ncorporate to him; but in it alone was
omnipotence vested. According to canon law, omnipotence was vested
solely in God; it is not the Catholic community which possesses this and
delegates it to the Pope;[5341] his rights accrue to him from another
and higher source.[5342] He is not the elect of the people, but the
interpreter, vicar and representative of Jesus Christ.

III. The Church today.

Existing Catholicism and its distinctive traits.--Authority,
its prestige and supports.--Rites, the priest, the Pope.
--The Catholic Church and the modern State.--Difficulties in
France born out of their respective constitutions.--

Such is the Catholic Church of to-day, a State constructed after the
type of the old Roman empire, independent and autonomous, monarchical
and centralized, with a domain not of territory but of souls and
therefore international, under an absolute and cosmopolite sovereign
whose subjects are simultaneously subjects of other non-religious
rulers. Hence, for the Catholic Church a situation apart in every
country, more difficult than for Greek, Slavic or Protestant churches;
these difficulties vary in each country according to the character of
the State and with the form which the Catholic Church has received in
them.[5343] In France, since the Concordat, these difficulties are of
greater gravity than elsewhere.

When, in 1802, the Church initially received her French form, this was
a complete systematic organization, after a general and regular plan,
according to which she formed only one compartment of the whole.
Napoleon, by his Concordat, organic articles and ulterior decrees,
in conformity with the ideas of the century and the principles of the
Constituent Assembly, desired to render the clergy of all kinds,
and especially the Catholic clergy, one of the subdivisions of his
administrative staff, a corps of functionaries, mere agents assigned
to religious interests as formerly to civil matters and therefore
manageable and revocable. This they all were, in fact, including the
bishops, since they at once tendered their resignations at his
order. Still, at the present day all, except the bishops, are in
this situation, having lost the ownership of their places and the
independence of their lives, through the maintenance of the consular and
imperial institutions, through removal, through the destruction of
the canonical and civil guarantees which formerly protected the
lower