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Perfect Society or

PERFECT SOCIETY OR 
VOLUNTARY ASSOCIATION? 

LOCKE, MARITAIN, AND THE AUTONOMY OF 
CHURCH AND STATE

SEAN SCULLY, CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY OF AMERICA

§ 1: INTRODUCTION  

 The liberal project began in Europe amidst fierce religious 
divisions. In the two centuries that followed the Protestant Reformation, 
competing claims of spiritual authority had driven the continent into 
a number of armed conflicts and suppressive campaigns. Given this 
context, it is not difficult to see why some desired a political arrangement 
that promoted a peaceful coexistence between different denominations. 
It was during this time period that John Locke published his Letter 
Concerning Toleration, which famously argued that the way to achieve 



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this coexistence was by making the state autonomous from the Church.62 
According to this vision, the jurisdiction of each entity would be entirely 
separated from the other, denying governments the right to coerce on 
behalf of any religious creed. This novel approach to political theory 
helped lay the groundwork for liberal philosophy and challenged the 
prevailing notion of the time that the state had a responsibility to promote 
both the temporal and the spiritual welfare of its citizens. 

 While this view was met with resistance from several Christian 
denominations, it faced particularly strong opposition from Catholic 
intellectuals. From the Middle Ages through the Counter-Reformation, 
the Church had always maintained that it was superior in dignity to the 
state and, as such, had the right to instruct and guide the state on spiritual 
matters.63 For this reason, the liberal idea that the state had no right to 
coerce on behalf of spiritual authority was seen by several popes as a direct 
threat to the rights the Church had traditionally claimed for itself.64 Since 
democracy and pluralism are now considered to be essential attributes 
of liberalism, this tension raised the question of whether a democratic 
and pluralistic society could ever realize the Catholic Church’s idealistic 
vision for Church-State relations.  

 Some Catholic thinkers have since been more optimistic about 
Catholicism’s compatibility with democracy. Jacques Maritain, a political 
theorist and committed Thomist, was one such thinker. In his book Man 
and the State, Maritain offers an alternative theoretical justification for 
secular democracy that does not rely on liberal presuppositions. In the 
process, he provides an extensive account of how a separation between 
Church and state could actually work for the benefit of the Church. 

 Although Locke and Maritain both argue for a kind of political 
secularization, they disagree starkly on the type of society that political 
secularization should bring about. Their disagreement strikes at the 
core of the Church-State question: what kind of status should organized 
religions enjoy in a democracy with no established religion? Furthermore, 
how should members of religious congregations, bound by specific 
moral dictates, participate in a political body composed of individuals 

62 For the purposes of this paper, whenever I speak of “the Church,” I am 
referring to the Roman Catholic Church.

63 See St. Thomas Aquinas’ De Regno, Giles of Rome’s On Ecclesiastical 
Power, Robert Bellarmine’s On the Roman Pontiff, and Francisco Suarez’s 
Defensio Fidei.

64 See Libertas and Immortale Dei by Pope Leo XIII and Quanta Cura and the 
Syllabus of Errors by Pope Pius IX.



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of all faiths? This paper aims to clearly explain the ways in which 
Locke and Maritain address these questions in their political theories. 
After drawing out their theoretical differences, I will assess which 
arrangement is more practically realizable. In doing so, I hope to show 
that only Locke’s theory is structured to fulfill its stated ambitions, while 
Maritain’s envisioned society fails to achieve its desired relationship 
between Church and State.

§ 2: LOCKE’S CONCEPTION OF THE COMMONWEALTH 

 Following more than a century of religious upheaval, Locke 
wrote his Letter Concerning Toleration in an attempt to provide civil 
leaders with a roadmap for governing a commonwealth with competing 
religious factions. Although the treatise employs a number of theological 
arguments regarding the nature of Christian Faith, of interest to us here 
are the various claims Locke makes about the proper jurisdiction of both 
political and ecclesiastical authority. 

 Beginning with civil power, Locke defined the state as nothing 
more than “a Society of Men constituted only for the procuring, 
preserving and advancing of their own civil interests.”65 These “civil 
interests” are restricted to temporal goods, such as “Life, Liberty, Health, 
and Indolency of Body” as well as the “Possession of outward things” 
like “Money, Lands, Houses, Furniture, and the like.”66 Furthermore, the 
Letter draws a distinction between temporal and spiritual goods, claiming 
that the state’s authority “neither can nor ought in any manner… be 
extended to the Salvation of Souls.” According to this view of political 
rule, the state exists to provide for the bare necessities of life (such as 
health, money, and property) and to give men the freedom to determine 
how they ought to be used. 

 These claims about civil society rely on several assumptions 
that are treated more extensively in Locke’s Second Treatise on 
Government.67 To better understand what Locke views as the state’s 
purpose, I will highlight just a few of its main ideas. Firstly, the Second 
Treatise describes the pre-political condition of man as being a “state of 

65 John Locke, A Letter Concerning Toleration, ed. James H. Tully 
(Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 1983), 26.

66 Ibid 26.
67 For the purposes of this paper, I am assuming that both the Letter and the 

Second Treatise present a singular, consistent theory of the state.



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perfect freedom” where all people can “order their actions, and dispose 
of their possessions and persons, as they think fit.”68 Without a governing 
entity to hold licentious men accountable, however, the natural equality 
and liberty that each man should enjoy is left insecure. For this reason, 
men freely (and conditionally) enter into political communities to 
preserve and protect their “lives, liberties, and estates.”69 This agreement, 
commonly referred to as the “social contract,” defines the purpose of the 
state as well as its jurisdictional limits. Locke reiterates this conception 
of the “social contract” in his Letter, where he argues that the state only 
has the authority to regulate matters that “advantage or prejudice the 
Life, Liberty, or Estate of any man.”70

 Most relevant to the topic of this paper, however, is the state’s 
obligation to preserve a man’s “liberty.” As David J. Lorenzo noted, the 
right to liberty remains after men enter into the “social contract,” and as 
such, the “government cannot rationally justify a policy forbidding us 
from acting on our remaining natural liberty.”71 From elsewhere in the 
Second Treatise, we can see that Locke’s conception of liberty within 
the commonwealth is similar to the kind of freedom from restraint that 
he believed we enjoyed in the state of nature. Elaborating on this point, 
Locke argued that the “end of law is not to abolish or restrain, but to 
preserve and enlarge freedom” as well as to allow men “to dispose, 
and order as he lists, his person, actions, possessions, and his whole 
property within the allowance of [the] law.”72 Because Locke believes 
we enter into a political community to secure this kind of freedom, he 
is by extension arguing that the state has an obligation to secure and 
“enlarge” the liberty of men to conduct their lives as they see fit. 

 Noting this, let us return to the Letter. As we discussed, Locke 
believes that the state is responsible for protecting and preserving 
man’s “civil” goods. Why, then, are religious beliefs and customs 
not considered to be one of these “civil” goods? According to Locke, 
one reason is that they are acquired through entirely different means. 
Remember, in Locke’s theory, coercive authority is invested in the state 
only for the purposes of securing “lives, liberties, and estates.” In these 

68 John Locke, Second Treatise of Government, ed. C.B. Macpherson 
(Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 1980), Chapter II, §4.

69 Ibid. Chapter IX, §123.
70  John Locke, A Letter Concerning Toleration, 39.
71 David J. Lorenzo “Tradition and Prudence in Locke’s Exceptions to 

Toleration.” American Journal of Political Science 47, no. 2 (2003): 254. 
https://doi.org/10.2307/3186136.

72 John Locke, Second Treatise of Government, Chapter VI, §57.



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instances, coercion can effectively encourage upright behavior, such as 
when thieves are punished with fines or imprisonment. Religion, on the 
other hand, depends upon the “inward and full perswasion of the mind,” 
which cannot be brought about through force.73 For example, although 
incarceration can dissuade a man from vandalizing property, Locke 
would argue that it could not be used to convince someone of the truth 
of a particular religion. If it were, the individual’s confession of  “faith” 
would only be given to avoid punishment, rendering it both inauthentic 
and meaningless.

 Locke even goes as far as to argue that forcing a man to betray 
his conscience is counterproductive to achieving his salvation. In 
his words, “to impose such things… [that are] contrary to their own 
Judgement, is in effect to command them to offend God.”74 Because the 
state is not given the kind of power that could effectively achieve the end 
of individual salvation, the state likewise cannot promote any particular 
path to salvation. For a state to do so would be an overreach of its proper 
authority. Instead, “the business of Laws is not to provide for the Truth 
of Opinions, but for the Safety and Security of the Commonwealth, and 
of every particular mans Goods and Person.”75

 The imposition of a religion, however, does not only fall outside 
of the state’s authority. It also actively undermines its obligation to 
“enlarge” liberty. Recall Locke’s theory that our original condition in 
the state of nature is one of “perfect freedom” to order our actions as 
we see fit. If this is the case, then this “perfect freedom” would likely 
extend to the ability to conduct our lives according to whichever creed 
we deem most correct. Indeed, Locke confirms this toward the end of 
his Letter, where he declares that the “Liberty of Conscience is every 
man’s natural Right.”76 For this reason, Locke argues that the “care of 
each Mans Salvation belongs only to himself.”77 Thus, while the state 
can provide for the basic conditions necessary for a good life (health, 
wealth, property, etc.), the state cannot, in the most fundamental sense, 
dictate how private citizens ought to pursue it. 

 So what authority does the Lockean commonwealth have over 
the Church? To determine where the Church falls within the state’s 

73 John Locke, A Letter Concerning Toleration, 26.
74 Ibid 39.
75 Ibid 46.
76 Ibid 51.
77 Ibid 47.



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jurisdiction, we must first identify the kind of organization Locke deems 
the Church to be. Toward the beginning of his Letter, Locke defines a 
church as a mere “voluntary Society of Men.”78 Like all other voluntary 
associations, churches do not have “any Jurisdiction in Worldly matters” 
and therefore have no right to advance their cause by any means of 
coercion.79 

 This model of Church-State relations is not unfamiliar to us 
today. Still, it is not extraordinary to find a liberal-democratic legal 
system that elevates religious congregations above other forms of 
“voluntary associations.” For example, think of how the United States 
exempts religious entities from certain kinds of taxation. Locke, on 
the other hand, makes no such distinction. As Eric R. Claeys correctly 
noted, “Locke treats church denominations as the equivalent of secular 
societies.”80 As evidence, Claeys points to the fact that Locke, when 
speaking of voluntary societies, refers interchangeably to churches 
and groups of “philosophers for learning, of Merchants for Commerce 
[and]… of men of leisure for mutual Conversation and Discourse.”81 
According to this model, there is no legal distinction between the 
Catholic Church and your local gardening club. 

 The status of “voluntary association” does afford the Church 
some basic liberties. Firstly, Locke maintains that all voluntary societies 
have the right to determine their own internal rules. In his words, “no 
Church or Company, I say, can in the least subsist and hold together, 
but will presently dissolve and break to pieces, unless it be regulated 
by some Laws, and the Members all consent to observe some Order.”82 
Since private societies have a right to exist within the Lockean 
commonwealth, and since these societies require rules and regulations to 
maintain themselves, it follows that they also have the right to regulate 
their internal affairs. To enforce their rules, such societies also have a 
right to admit and exclude members at their discretion. This allowance, 
however, does have one condition; the exclusion of a person from 
a religious society cannot deprive that person of any of their “Civil 

78 Ibid 28.
79 Ibid 32.
80 Eric Claeys, “The Private Society and the Liberal Public Good in John 

Locke’s Thought,” George Mason Law & Economics Research Paper no. 
07-43, 5, accessed November 26, 2024, https://www.law.gmu.edu/assets/
files/publications/working_papers/07-43.pdf.

81 John Locke, A Letter Concerning Toleration, 10; 51.
82 Ibid 28.



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Goods.”83 Since these goods fall under the protection of the magistrate, 
the religious organization in question would be liable to civil punishment 
if it infringed upon them. In this way, the congregation is prevented from 
possessing coercive power over citizens. 

 Beyond mere logistical regulations, Locke also grants churches 
the right to establish their own doctrines. As he wrote in the Letter, 
“the Magistrate ought not to forbid the Preaching or Professing of any 
Speculative Opinions in any Church, because they have no manner of 
relation to the Civil Rights of the Subjects.”84 Each denomination is 
free to have its members assent to whatever articles of faith they deem 
to be true. Whether a denomination affirms the veracity of the New 
Testament or believes in the Real presence of Christ in the Eucharist is 
of no concern to the state. If a ruler is to uphold Locke’s conception of 
the “liberty of conscience,” he must tolerate any number of “speculative 
opinions,” recognizing that such opinions fall entirely outside the realm 
of civil authority.

 This does not mean that churches are allowed to profess any 
belief whatsoever. On the contrary, Locke argues that the state has an 
obligation to quell opinions that subvert the fulfillment of its own ends. 
To explain the boundary between acceptable and unacceptable doctrine, 
Locke makes a distinction between speculative opinions, which require 
mere intellectual assent, and practical opinions, which bear directly on 
someone’s ethical choices or political decisions.85 Confessing belief in 
the triune God, for example, would be a speculative opinion, while the 
adhering to the laws laid down by the ten commandments would be 
a practical one. Speculative opinions, as we have mentioned, have no 
relation to a man’s civil goods and therefore fall outside the regulatory 
authority of the commonwealth.

 In contrast, Locke defends the state’s right to regulate practical 
opinions that fail to promote the virtues necessitated by liberalism. In his 
words, “A Good Life, in which consists not the least part of Religion and 
true Piety, concerns also the Civil Government…Moral Actions belong 
therefore to the Jurisdiction both of the… Magistrate and Conscience.”86 
For this reason, the state has the authority to restrict those opinions 

83 Ibid 31.
84 Ibid 46.
85 Ibid 46.
86 Ibid 46.



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which are contrary to the “moral Rules which are necessary for the 
preservation of Civil Society.”87

 Determining which opinions to suppress requires, as Claeys puts 
it, “a tough-minded calculation [of] how to tolerate the widest freedom 
of thought consistent with the community’s responsibility to perpetuate 
the conditions in which such freedom is possible.”88 Remember that 
Locke believes that the freedom we enjoy in the commonwealth ought 
to imitate the freedom from restraint that he believes we enjoy in the 
state of nature. As part of the “social contract,” the state is obligated 
to “enlarge” this freedom. If, therefore, the Lockean state chooses to 
suppress a particular opinion, it does so to preserve what Locke identifies 
as as man’s natural right to pursue his own conception of a good life. 

 While Locke enumerates a number of unacceptable opinions, 
there is one that is particularly relevant to this paper, namely the ban 
he places on churches whose condition of membership requires that 
“all those who enter into it, do thereby, ipso facto, deliver themselves 
up to the Protection and Service of another Prince.”89 This, in Locke’s 
view, allows for the possibility of having citizens who feel obligated to 
undermine the activities of their magistrate because of commands they 
received from their religious leader. Even though he only cites Muslims 
beholden to the Ottoman Empire as an example, this restriction is also 
clearly applicable to Catholics, who recognize the supreme authority 
of the Roman Pontiff. In this instance, the Church and the unity of its 
doctrine would be subordinated to the end of the state. Locke, then, 
affords the Church no special designation or exemption for the sake of 
maintaining the entirety of its faith. Rather, if the Church’s teachings 
are deemed counterproductive to the security of each man’s “liberty of 
conscience,” then the expectation is that the Church must discard those 
teachings. 

 Throughout the course of his Letter, Locke presents a view of 
Church-State relations that is very familiar to contemporary readers: 
“the Church it self is a thing absolutely separate and distinct from 
the Commonwealth.”90 Since its publication, the Letter’s position of 
“separation of Church and State” has become standard among Western 

87 Ibid 49.
88 Claeys, “The Private Society and the Liberal Public Good in John Locke’s 

Thought,” 28.
89 John Locke, A Letter Concerning Toleration, 50.
90 Ibid 33.



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nations. In this dynamic, the state is the only entity which possesses 
coercive authority, and churches are partially shielded from government 
overreach through each man’s right to form “voluntary associations.” If 
the Church is regarded as a voluntary association like any other, however, 
then it is difficult to claim any special right for it. As we shall see in 
the next section, this very limitation created a dilemma that Catholic 
philosophers are still grappling with. 

§ 3: MARITAIN’S ATTEMPT TO RECONCILE 
CHRISTIANITY AND PLURALISM 

 A cursory glance at the history of Catholic political thought 
reveals the challenge Locke’s view (and, by extension, the classical 
liberal tradition) poses to the Church’s traditional stance. As late as the 
nineteenth century, there were papal encyclicals published condemning 
the process of rapid liberalization that most Western nations were 
undergoing. In these encyclicals, there are a number of clear and succinct 
rejections of the arguments that were discussed in the previous section. 

 For example, in 1864, Pope Pius IX published the Syllabus 
of Errors, a document that contains a list of 80 propositions that were 
condemned by the pope as heretical and erroneous. Among the claims 
it rejects is the idea that a civil ruler “may interfere in matters relating 
to religion, morality and spiritual government, ” directly rebuking the 
state’s authority to regulate the Church’s opinions.91 The Syllabus also 
condemns a statement which sounds like it could have been written by 
Locke himself: “the Church ought to be separated from the State, and the 
State from the Church.”92 

 These ideas are elaborated upon in Pope Leo XIII’s 1885 
encyclical Immortale Dei. In it, Leo XIII seems to reject the Lockean 
conception of religious liberty, denying “that everyone is to be free to 
follow whatever religion he prefers.”93 He likewise rejects the idea that 
the state ought to refrain from attending to spiritual affairs, arguing 
instead that “it [is] a sin for the State not to have care for religion as 
a something beyond its scope, or as of no practical benefit; or out of 
many forms of religion to adopt that one which chimes in with fancy.”94 

91 Pius IX, The Syllabus of Errors,§44.
92 Pius IX, The Syllabus of Errors, §55.
93 Leo XIII, Immortale Dei, §26.
94 Leo XIII, Immortale Dei, §6.



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Later on, he makes it clear that the ideal political arrangement is not 
one where the state merely facilitates religious liberty, but one where 
the “religion instituted by Jesus Christ, established firmly in befitting 
dignity, [flourishes] everywhere, by the favour of princes and the 
legitimate protection of magistrates; and Church and state [are] happily 
united in concord.”95 By the turn of the twentieth century, it seemed 
clear that magisterial authority had not yet placed its faith in secular 
democracy. 

 This put Maritain in a tough position. As we mentioned briefly 
in the introduction, Maritain was pleased by many of the developments 
that had taken place in civil society throughout his lifetime. He spoke 
favorably of democracy, describing it as “the only way of bringing about 
a moral rationalization of politics” and the “only way through which 
the progressive energies of human life [come to] pass.”96 At the same 
time, however, Maritain recognized that some of these improvements in 
human flourishing were advanced on the basis of principles at odds with 
his Thomistic philosophical commitments.97 Thus, one of Maritain’s 
objectives in Man and the State was to formulate a new political theory 
that defended pluralistic democracy on non-liberal grounds. Although 
the book is comprehensive in its treatment of political authority, what 
is of particular interest to us here is his sixth chapter, where he directly 
addresses the Church-State issue.

 In order to grasp Maritain’s general argument, it is important to 
understand his distinctive philosophy of history. Maritain was aware that 
his predecessors within the Catholic intellectual tradition (Bellarmine, 
Pius IX, Leo XIII, etc.) held a very different view of Church-State 
relations than he did. In Maritain’s view, however, it was a mistake 
to assume that a political arrangement deemed ideal in its time would 
necessarily remain ideal for all times. Instead, Maritain believed that 
each epoch possessed its own unique “historical climate” that had to be 
considered when determining the ideal form of Church-State relations.98 
Only in the context of a society’s current “social, political, and juridical” 
circumstances could a political ideal be fashioned.99

95 Leo XIII, Immortale Dei, paragraph 21.
96 Jacques Maritain, Man and the State, (Washington D.C.: Catholic University 

of America Press, 1951), Chapter III, 59-60.
97 Ibid Chapter VI, 159.
98 Ibid Chapter VI, 156.
99 Ibid Chapter VI, 156.



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 Maritain did not take this to mean that new political theories could 
be formulated without reference to the past. Rather, Maritain believed that 
a set of conditions, or “immutable principles,” had to be met for any theory 
of Church-State relations to be adequate.100 In this way, he could propose 
a new ideal relationship between Church and State while maintaining 
continuity with previous teaching. The immutable principles laid out by 
Maritain are threefold. First, the state must acknowledge that its end of 
temporal welfare is inferior to each individual person’s spiritual end and, 
consequently, is subordinate to the spiritual in dignity.101 Secondly, the 
Church, as the “Kingdom of God” on Earth, must be given the liberty to 
carry out its mission of teaching, preaching, and worshipping.102 Finally, 
as creatures that are both corporeal and spiritual, those who profess faith 
in the Church are simultaneously members of the Church as well as the 
body politic. Because of this, the “Church and the body politic cannot 
live and develop in sheer isolation…from one another.”103 Consequently, 
there must be some kind of cooperation between Church and State.104 

 Now, as Maritain suggests, let us contextualize our own time 
period with what Maritain considers to be our particular “historical 
climate.” For him, our age is a “secular” one, defined by the gradual 
rise of the state as completely differentiated and autonomous from the 
Church.105 Maritain sees this as a positive development that fully realizes 
the “Gospel’s very distinction between God’s and Caesar’s domains.”106 
This does not mean that the state must be irreligious or indifferent toward 
religion. Instead, it merely means that the state is “only concerned with 
the temporal life of men and their temporal common good.”107 As a 
faithful Thomist, however, Maritain believed man to be a unity of body 
and soul, and as such, he saw the good of each man as transcending his 
mere material conditions. For this reason, the state must provide for the 
fulfillment of the “higher ends of the human person” by “supervising the 
development of sound conditions and means in the body politic for good 
human life, both material and rational.”108 Unlike Locke, Maritain does 
not believe the state exists exclusively to secure a man’s “life, liberty, 
and estate.” Rather, the “common good” envisioned by Maritain is much 

100 Ibid Chapter VI,  157.
101  Ibid Chapter VI, 149-150.
102  Ibid Chapter VI, 151-152.
103  Ibid Chapter VI, 153.
104  Ibid Chapter VI, 154.
105  Ibid Chapter VI, 159.
106  Ibid Chapter VI, 159.
107  Ibid Chapter VI, 153.
108  Ibid Chapter VI, 173b.



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more comprehensive, encompassing both material interests as well as 
the spiritual good of each person. 

 But alas, as a secular institution, Maritain’s state does not confess 
faith in the Catholic religion in quite the way Leo XIII would have hoped. 
This is because such a state would respect what is acknowledged as man’s 
natural right to “free association” and to “believe the truth recognized 
by one’s conscience.”109 As such, the state would be prohibited from 
imposing a singular belief system or way of life on its citizenry. Instead, 
Maritain argues that the state must respect the open discussion of ideas 
and opinions, for “[f]reedom of inquiry, even at risk of error, is the normal 
condition for men to get access to the truth.”110 In this way, Maritain’s 
society bears a resemblance to the Lockean commonwealth, which is 
entirely unconcerned with the “truth of opinions.” Furthermore, both 
thinkers would agree that the state is “not equipped to deal with matters 
of intelligence”––or speculative opinions as Locke would call them.111 
Thus, neither Locke nor Maritain believe that opinions can be restricted 
purely for their moral quality.

 Maritain does, however, elevate the Church (and other churches) 
above the status of a mere voluntary association. Maritain’s state, 
rooted in the natural law, acknowledges the importance of collectively 
acknowledging faith in a lawgiver.112 Although this does not have to 
be done according to the Catholic Faith, such a state would have the 
right to grant institutional recognition and support to those “religious 
communities historically rooted in the life of the people.”113 Thus, full 
autonomy for Maritain is not synonymous with a complete lack of 
cooperation.

 Indeed, this model of governance intends to preserve the 
Church as a “perfect and perfectly independent society” fully capable of 
achieving its own ends.114 In Maritain’s view, when the Church is made 
independent from the state, it will be able to exercise its function more 
“purely.”115 In this way, Maritain’s “christianly inspired” democracy 
grants the Church the liberty it requires according to the three immutable 
principles mentioned earlier. The freedom to fulfill its mission will, in 

109  Ibid Chapter VI, 150.
110  Ibid Chapter VI, 162.
111  Ibid Chapter V, 118.
112  Ibid Chapter VI, 172-173.
113  Ibid Chapter VI, 174.
114  Ibid Chapter VI, 175.
115  Ibid Chapter VI, 169.



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turn, inspire and rejuvenate the faithful, who will then influence all 
the states of the world through their universal and pervasive influence 
(which, in Maritain’s view, provides for the spiritual superiority of the 
Church).116 Finally, Maritain’s state will achieve the immutable principle 
of cooperation by simply fulfilling its own proper end effectively.117 
As we have shown before, Maritain believes that the “common good” 
that the state strives for aims to secure our “higher ends” as well as our 
material interests. Therefore, just as grace builds on nature, Maritain is 
proposing that what the state owes to the Church is a well-formed and 
cultivated citizenry. Thus, in showing us how this arrangement satisfied 
all three of his immutable principles, Maritain is optimistic about the 
Church’s ability to carry out its mission within a pluralistic society. 

§ 4: AUTONOMY IN PRACTICE:
 By now, we have discussed two theories of secular democracy. 
While both posit a kind of autonomy between Church and State, their 
intentions are radically different. Locke’s theory aims to reduce the 
Church to the status of a voluntary association, subject to the state’s 
coercive correction if they are deemed subversive to the values of a 
liberal society. Maritain’s theory, on the other hand, seeks to liberate the 
Church from cumbersome political concerns, allowing it to conduct its 
mission in the freest sense possible. As this paper draws to a close, we 
will be testing the strength of these theories by investigating which end 
secular society is more capable of achieving. 

 To begin, let us return to a point in Maritain’s argument which 
may give pause to contemporary readers: the idea that the Church and 
State must “cooperate” with one another. As was made clear, Maritain 
does not take this to mean that the state must conspire on behalf of a 
singular religious institution. If, however, the Church is regarded as a 
“supreme and sovereign” authority over matters of faith and morals (as 
Maritain would have it), it becomes hard to see how civil governments 
could act independently of the Church’s directives.118 Conversely, if the 
Church is not viewed as “supreme and sovereign,” it becomes challenging 
to distinguish it from any other kind of voluntary association.

 This very criticism was made cogently by a philosopher named 
Gregory Vlastos. A contemporary of Maritain’s, he too greatly admired 

116  Ibid Chapter VI, 164.
117  Ibid Chapter VI, 178.
118  Ibid. Chapter VI, 185.



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the secularization and democratization of civil society. Although he 
believed that there was much to be commended within Maritain’s book, 
he was utterly dismayed by Maritain’s conception of Church and state. 
He questioned whether the Church could exercise her full authority 
without “infringing on the ‘full autonomy’ of civil society.”119 Whereas 
Maritain was optimistic about society’s ability to separate “God and 
Caesar,” Vlastos noted that if the Church were to maintain its claim of 
absolute authority over matters of morality, its jurisdiction would have 
to include the temporal welfare of society. After all, peace, justice, and 
human flourishing are all moral goods.120 This very idea is explicitly 
maintained within the encyclicals of Catholic social teaching, such as 
when Pope Pius XI proclaimed that “social” and “economic activities” 
belong underneath the Church’s “supreme jurisdiction.”121 Such claims 
about the nature of papal authority make a neat division between 
“secular” and “spiritual” matters impossible.

 Vlastos went on to argue that if the pope can authoritatively 
interpret and apply the natural law, he would then also possess the 
power to render the laws of sovereign nations illegitimate.122 In making 
this claim, he employs Maritain’s own Thomistic belief that an “unjust 
law, even if it expresses the will of the people, is not law.”123 Thus, 
if members of the Church “were so instructed by the [pope] as to 
understand that a given law of their state…goes ‘against the laws and 
dictates of nature,’ they would be conscience-bound to hold that it is not 
a law.”124 His argument can be restated more simply in the following 
syllogism: if an unjust law is no law at all, and the pope has the authority 
to determine whether a law is unjust, he therefore also has the authority 
to render democratically-instituted laws illicit. If the pope reserves 
the right to nullify the legitimacy of state law, then, theoretically, the 
legitimacy of political activity hinges upon the tacit or explicit approval 
of ecclesiastical authority. Consequently, democratic governments 
possess moral authority over Catholics only to the extent permitted 
by the Church. Thus, the state would only appear autonomous when, 

119  Gregory Vlastos, “Of Sovereignty in Church and State.” The Philosophical 
Review 62, no. 4 (1953): 575-576. https://doi.org/10.2307/2182462.

120  Ibid 569.
121  Pope Pius XI, Quadragesimo Anno, encyclical letter, May 15, 1931, para. 

41, accessed November 27, 2024, https://www.vatican.va/content/pius-xi/
en/encyclicals/documents/hf_p-xi_enc_19310515_quadragesimo-anno.
html.

122  Vlastos, “Of Sovereignty in Church and State,” 570.
123  Jacques Maritain, Man and the State, Chapter II, 48.
124  Vlastos, “Of Sovereignty in Church and State,” 570.



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in actuality, the validity of its activities would depend on the moral 
directives of the Church.

 This is why Locke cautioned against permitting religions that 
“deliver” their members “up to the Protection and Service of another 
Prince.” In such cases, citizens could not only face spiritual penalties for 
obeying secular laws, but might also feel morally obligated to enforce 
their denomination’s moral teaching through legislation. If this were to 
occur, Vlastos argued, then the Church would threaten the autonomy 
of the state and “cease to be a voluntary association.”125 In Lockean 
fashion, Vlastos prioritizes the conditions that enable religious pluralism 
over any particular church’s right to adhere to the fullness of their faith.

 One point I hope is clear by now is the challenge of maintaining 
that the Church and state can operate in entirely separate spheres of 
jurisdictional authority without ever infringing on one another. To return 
to the dilemma that we presented at the beginning of this section, if the 
authority of the Church is to be regarded as “supreme and sovereign” 
over matters of faith and morals, then the otherwise legitimate functions 
of a democratic and pluralistic state cannot be truly autonomous from the 
moral judgements of the Church. What is considered to be the Church’s 
proper sphere of influence (faith and morals) too frequently intersects 
with political and social matters for this to be possible. 

 Within Maritain’s framework of mutual autonomy, one can 
certainly imagine functions which would be more appropriate for one 
entity or the other. No pope, as far as I am aware, has ever made a ruckus 
over the decisions a political body has made regarding their own traffic 
laws. It is those matters where faith, morals, and politics intersect that 
present more complex challenges. The debates surrounding the legality 
of abortion, same-sex marriage, and euthanasia, for example, have all 
been highly-politicized issues on which the Church has taken strong 
stances. In these instances where the teaching of the Church might 
conflict with the enactments of a sovereign nation, the question shifts 
from determining which entity has authority over the issue to deciding 
whose authority takes precedence. 

 Up to this point, we have been considering a hypothetical in 
which the members of the body politic recognize the moral authority 
of the Church. In our own day, however, the general public is far more 
likely to acknowledge and comply with the coercive power of the state 

125  Vlastos, “Of Sovereignty in Church and State,” 574.



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than the directives of any one church or religious congregation. There are 
certainly many whose political opinions are influenced by their religious 
convictions, but governments in Western nations generally do not allow 
objections from clergy to prevent them from implementing duly-enacted 
laws. Thus, in practice, it certainly seems as if most Western nations 
recognize the state’s authority over the Church whenever they encounter 
these “mixed” matters. 

 Maritain himself knew full well that the state was no 
longer beholden to the Church’s bidding––in fact, he celebrated 
this development. He never seemed to anticipate, however, that the 
secularization of society would correspond with the waning influence of 
religion. Instead, as we have covered, he believed that the separation of 
Church and state would lead to the Church being able to conduct itself 
more “purely” and “in a completely free and autonomous manner.”126 
In doing so, the Church would exercise a “vivifying” influence on the 
body politic, influencing the affairs of state through the activity of its 
laypeople rather than the demands of the clergy.127 

 It is abundantly clear to us today that this arrangement has not 
come to pass. The different Christian churches certainly still have a right 
to congregate and worship according to their particular doctrines, but 
beyond that, their ability to influence and change public opinion has only 
decreased. This is because, as Thomas Pink noted, when a society no 
longer feels obligated to acknowledge the truth of a particular religion, 
it simultaneously ceases to promote religion in general as a distinctive 
and transcendent good. In his words, “[i]t seems that unless the truth 
of supernatural revelation is accepted, there is simply no reason for 
denying the state the same authority over religion as over other natural 
goods.”128 As a result, the state then “seeks to direct religion, but 
without recognizing religion as a distinctive natural good, assimilating 
it instead…as one among many forms of subjectively fulfilling personal 
commitments, like a sport or a hobby.”129 

 In other words, when the Church is not publicly recognized by 
the state as having a supernatural character that distinguishes it from all 
the other denominations claiming the same status, the Church is reduced 

126  Jacques Maritain, Man and the State, Chapter VI, 163.
127  Ibid 162.
128  Thomas Pink, “Jacques Maritain and the Problem of Church and State,” 

The Thomist: A Speculative Quarterly Review 79, no. 1 (January 2015): pg. 
29.

129  Ibid 29.



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to a mere voluntary association of the Lockean variety. As such, the 
state has the same sort of jurisdiction that it would over other voluntary 
associations. To name just one example, were churches considered 
“essential services” during the 2020 lockdowns? Or were their activities 
restricted in the same way restaurants and gyms were? The answer to 
this question indicates that contemporary society has joined Locke in 
seeing no substantive distinction between religious congregations and 
secular associations. Far from what Maritain had hoped for, the process 
of secularization has not promoted the idea that religion is “essential” to 
fulfilling the ends of a human person. Instead, it has only lent itself to the 
Lockean view of Church-State relations.

§ 5: CONCLUSION
 Allow me to now make explicit what I have merely been 
suggesting; Locke, in his theory of Church and State, presents a much 
more realistic vision of the kind of relationship these two entities can 
maintain in a secular society. The conflict between Church and state 
arises in their competing claims of ultimate authority–– with the Church 
asserting authority over faith and morals and the state asserting authority 
over the political common good. Maritain argues that, in our secular 
era, the Church and state can remain simultaneously autonomous and 
sovereign within their respective spheres, and that this arrangement is 
ordered toward the benefit of both. This argument, however, presupposes 
that the jurisdictions of Church and state never overlap; otherwise, one 
authority would inevitably be subordinated to the other. As we have 
shown, however, there are plenty of “mixed matters” in which both 
entities can legitimately claim stake. 

 Furthermore, Maritain attributes to the Church no special power 
or privilege that would indicate that the Church would take priority over 
these “mixed matters.” Because of Maritain’s sincere belief in intellectual 
pluralism, his theory offers the Church no means for enforcing its vision 
of the common good. Although he personally believes in the truth of the 
Catholic religion, his ideal state would allow each man to pursue the 
“truth recognized by one’s [own] conscience.”130 Locke’s theory, on the 
other hand, provides the theoretical justification for censoring those who 
subvert the purpose of the liberal state. In the Lockean commonwealth, 
the magistrate is given full authority to censor those “practical opinions” 
which endanger men’s liberty. Maritain has no such provision to regulate 

130  Ibid Chapter VI, 150.



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those who would subvert his “christianly inspired” state. For a believer 
such as Maritain, the Church may be the kingdom of Heaven on Earth. 
As Locke would say, however, “every Church is Orthodox to itself.”131 

 As both Vlastos and Pink show, I am not the first one to point out 
some of the vulnerabilities in Maritain’s theory. Both authors correctly 
point out that the Church cannot exercise the rights it has traditionally 
claimed for itself within the context of a liberal, pluralistic state. My 
intention in this paper, however, was not merely to identify these areas 
of tension. Rather, I wanted to contextualize this ongoing discussion by 
digging deeper into the theoretical framework which gave rise to the 
secular state. In doing so, I hoped to show how Locke’s theory of a 
liberal society (as well as secular society as it has unfolded) is designed 
to be insulated from the influence of any one, particular denomination. 
Although Maritain offers an alternative theory of secular democracy, the 
fruits of history have shown that the intended consequences of Locke’s 
theory were far more plausible.

131  John Locke, A Letter Concerning Toleration, 33.



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Locke, John. A Letter Concerning Toleration. Edited by James H. Tully. 
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