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I saw some statements against the temporal power of the Sovereign Pontiff on the Malachi Martin thread and decided to start a new thread so that that one did not get too far off-topic.

I have never read anything by Fr Malachi Martin and do not have strong opinions about him one way or another.  I thought it was unfair when it was assumed that his conversion was not genuine, but I also am shocked by some of his statements after his avowed conversion.  Do not let the impression that I have strong opinions about Malachi Martin detract from my real purpose, which is to discuss the temporal power of the Roman Pontiff, to which apparently Fr Martin was hostile (this does sway my opinion, of course).

Temporal authority is different from moral authority.

That's a bit simplistic, don't you think ?

He wasn't fond of politicking priests like Robt. Drinan for one.

Fr Drinan was a pro-abortion left-wing apparatchik.  It's rather ridiculous that you would bring him up in the context of the Papal States and the Risorgimento, given the historical background regarding the Papal States going all the way back to Pepin le Bref, not to mention the role of the Pontiffs in Rome since the trials of Late Antiquity and the movement of the imperial Roman capital to Milan and then Constantinople left the Pope with so much benign power in Rome and its environs.  Perhaps you don't quite understand the issue, since you seem to be pretty nonchalant about the scandalous loss of the temporal power of the Sovereign Pontiffs.

I believe he thought the ideal was the state was separate but subordinate on moral issues to the Church. He didn't think the Church was Divinely empowered to automatically know the best tax policy or sewage treatment or policing tactics.

This is just disingenuousness on your part.  I find it hard to believe that you think that the practical separation of Church and State, rather than the integral reign of Christ the King over all societies, is roughly equivalent to thinking that the Holy Father simply isn't qualified to give advice on sewage treatment and policing tactics.  Obedience to the Holy See in matters of morals would include obedience to the Holy See in matters of Canon Law and matters of Faith, since divorce and noncanonical marriages, as well as the suppression of heretics, both pertain to Christian morality.  How would a "morally subject but otherwise separated from the Church" civil power deal with a Protestant couple wanted to marry but whose case suffered from a diriment impediment ?  There is the Kingship of Christ, which entails a solid relationship between Church and State and the active promotion of Christianity by the civil authority, or the civil power is simply rebelling from Christ.

If Fr Martin honestly believed that the issue was so simple as "separation except in moral questions," and if you, too, believed the same thing, then what objection would either of you have to Dignitatis Humanae and the subsequent teaching on religious liberty and human rights ?

His reading of history seems to indicate that the papal states weren't particularly well run and the people were very unhappy and the secular world lashed out to deprive the papacy of its temporal power and not without some justification due to the damage done by Popes from Pius VIII through Gregory XVi.

What was wrong with what Pius VIII and Gregory XVI had done ?  Do you know the nature of the complaints against them, particularly the complaints against Gregory XVI's Secretary of State, the great Cardinal Luigi Lambruschini ?  I don't think you should be so forgiving of Fr Martin's claims that defame these good Popes and their holy curial officials when you could, instead, give the benefit of the doubt to the Pontiffs and their efforts to save Rome and the people of the Pontifical States from the Revolution.

The idea that the people were very unhappy in the Papal States and that the saecular world deprived the Papacy of its temporal power with some justification belies the fact that those who complained the most were liberals and avaricious businessmen who wanted trains and gas-lamps and modern industry and public infrastructure, as well as people who were angry over the amount of political criminals imprisoned within the Papal States during a generation of metasticising liberalism.  The standard of "well-governed" assumes that the liberal nation-state and modern infrastructure and amenities are good and beneficial.  If anything, the saecular world should have lamented their impiety, which led to their application of revolutionary infrastructural solutions rather than creative and virtuous ones.  The ancient Romans and Persians were able to accomplish incredible feats of engineering and transportation that didn't upset the social order.  If the lukewarm or outright anti-Christ governments of Europe during those decades were not actively pursuing industrialisation and social disruption and disorder, perhaps the Papal States would not have been so isolated and the issue would never have arisen.

Shame on those who try to simplify the issue and blame the victims for the crimes of international Judaeo-Masonry !

Fr. Martin believed the only lasting power the papacy had was the power it received from Jesus Himself.  He thought Pius IX saw it all coming and his trump card was Vatican I and papal infalliblity.  Something the secular world would not be capable of taking away.

The Church teaches that the temporal power is rooted in the Gospel itself, not simply from the Donation of Pepin.  The possession of the Pontifical States was rooted in the Donation of Pepin, but the temporal power of the Holy See is from Our Lord Jesus Christ.

Gerard, you need to understand that liberal propaganda greatly exaggerated the evils of the governance of the Papal states.

The technique of carrying out propaganda campaigns against governments, the way we see today, is not something that came out of a vacuum.  The Papal states were hated by the media controllers of that century.  Just as the government of the Czars was hated.

I'm not going to say the Papal states were particularly well-run.  However, as with the Spanish cινιℓ ωαr, one has to examine the sources one is dealing with when one discusses this topic.  They are overwhelmingly heavily biased against the Papacy.

It seems the papal states were a constant target and the Pope often had to call on the European countries to provide blood and treasure to defend it.  I say this only as a superficial observation and stand for correction, but it really reminds me of the modern state of Israel.

That's really a crazy way to look at it.

The independence of the Papal states had a great importance in keeping the Church free from external coercion.  Freemasons and later Communists of the 19th early 20th Century were constantly agitating for subjugation and even the destruction of the Catholic Church.

The Pope was always imperiled by the the Kingdom of Italy - it was only the balance of power and the existence of Catholic Austria Hungary that offered any serious protection to the Papacy.  Indeed, I think a case can be made that the freemasons who conspired to unleash WWI were in significant part motivated by a desire to crush the Church.  Under Mussolini the Papacy in Rome again had some degree of security.

The virtual partition of the world between Anglo-Americans and the Soviets at the end of WWII is one of the main political causes for Vatican II.

A Pope (or antipope) like Paul VI was elected, the papal Tiara presented to the UN, because of that.