The greatest enemy to the Church is an unrestrained State. But the State has power only as people give it. In other words, the level of State power is inversely proportional to the level of public and private virtue exercised by the people. Edmund Burke once wrote, “Society cannot exist unless a controlling power upon will and appetite be placed somewhere, and the less of it there is within, the more there must be without.”
Society must exist, and either the people will maintain the peace through voluntary associations which promote Virtue, beginning with the Family, or the State will step in to maintain the Peace, but at the expense of liberty. The family fails at the cost of liberty. Christopher Dawson pointed out, “If…marriage is transformed into a temporary arrangement for the satisfaction of the sexual impulse and for mutual companionship, which is not intended to create a permanent social unit, it is clear that the family loses its social and economic importance and that the state will take its place as the guardian and educator of children.”
In such a society, the purpose of the State, being jealous of its power, will then be to inculcate in the youngest generations a loyalty to the State against all other associations. Children will be taught that the Church is useless, and the Family is outdated and oppressive. The Family is the primary bulwark against State aggression toward the Church, and so long as the Family is maintained, the Church will stand. But the State, if left unrestrained, will bring all its resources to bear to eliminate its opponents.
A free and enduring society can only exist where the Family, the Church, and the State peaceably coexist in a balance of powers, each recognizing the others’ roles, and their own limits on power; not simply checking the others against usurpation, but actually promoting their influence in society. A society like this would justly be called near to the Kingdom of God.