The things we do!

-- For these are societies, administrations,
and hierarchies, and no society, administration, or hierarchy may
exist in the State without entering into its ---departments under
the title of subordinate, delegate, or employee. A priest is now
essentially a salaried officer like the rest, a functionary[71]
presiding over matters pertaining to worship and morality. If the
State is disposed to change the number, the mode of nomination, the
duties and the posts of its engineers, it is not bound to assemble
its engineers and ask their permission, least of all that of a
foreign engineer established at Rome. If it wishes to change the
condition of "its ecclesiastical officers," its right to do so is
the same, and therefore unquestioned. There is no need of asking
anybody's consent in the exercise of this right, and it allows no
interference between it and its clerks. The Assembly refuses to
call a Gallican council; it refuses to negotiate with the Pope, and,
on its own authority alone, it recasts the whole Constitution of the
Church.


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