Drawing on the Catholic Church's self-understanding as a complete, self-sufficient (in the Aristotelian sense, "perfect") society, Not to Caesar but to Peter explains how the Catholic Church's claimed legal authority provides a stable basis for religious liberty in civil law. If the Church were to remember this traditional claim of her legal authority, she could improve U.S. law's commitment to protecting religious liberty for religious institutions and communities. In so doing, the Church can both grow in American life and, by being who she truly is, respond to common misunderstandings about the proper relationship between the Catholic Church and the state that threaten her presence in public life-ranging from those who see the Church as just another social club in civil society, to those who treat the Church as an instrument of power that should be "integrated" with the state "from within."
