Civil Authority Quotes

While the Church exhorts civil authorities to seek peace, not war, and to exercise discretion and mercy in imposing punishment on criminals, it may still be permissible to take up arms to repel an aggressor or to have recourse to capital punishment. There may be a legitimate diversity of opinion even among Catholics about waging war and applying the death penalty, but not however with regard to abortion and euthanasia.

Rulers come and go. It's the people who are the real rulers of the country.

To think that a Catholic bishop must answer to a civil authority over matters of faith is abominable. It is abhorrent to me, to other Catholics, and to every member of every faith community.

Secularization is the process by which certain responsibilities pass from ecclesiastical to political authorities.

That the people have a right to bear arms, for the defense of themselves and the State: and as standing armies, in the time of peace, are dangerous to liberty, they ought not to be kept up; and that the military should be kept under strict subordination to, and governed by the civil power

It is an insult to reason and the laws to pronounce the words, 'Civil and Ecclesiastical Government.' … no regulation should be made save by the civil power.

All of us know that if an individual, a community, or a state is going continuously and successfully to defy the rulings of the courts, then anarchy results.

The Military shall be subordinate to the Civil authority

The military power shall always be held in exact subordination to the civil authority, and be governed by it.

The Holy Ghost carries on the whole Christian system in this earth. Not a Baptism, not a Marriage, not a Sacrament can be administered but by the Holy Ghost... There is no Authority civil or religious: there can be no legitimate Government but what is administered by this Holy Ghost. There can be no salvation without it. All, without it is Rebellion and Perdition, or in more orthodox words Damnation.

Unquestionably a military government, established as the permanent government for the State, would not be a republican government, and it would be the duty of Congress to overthrow it. But the law of Rhode Island evidently contemplated no such government. It was intended merely for the crisis, and to meet the peril in which the existing government was placed by the armed resistance to its authority. It was so understood and construed by the State authorities. And unquestionably a State may use its military power to put down an armed insurrection too strong to be controlled by the civil authority. The power is essential to the existence of every government, essential to the preservation of order and free institutions, and is as necessary to the States of this Union as to any other government. The State itself must determine what degree of three the crisis demands.

The Bible says you should keep the Sabbath day holy. Well, in the Bible the penalty for not doing so is death. We don't go that far. We just give you a summons.

Baptists are very strong believers that the civil magistrate is ordained by God to punish those who do evil.

Nor can We predict happier times for religion and government from the plans of those who desire vehemently to separate the Church from the state, and to break the mutual concord between temporal authority and the priesthood. It is certain that that concord which always was favorable and beneficial for the sacred and the civil order is feared by the shameless lovers of liberty.

So the question is, First, Whether the civil magistrate hath power to force men in things religious to do contrary to their conscience, and if they will not to punish them in their goods, liberties, or lives? this we hold in the negative.

The union of Church and State is not to make the Church political, but the State religious.

God's institutions (such as the government of church and of commonwealth be) may be close and compact, and co-ordinate one to another, and yet not confounded.

… the all-pervading influence of clericalism rendered good government well-nigh impossible. Under its influence the colonial organizations consisted of sundry independent jurisdictions, incompatible with the preservation of order in any community …. There was the church establishment with its bishop or archbishop, in no way subordinate to the civil power. There were the various regular orders, -- Franciscans, Dominicans, Augustinians, Jesuits, etc., -- bitterly jealous of one another and prompt to quarrel, exempt from episcopal jurisdiction, and subject only to their respective superiors or to the Pope

… from the time of the Mosaic revelation through to the final collapse of Jewish sovereignty, God’s people observed no distinction between civil and religious law.

Marriage should be viewed as an institution ordained by God and should be out of the control of the state.

The First Amendment’s purpose was to create a complete and permanent separation of the spheres of religious activity and civil authority by comprehensively forbidding every form of public aid or support for religion.

There can be no liberty where the military is not subordinate to the civil power.

The Parish makes the constable, and when the constable is made, he governs the Parish.

Every one must act according to the dictates of his own reason, and mine tells me that civil powers alone have been given to the President of the United States, and no authority to direct the religious exercises of his constituents.

No minister of the gospel, or priest of any denomination whatsoever, shall, at any time hereafter, under any presence or description whatever, be eligible to, or capable of holding, any civil or military office or place within this State.