.

Pope Gelasius II in his letter Duo Sunt, written in AD 494, distinguished the 'auctoritas sacrata pontificum - the holy authority of the bishops' from the 'regalis potestas - royal power'. This separation was re-emphasized by Accursius in the 1200s, where 'neither the pope in secular matters, nor the emperor in spiritual matters has any authority.' The impetus behind this insistence on the separation of Church and State may have been out of the Church's desire for autonomy, but it is primarily due to the nature of the role of the Church.

The Church's role is not political governance, but that of the proclamation of the Good News; that Christ has died for our sins. The Church makes a proposal of the possibility of redemption to Man. The Church should maintain a critical distance from the world, that it may serve as a sign that the material world is not all there is.   We are in the world as Christians, but not of the world. The maintenance of impartiality of impartiality and objectivity by having a critical distance would allow the Church to convict political societies of their wrongdoings (eg. the errors of communism, the culture of death, etc.).This, on a side note, would preclude the idea that in order to maintain the separation of Church and State, moral values rooted in religious views ought not be brought into the public sphere.

The Church must practice a sort of contemptus mundi, to constantly remind us, as a prophet would, that one should never absolutize or idolize the State. As George Weigel noted, 'The Church must have no desire to be Caesar, and Caesar must not pretend to be God.' If the Church acts like the State, there possess a high tendency to depart from its primary role in the proclamation of the Good News. And if the State becomes the Church, in the sense of portraying itself as the 'saviour' of the people (eg. Nazi Germany, Communist Russia, etc), then it is merely deluding itself and the people it claims to save.