Not according to the fleeting exigencies of the day, not according to the counsel of erring hours – no, gentlemen, according to the eternal principles of justice, according to the unvarying aims of the history of a people, and according to the stars which the Church of God sets up for the tribes of humanity through history as a sign for their great, wide walkway and which radiates its guiding light down into the conscience of every human being – [that is how] the Catholic conducts politics. And these politics, about which admittedly the cabinets and the princes and the halls of the legislative assemblies hear but very little, I shall carry into the Catholic associations and would like to gather the diverging convictions of my brethren around it. And if I were not to do this with conviction about the fruits, about the necessity of this action, I could not answer to my conscience, not to the great Fatherland, not to my Church and the eternal God.
Actually, it seems to me that there are major misunderstandings about the participation of the Catholic associations in politics, however, these prevail more in the teachings than in life. The life of the nation, the life of the individual does not lend itself to demarcation. Who can show me the boundary where the Christian stops and the patriot starts, I believe instead that both fit together. (Bravo) Therefore we must accept transitions, abandoning the principle does not help us, instead what matters is its practical application. Even the minority is partly in favor of incorporating political questions, only it wants to see that these are limited by the words "immediate" and "purely political." It [the minority] is only looking at participating in political questions that relate immediately to the Church; naturally, this eliminates every purely political question.
It is self-evident that clerical freedom, the autonomy of clerical corporations, independent administration of wealth etc. are questions immediately connected to the Church. Only, I shall go further: I count even those political questions that are indirectly related to Catholic aims as part of the sphere of activity of the Catholic associations. Practical reason knows with considerable certainty how to find the boundary, how far this "immediate" can be extended. But this boundary can even be found through doctrine, for it establishes the principle that all political rights which are either exclusively means for achieving purely church-related aims or just partly means for achieving freedom for the church are, along with those rights purely relating to the church, indirectly connected with the church. Attaining these rights and liberties therefore properly belongs to the activity of the Pius Associations. Whoever wants the goal must also want its exclusive means.
Do you really believe it would be enough for the constitution to guarantee the independence of the Catholic Church? The independence of the Church rests on the freedom of the church corporations. But this is only secured when all corporations are free. It is therefore this purely political freedom, which merely has an indirect relationship with the Church, that is necessary for the maintenance of clerical freedom. One may ask: What does freedom of the church have to do with a free provincial and local government constitution? Freedom of the church has lots to do with it, since schools are constitutionally in the hands of local government, and when the local bylaws are bad, schools will be bad as well. It has just as much to do with the provincial constitution, since its greatest enemy is bureaucracy; this needs to be reined in by autonomous provincial administrations. In these provinces there are a number of clerical foundations; they are all under the guardianship of bureaucracy, and many have gone lost in their hands. (Bravo) But a free constitution will pluck each one out of the clutches [of bureaucracy] (Bravo) and force control to be yielded back to the foundations.
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