In 1870, the Kingdom of Italy defeated the Papal States and ended over a millennium of direct Papal rule over Rome and most of central Italy. This conflict was watched closely by Fyodor Dostoevsky, and would go a long way to inspiring his idea of the relationship between Church and State. Being devoutly Eastern Orthodox himself, Dostoevsky was of course somewhat partial against the Western Church, and saw the Papal States as desperately trying to cling on to Earthly authority, which likely inspired the Church-State dystopia presented in The Grand Inquisitor. However, to take the simplistic reading that Dostoevsky is advocating against any temporal power for Christians would be inaccurate. Dostoevsky's view could, in fact, be seen as vastly more extreme than the rulers of the Papal Kingdom ever envisioned. As Ivan and Zossima outline during their discussion, the ideal scenario would be for the state to simply become the Church. To drag the Church into a decayed state would likely just corrupt the Church, as can be seen from most interactions between Catholic Bishops and our political system. Far from aiming for a religiously indifferent or relativistic state, our goal should be to transform the state into something as closely resembling the Church as possible, without forcing the Church into a position that it's not intended for.
Earthly Power
The Grand Inquisitor is fundamentally a message against those yearning for easy faith. The Inquisitor has seemingly converted the whole world to Catholicism, not through inspiring changes in their hearts, minds, and souls, but through physical authority, bribery, and sensory proofs in the form of miracles. Even without the direct involvement of the Church, it is tempting to feel that we should aspire to use state power for the sake of converting the masses to Catholicism, this seems to be a logical conclusion of Catholicism being the true faith. However, such an action would not produce genuine conversions, it would only take advantage of the natural tendency of the masses to follow the most authoritative figures in their society. It would clearly be wrong though to simply leave people cut adrift and just hope that they can make their way through the sea of evil and temptations that we see in our current society. Inevitably, most will drown without some guidance. As usual, St. Thomas provides an outline in reconciling these issues with his discussion of Human Law. He maintains that it's not the role of human law to repress all vices, but that evildoers need to be coerced towards good if they will not do so willingly, and that they need to be barred from harming others. When considering how laws need to be changed in our current society, St. Thomas provides a pertinent description of one form of unjust law:
"Laws may be unjust through being opposed to the Divine good: such are the laws of tyrants inducing to idolatry, or to anything else contrary to the Divine law: and laws of this kind must nowise be observed, because, as stated in Acts 5:29, "we ought to obey God rather than man." (Summa, 1, Q96, A4)
The question now is what laws in our society have contributed to inducing people towards sin and idolatry? Almost all of them, I would argue, down to the Constitution itself. Given the fact that almost all influential members of our society promote sin and idolatry on a regular basis, and that the point of human law is to stop evildoers from harming others, then it's clear that our current laws are woefully failing our society and deeply unjust. A key issue here appears to come from the state not aspiring towards the Church. Our state is mostly capable of stopping evildoers from physically harming others (BLM not withstanding), but it doesn't care an iota for the souls of these people, and is perfectly fine with the depraved and malicious sucking others into sin, whether for the sake of profit, or simply because misery loves company. This can be traced down to the First Amendment of the United States, which provides for the "freedom" of the press, of speech, and of religion. This acts as a protective shield for liars and manipulators in the press, charismatic supporters of sin, and those who promote heresy and blasphemy. Due to this "freedom," our society is now run by a cadre of people who engage in precisely all of these things. While we can maintain that it's not the responsibility of the state to end private vices, it is absolutely the responsibility of the state to remove things contrary to the Divine good from the public square and mainstream media, so that they cannot harm the souls of others. This includes all promotions of extra-marital sex and promiscuity, moral relativism, religious relativism, encouraging Whites to hate their racial family, abortion, contraception, and all things contrary to objective goodness. Influential people who have profited from promotion of these things should be jailed indefinitely, until it can be determined that they are no longer a threat to society. For some of the worst offenders, such as pornographers, media executives, or those facilitating the ethnic cleansing of native Europeans, their crimes may have been too significant, and it may be appropriate for them to face capital punishment.
The issue of other religions is delicate, but important. While it's probably unjust and unwise to forbid the practice of other religions, special consideration needs to be applied when it comes to those that are explicitly blasphemous towards Christ, such as Talmudic Judaism. The Fourth Lateran Council of the Catholic Church provides a useful guideline for how to handle this. It commanded that Jews where symbols of identification to distinguish themselves from Christians, and forbade Jews from holding positions of power over Christians. Taking this into account, it would be wise to disqualify Jews from all positions of power and influence. Along with that, following the example of St. Louis IX, the blasphemous Talmud should be completely outlawed.
A natural objection arises. Is it a good idea to advocate for such an intolerant and illiberal society, when this belief could potentially backfire and be used to justify further restrictions against Catholics by rival groups? While this is not an impossibility, we should not refrain from fighting evil because we are afraid that it will fight back. Jesus did not hold back from whipping the money changers in the temple because he feared how the Pharisees would respond. As St. Thomas quotes in the Summa regarding unjust laws, "This is thankworthy, if for conscience . . . a man endures sorrows, suffering wrongfully." (1 Peter 2:19).
Prosperity, Not Prosperity Gospel
The next way in which the Inquisitor brings people to Catholicism is through the Church-State providing for their material prosperity. It's well known how a strong economy creates a popular President, and the Grand Inquisitor simply applies that to the Church. Unfortunately, in much the same way that those who vote based on economic conditions lack ideological principles, those who follow a religion because it makes them wealthy lack actual faith. The role of the Church is to provide for spiritual needs, not material ones. That being said, the Church also emphasizes the value of caring for the poor materially, so it would be unwise to totally discount the role of material well-being in society. The distinction, however, is that the state should provide material goods for the sake of bringing about greater spiritual goods for its citizens, goods that will hopefully lead them to the faith. The state should not aim to increase material wealth as a goal in and of itself, or as a way of bribing people into Catholicism.
In Aristotle's view, wealth is only good as a means to an end. While being wealthy isn't inherently good, being generous is, and a wealthy person is capable of more generosity than a poor person. In the same sense, we should not seek to redistribute wealth simply for the sake of material equality, as a socialist would suggest. We should distribute wealth with the goal of ensuring wide access to spiritual goods, such as the ability to raise a family. Two of the core economic issues of our time are the skyrocketed price of home ownership and inability of the state to fund Social Security/Medicare due to low birth rates. While a low birth rate is a critical economic problem, it also signifies that a significant portion of the population is either unable or unwilling to experience the vocation of marriage and family life, the only valid one outside of being consecrated. Our economic policy should be geared towards ensuring that the path to family life is both eased and encouraged. As an example, there's a clear issue with the fact that those with two incomes and no children (or one child) are frequently the ones who live in enormous houses, as they have plenty of capital freed up thanks to their prioritizing of careers over family, and the savings they have from not supporting children. This is damaging to their own spiritual well-being, and also to those who do chose the right path but have to financially compete with them for housing. It would be just for these people, as well as retirees, to be restricted in the extravagance of their housing, so that construction could be freed up to build homes for young families who actually need them. As one potential suggestion for how to enact this, couples could list their intended family size on their mortgage application, and those intending a large family could have their mortgage interest waived, assuming they follow through with their promise. This would serve the dual purpose of combating usury as well.
Bread, Circuses, and the Miraculous
There is an innate desire in believers to see confirmation of their faith, usually in the form of miraculous events. However, the reason God has made these events so rare is that such obvious, sensory confirmation of the divine can take away the need for faith. No one needs to have faith that the sky is blue, faith is about trusting in the existence of that which you cannot directly see. The Inquisitor appeals to this desire in people with supposed miracles that are presumably fake, as another way of making their belief in the Church easy. Alyosha himself suffers from this when his faith is shaken by the early decay of Father Zossima's corpse, when he was expecting miraculous incorruption. Alyosha did not, at the time, realize that a miracle is a gift from God, not something that should just be expected.
Spectacle and fantasy have come to assume a central role in our society. As people in a secular world struggle to have faith in a genuine divine, they have retreated into other sources of the apparently supernatural that require no faith, and simply require them to sit back and watch. The most obvious example of this is Marvel movies, and also the immense significance people have begun to attach to their professional sports teams. Guiding culture is essential in creating a State that resembles the Church. The Church has historically been a patron of art that was both beautiful and reflected the genuine, real divine. Our culture should encourage people to reflect on the immense beauty that lies beyond their senses, not to retreat into a childish fantasy. In practice, this would mean restrictions on the creation of massively profitable but low quality and shallow entertainment forms, based on nothing more than spectacle. At one point in The Brothers Karamazov, Father Zossima relays the story of his own life. He tells of how he spitefully agitated a rival into a duel, but after realizing the shallow and petty nature of his action, he commits himself to monastic life, but still faces down the shot of his enemy, without firing his own. This act of moral courage over material existence inspires a murderer to finally confess to his own crime and face punishment. This story is deeply personal, invites us to reflect on our own morality, and does not require a reliance on special effects to captivate its audience. If a similar story were to take place in a Marvel movie, it would be primarily for the purpose of portraying the amazing moment when Iron Man liquidates his cartoonishly evil rival, in a fashion that ensures there could be no possible moral dilemma in any of his actions. He's the hero, after all! As difficult as it may be, we must strive to call the masses to something higher, rather than pacifying them with base spectacles.
The atheistic Ivan was likely intending his suggestion of the State-Church to be an ironical condemnation of the Church itself, and he later presents that condemnation with his story of the Grand Inquisitor. Despite that, Father Zossima sees a wisdom in Ivan's suggestion that he does not see himself. Zossima recognizes the distinction between a Church that aspires to be a state and a state that aspires to be the Church, and he strongly supports the latter. Zossima uses the example of how the state can only truly solve the issue of criminality by making the criminal recognize how his crime has cut him off from God. This foreshadows the struggle of Ivan and Smerdyakov, who were jointly responsible for their father's death. Ivan's guilt consumes him, and he has to literally face the devil before he can move towards repentance. Smerdyakov never accepts God, and commits suicide. If our current hostile regime ever falls, Catholics will need to rebuild an America that has long since been severed from God, and we must resist the temptation of ruling with the same cheap tricks that our current government uses to buy the loyalty of its populace. If our society is governed by immaterial, eternal, divine principles as opposed to the shallow and material principles of our "Founding Fathers", we may one day see the realization of a society that resembles the truth and beauty of our Church.