The article offers thorough analysis of the church’s, the state’s and society’s interaction and contention that have determined the present, predominatingly secular, nature of modern western states. Retracing the evolution of the interrelations of the church and the secular power since the period of Christianity’s having become official religion, the author demonstrates that the problem of the West-Christian world has consisted in its not having managed to rise to real — even if conflict-harbouring — equilibrium of the spiritual and the secular powers. Great attention is given in the article to power secularization which is interpreted by the author not so much in the sense of separation of power from the church as in the sense of separation of the church from society, and to the question of the church’s perception of modern secular state. According to the author’s conclusion, although the question of correlation of the state and the church hasn’t in recent decades been being raised in the catholic world, Vatican is far from having reconciled itself to its today’s role and has not renounced its claim to changing the relations between the church and the state “as more favourable times set in”.