What is the distinct end or purpose of each society?
The Church and the State are a complement to each other in view of man’s supernatural and temporal welfare: “This last difference between the two societies, based upon their respective ends, undoubtedly excludes that violent subjection of the Church to the State…But it does not exclude every kind of union between the two societies…Such a view would…leave out of consideration the fact that the Church and the State both have their origin in God and that both are concerned with the same subject – human beings…All this could not and did not escape the attention of Pope Leo XIII when, in his encyclical Immortale Dei…he defined clearly the limits of the two societies in terms of their ends, observing that the proximate and special end of the State is to care for man’s earthly prosperity, while that of the Church is to procure their heavenly and eternal welfare.” (Pius XII, Allocution to the Roman Rota, October 29, 1947)
