Dignitatis humanae

Dignitatis humanaeTemplate:EfnTemplate:Efn (Of the Dignity of the Human Person) is the Second Vatican Council's Declaration on Religious Freedom.<ref>The full text of a translation into English is available from the Holy See's website Template:Webarchive</ref> In the context of the council's stated intention "to develop the doctrine of recent popes on the inviolable rights of the human person and the constitutional order of society", Dignitatis humanae spells out the church's support for the protection of religious liberty. It set the ground rules by which the church would relate to secular states.

The passage of this measure by a vote of 2,308 to 70 is considered by many to be one of the most significant events of the council.<ref>"Thus, during the final vote on the morning of December 7 (when the fathers had to choose between a simple approval or disapproval of the last draft), Lefebvre was one of the 70 — about 3 percent of the total — who voted against the schema." Marcel Lefebvre: Signatory to Dignitatis humanae, by Brian Harrison</ref> This declaration was promulgated by Pope Paul VI on December 7, 1965.

Dignitatis humanae became one of the key points of dispute between the Vatican and traditionalist Catholics such as Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre who argued that the council document was incompatible with previous authoritatively stated Catholic teaching.

Background

Earlier Catholic view

Historically, the ideal of Catholic political organization was a tightly interwoven structure of the Catholic Church and secular rulers generally known as Christendom, with the Catholic Church having a favoured place in the political structure.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> In 1520, Pope Leo X in the papal bull Exsurge Domine had censured the proposition "That heretics be burned is against the will of the Spirit" as one of a number of errors that were "either heretical, scandalous, false, offensive to pious ears, or seductive of simple minds and against Catholic truth".<ref>Template:Cite web</ref><ref>Template:Cite book</ref><ref>Template:Cite book</ref><ref>Template:Cite book</ref>

However, during the same period, the Catholic Church condemned the Regalist, Gallican and Caesaropapist heresies that aspired to a State, under the pretext of its Confessionality, with inherent rights to intervene in religious matters (such as the Conversion of people or the repression of Heresy) that were typically a protest of the ecclesiastical Jurisdiction. So, the Church rather defended the Augustinian and Thomist doctrine which stated that, only by concession of the Spiritual Power of the Papacy (considered of a higher order according to the Doctrine of the two swords), is that a Christian Government could use its Temporal Power in such matters, so that the civil Authority then could represses heresy or apostasy (if and only there was a just cause, something that only the Papacy could determine), but teaching as magisterial doctrine that it was not an inherent right of the State to be an institution with religious faculties, and therefore, the Church strongly condemned the Christian rulers who, during the European Wars of Religion, abused such concessions of the Church with the Patronato (or usurped the powers of the Catholic ecclesiastical Jurisdiction, as in the case of countries that embraced the Protestant Reformation and founded national Churches controlled by the State, such as the Anglican Church whose head was the King of England) in order to violate the rights of people who were not attached to the true Church, who according to the Holy See should be treated with compassion and called to correct themselves so that they return to Orthodoxy (not be brutally repressed without respect for a Presumption of innocence) while also condemning rulers who wanted to repress or ignore the rights of non-Christians, such as Muslims or Jews, who were not under the jurisdiction of Christians because they were in a different religious communion, and therefore even outside the jurisdiction of the Inquisition.<ref name=":0">https://isidore.co/misc/Res%20pro%20Deo/Nova%20et%20Vetera/The%20Interpretation%20of%20Dignitatis%20Humanae:%20A%20Reply%20to%20Martin%20Rhonheimer%20(Thomas%20Pink).pdf Template:Bare URL PDF</ref>

In short, the Church reserved for the Clergy the right to judge the religious conscience of souls to determine who was a Heretic and how to deal with them judicially (reserving the most severe penalties for repeat heretics or those who admitted to being apostates publicly), while the State did not have such Prerogatives by themselves, but by the grace of the true Church of Christ (the Holy See), which also did not consider it morally acceptable to interfere with the conscience of non-Christians that lacked of Baptism, these having to be respected in their condition as natural non-Christians (according to Jus gentium and Natural law) and to have the freedom to profess their religion among their communities (such as the Ghettos) as long as they do not proselytize what the Church understands as false religions whose expansion would endanger Salvation in Christianity (the Church then leaning towards defending Catholic Unity, which involved religious Uniformism at a political level, and so Catholic political supremacy in societies with a Catholic majority).

Late modern pre-Conciliar teaching

Following the French Revolution, the Papacy had found itself in a bitter clash against liberalism and revolutionary ideas: harsh anti-clerical measures such as the Civil Constitution of the Clergy had drawn harsh condemnation from the Holy See.<ref>Pope Pius VI, Quod aliquantum, 1791</ref> The Magisterium was particularly concerned with the rise of indifferentism and relativism and the ideas of religious pluralism and freedom of conscience were seen as expression of both and were strongly rejected by several Pontiffs.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref><ref>Template:Cite web</ref><ref>Template:Cite web</ref> Thus, the Catholic Church condemned religious freedom (as how was defined the concept by Liberal philosophy) as a heresy during the Papacy of Pius IX with the encyclical Quanta cura, and this condemnation was reaffirmed with the Syllabus of Errors (a compendium of heretical propositions condemned by the Magisterium of the Church). Both condemnations were a continuation of a long series of reactionary condemnations against the Modernist Heresy and Liberal Theology that had arisen since the end of the 18th Century, in which was relevant the opposition of the Church to the "philosophical innovations" of the Enlightenment (as well as to the secular States that emerged from the Atlantic Revolutions) under the argument that political Liberalism, through the right to Freedom of worship, encouraged religious Indifference and forced Secularization that violated the political duties of Catholic societies to defend religious practice and Christian values in the public sphere (reducing religious life to a purely private matter, which was considered to endanger Salvation in Christianity and would only lead to Dechristianization through an increase in non-practicing Catholics), as well as for violating the socio-political rights of the Church in the face of the Anticlerical policies of the Secularists (who also sought to promote religious Minorities and the expansion of Irreligious population, as well as trying to convince the civil power to intervene against the ecclesiastical jurisdiction to increase the power of the state and seize church properties).<ref name=":0" /><ref name=":1">Template:Cite journal</ref>

In this context of hostility between Catholics and Liberals in politics due to irreconcilable differences about Philosophy of Law, the Church would strongly condemn the right to Religious Freedom, but only as was formulated by liberal ideologues such concept (being open a possible aceptance in the future under different definitions), which was understood under the heretical proposition that "all religions (or all Christian confessions) are equally true and valid" on which liberal jurists based their definition of Religious Freedom. However, this never implied that the Church sought to deny the rights of people who were by birth non-Catholic people (because in the eyes of Natural Law and Ius gentium, they had a right to accept or reject Catholic Doctrine according to the good faith of their hearts), only to affirm that, as a consequence of the Catholic Faith being considered the only true religion, the rest of the religious positions by Logic couldn't have the same rights as the Catholic faith in the political order (if and only if the political society confessed the Catholic faith, so that being ruled by a Catholic ruler), arguing that error has no rights, and so the Church sought to call on Catholic Rulers (in a historical context where most governments still were confessional States) to not alter those historical relations of Catholic supremacy in the political sphere, because for the Holy See, Rulers with a sincere Catholic faith had a duty to condemn the Separation of Church and State (as understood by liberals) as a heresy, and not be badly influenced by liberal preaching arguing that the abolition of the privileges of the Catholic Church was necessary to achieve "public peace" (that there would be no political division in the state if the political differences between confessionalities were no longer recognized, aspiring to equalize them all before the law).<ref name=":0" /><ref name=":1" /> Leo XIII, Pius XI and Pius XII, while reiterating traditional Catholic teaching, had also argued that "every man in the State may follow the will of God and, from a consciousness of duty and free from every obstacle, obey His commands"<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> and that "laws which impede this profession and practice of Faith are against natural law".<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> John XXIII had made a distinction between "error as such" and the person in error, who preserves his dignity.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

Vatican II and religious freedom

Third session (1964)

The debate on a separate Declaration on Religious Liberty was held on September 23 – September 25, as promised by Pope Paul the year before. However, in October an attempt was made by the Curial party to return this declaration to review by a special commission, which contained many hostile members and was outside the jurisdiction of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity.<ref>"It was suddenly announced that the document on Religious Liberty would be handed to a new commission for revision – a commission that included some of the most moss-backed of the moss-backed conservatives (to borrow a phrase from Archbishop Connolly!), including Archbishop Lefebvre, who later established the schismatic Society of St. Pius X." Vatican II, Part 4: The Third Session Template:Webarchive, Corinna Laughlin, St. James Cathedral, Seattle</ref> Protest by bishops to Pope Paul resulted in the declaration staying under Unity with a different working commission which reviewed and amended it.<ref>Template:Cite magazine</ref>

Fourth session (1965)

This re-revised text was approved by the council on October 25, with only minor amendments allowed afterward (including some disliked by Murray). The final vote was taken and the declaration was promulgated at the end of council on December 7, 1965. The claim by some that this overwhelming majority was due to intense lobbying by the reformist wing of Council Fathers among those prelates who initially had reservations or even objections.<ref>Der Rhein fliesst in den Tiber: eine Geschichte des Zweiten Vatikanischen Konzils, Wiltgen, Ralph M., Feldkirch. Lins. cop. 1988. p. 316</ref>

Traditionalist Catholic reception

Template:AnchorSociety of Saint Pius X

The Society of Saint Pius X (SSPX) rejects in particular point 2 of the Dignitatis Humanae (taken up again in no. 2108 of the Catechism of the Catholic Church) which states: "The right to religious liberty is neither a moral license to adhere to error, nor a supposed right to error, but rather a natural right of the human person to civil liberty, i.e., immunity, within just limits, from external constraint in religious matters by political authorities. This natural right ought to be acknowledged in the juridical order of society in such a way that it constitutes a civil right."<ref name="Courrier de Rome" /><ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

The SSPX's claims its doctrine comes from the teachings of Pius XII and Leo XIII. They claim that Pope Pius IX, in his encyclical Quanta cura (1864), while admitting the tolerance of error on the part of public authorities, stated that the right to freedom of public expression and dissemination could not be recognized for those religions that did not serve the truth, such as the Catholic religion. They also state that Leo XIII, in his encyclical Libertas, explained that a false religion has no right to spread.<ref name="Courrier de Rome">Template:Cite web </ref>

Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre cited Libertas as one of the fundamental reasons for his difficulties with the Second Vatican Council. It remains a focus for attacks from Traditionalists in the 21st century.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>

The Society of St. Pius X criticized how Dignitatis humanae approached religious freedom with an argument from history:<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

Template:QuoteThe Vatican's position that the SSPX must acknowledge Dignitatis humanae and Nostra aetate as authoritative remained Template:As of a key point of difference between the two.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>

Interpretation in continuity

The interpretation of the document, according to the Hermeneutics of Continuity, is that the Second Vatican Council's defense of religious freedom, along with other concepts commonly associated with the Charter of Human Rights (the latter developed according to liberal ideologies condemned by the Magisterium of the Church), is a defense that is always given as long as they are subordinated to natural law and the common good, not understanding them as subjective rights that allow a false right to believe in error (maintaining the condemnations in Quanta cura and the Syllabus against Indifferentism as well as the social teaching for Catholic Rulers to protect Political catholicism), but as objective rights where there are duties of every State to protect the rights of the human person to believe in the true religion.<ref name=":1" />

Thus, it is inferred that Dignitates Humanae considers implicit that a Christian State has commitments to safeguard the salvation of souls (aspiring to Catholic unity) and to avoid apostasies or the spread of heresy. Therefore, its emphasis of the document (already assuming the above a priori in the Tradition of the Church) aims to make explicit that a secular Government, to be legitimate in view of the eternal law and the natural order (even if it were a non-Christian State), should allow the right for all human person to be able to search for the true religion, instead of imposing Secularism or State Atheism on the one hand, as well as imposing Forced Conversions or a Sacerdotal State on the other hand.<ref name=":1" />

On the contradictions some see between Dignitatis humanae and Pope Pius IX's Syllabus of Errors, the SSPX has argued that:Template:Quote

International Theological Commission, 2019

On 21 March 2019, Pope Francis approved the publication of a document produced by the International Theological Commission called "Religious freedom for the good of all: Theological approach to contemporary challenges". It attempts to update Dignitatis humanae in the light of the increasing diversity and secularization seen since the Council: "the cultural complexity of today's civil order".<ref>Template:Cite news</ref><ref>Template:Cite web The official text is available only in Italian.</ref>

See also

• Relations between the Catholic Church and the state
• Christian state
• Res publica Christiana
• Quanta cura
• Mirari vos

Further reading

• Stüssi, Marcel (2012). Models of Religious Freedom: Switzerland, the United States, and Syria by Analytical, Methodological, and Eclectic Representation, 375 ff. Template:ISBN

External links

• Holy See: Archive: Documents of the II Vatican Council: Dignitatis humanae (full text in English)