Religious Liberty & Continuity

The Second Vatican Council’s declaration Dignitatis Humanae teaches that every person has a right to what the text calls religious liberty.(1) However, some have objected that this document breaks with the Church’s pre-conciliar teaching. While the Dignitatis Humanae affirms traditional teaching on the state's obligation to the true religion, it is argued that the document contradicts this teaching by granting equal rights to all belief systems. Many of the pre-conciliar Popes condemned religious indifferentism and taught that civil authorities had a certain set of obligations toward the Catholic faith.(2) At certain points in the document, it can appear as though the council is teaching something that cannot be reconciled with the Church’s previous magisterium. However, Thomas Pink argues that Dignitatis Humanae can be understood in continuity with the Church’s perennial doctrine because it addresses the particular question of the right to religious liberty in civil society rather than religious liberty in general. This essay will demonstrate how, by making the distinction between civil authority and ecclesiastical authority, the Church can affirm both Dignitatis Humanae and its own pre-conciliar teaching.  

According to Dignitatis Humanae, religious liberty means that people should be free from coercion by individuals, groups, or civil authorities in religious matters.(3) However, it is important to make a distinction here between religious liberty and what the Church calls religious indifferentism. Religious indifferentism is the mistaken belief that religious truth does not matter or that all religions are equally true. Pope Gregory XVI condemned this view in Mirari Vos (1832), criticizing the idea that freedom of conscience should be understood as an unrestricted freedom to choose whatever one wishes. He writes,

"This shameful font of indifferentism gives rise to that absurd and erroneous proposition which claims that liberty of conscience must be maintained for everyone. It spreads ruin in sacred and civil affairs, though some repeat over and over again with the greatest impudence that some advantage accrues to religion from it. “But the death of the soul is worse than freedom of error,” as Augustine was wont to say. When all restraints are removed by which men are kept on the narrow path of truth, their nature, which is already inclined to evil, propels them to ruin."(4)

Certain interpreters of Dignitatis Humanae have raised the objection that the document embraces what Gregory XVII explicitly condemned in Mirari Vos.(5) However, the kind of religious liberty described in Dignitatis Humanae does not mean that people have a moral right to believe whatever they want. Rather, it means that civil authorities should not force people to accept or practice a particular religion against their will. 

The Catechism of the Catholic Church explains that “religious liberty is not a moral license to adhere to error, but a natural right to civil liberty, within just limits, from external constraint in religious matters.”(6) Thus, people remain morally responsible for seeking religious truth even when they possess a right to be free from civil coercion. This distinction is essential to understanding the council’s teaching. The Church continues to affirm that religious truth matters and that people have an obligation to seek and embrace it. Nevertheless, civil authorities cannot simply compel people to believe or practice the Catholic faith or any other religion. Faith must always be a genuinely human act rather than merely the result of external force.(7) 

Civil and Ecclesiastical Authority

Thus far I have attempted to demonstrate that despite the critics, Dignitatis Humanae can be read in continuity with previous church teaching because of its distinction between the civil and ecclesiastical authority. According to Thomas Pink, religious liberty must be understood in relation to the authority being considered in the text, which is the civil authority.(8) In his papal letter Duo Sunt, Pope Gelasius I declares: “For there are two powers, oh emperor Augustus, by which the world is principally ruled: the sacred authority of pontiffs and the royal power.”(9) In other words, there is the realm of Caesar and the realm of God (Matt 22:21). And while these two powers are distinct from one another, they are both ultimately ordered by God to the same proper end, which is the good of the human person. Consequently, the limits of civil authority must be distinguished from the authority the Church possesses in matters of faith.

This distinction is important because Dignitatis Humanae concerns the right to religious liberty in civil society, which does not include every aspect of civil life. According to Pink, the declaration should not automatically be interpreted as a comprehensive statement about every form of coercion or authority that the Church might exercise over its members, because the document is not about the ecclesiastical power. In particular, the Church’s authority over baptized persons involves obligations grounded in the sacrament of baptism and the revealed truths of the Christian faith. As Pink points out, even the most recent Code of Canon Law affirms the Church’s right to use coercion when dealing with those under its jurisdiction; the baptised. 

These questions cannot be settled simply by appealing to the limits of civil authority, because they are concerned with an entirely different issue. Therefore, the declaration’s affirmation of religious liberty does not necessarily mean that the Church has abandoned its traditional teaching about its own authority. Instead, the document focuses on the rights of individuals and religious communities in relation to civil institutions. As the document itself states in its very first paragraph, its teaching on civil liberty leaves intact the traditional Catholic teaching concerning the moral obligations of individuals and societies toward the true religion and the one Church of Christ.(11) The commission tasked with writing this document even alludes to this distinction in the acts of the council:

"Examples and statements brought against the text taken from the New Testament (and also many from the Old Testament) either concern the internal life of the religious community of Israel, in which Jesus and the apostles lived, or the intra-ecclesial life of the early Christian community. And the declaration does not treat of this life."(12)

Does Dignitatis Humanae Contradict Earlier Church Teaching?

One of the main objections leveled at Dignitatis Humanae is that earlier popes taught that civil authorities should uphold the Catholic faith and restrict the public practice of false religions. Critics argue that if the Catholic faith is true, the state should not recognize religious freedom for those who reject it. At least not without a clear distinction between those religions that are false and the one which is true.(13) For example, the founder of the Society of St. Pius X, Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, argued that Dignitatis Humanae could not be reconciled with earlier papal teaching and that Catholics would have to choose between the pre-conciliar church and the Church of Vatican II.(14)

Pink’s interpretation in particular offers a brilliant rebuttal to this objection by emphasizing the specific scope of the declaration. If Dignitatis Humanae were understood as a universal statement that no religious authority could ever exercise any form of coercion, then its relationship to earlier teaching about the Church’s authority would require further explanation and maybe even complete rejection. Fortunately, the declaration is not intended to provide such a comprehensive account. Its primary concern is immunity from coercion by civil authorities, rather than the full range of questions concerning the Church’s authority over the baptized. The state’s obligation to respect religious liberty does not establish that all religions are equally true or that society has no moral responsibilities toward religion. Instead, it limits what civil authorities may do to compel religious belief and practice. The moral obligation to seek the true religion remains, even when people are protected from civil coercion. 

The Obligation of the State

The state cannot coerce people into accepting any kind of religious belief that is contrary to their own opinion. However, the state still has an obligation to be guided by the one true religion. Consider Pius XI encyclical Quas Primas as an example of this teaching. In his own words, Pius XI writes, “It would be a grave error, on the other hand, to say that Christ has no authority whatever in civil affairs, since, by virtue of the absolute empire over all creatures committed to him by the Father, all things are in his power.”(15) In other words, the secular power and the spiritual power are both under the kingship of Christ, meaning every aspect of their workings must be subject to Him. In fact, the good of every society rests in its ability to submit to the universal kingship of Jesus Christ. Or as Pius XI puts it, “In him is the salvation of the individual, in him is the salvation of society.”(16)

The obligation of the state to the true religion can be summarized in the following way: “The power of the state is ultimately subject to Christ and must be exercised according to God's law and for the sake of the common good.” Pius XI gives three dimensions of society that should be entirely under the influence of the commandments of God. These are the "making of laws, the administration of justice, and the education of youth."(17) Since every person has the right to know the truth, it is the obligation of the state to make that truth known as much as possible not just in its laws but in its education system.(18) Put another way, the state must direct all of these areas according to God’s law while continuing to respect each person’s right to not be forced to worship against their will, as Leo XIII expressed in Immortale Dei.(19)

Conclusion

Every person has the right to immunity from coercion by the civil authorities in religious matters within just limits. Simultaneously, the state still has an obligation to promote and be directed by the true religion. It does not mean that all religions are equally true, that religious truth is unimportant, or that people have no moral obligation to seek the truth. Religious liberty must therefore be distinguished from religious indifferentism that has already been thoroughly condemned. Dignitatis Humanae can, and should, be understood in continuity with the Church’s perennial teaching because it addresses civil liberty rather than providing a comprehensive account of every form of ecclesiastical authority. Properly understood, religious liberty does not require the Church to abandon its traditional teaching; it clarifies the distinction between the obligation to seek religious truth and the limits of civil power in religious affairs.

1. Vatican II, Declaration on the Right of the Person and of Communities to Social and Civil Freedom in Religious Matters Dignitatis Humanae (7 Dec 1965), §2 (Tacoma, WA: Cluny Media, 2017), 252.

2. Leo XIII, Encyclical on The Christian Constitution of States in A Reader in Catholic Social Teaching Immortale Dei (1 Nov 1885), §6 (Tacoma, WA: Cluny Media, 2017), 34.

3. Vatican II, Dignitatis Humanae, §2.

4. Gregory XVII, On Liberalism and Religious Indifferentism

   Mirari Vos (1832) §14, at Papal Encyclicals Online, https://www.papalencyclicals.net/greg16/g16mirar.htm 

5. Roger W. Nutt and Michael R. De Salvo, “The Debate over Dignitatis Humanae at Vatican II: The Contribution of Charles Cardinal Journet,” The Thomist 85 (2021): 176–177.

6. Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2nd ed. (Washington, DC: USCCB, 2000), § 2108.

7. Nutt and De Salvo, “The Debate over Dignitatis Humanae at Vatican II: The Contribution of Charles Cardinal Journet,” 176–177.

8. Thomas Pink, “What Is the Catholic Doctrine of Religious Liberty?”, (15 June 2012), 33.

9. Gelasius I, On The Two Swords Famuli Vestrae Pietatis (494) §2.

10. Pink, “What Is the Catholic Doctrine of Religious Liberty?”, 27.

11. Vatican II, Dignitatis Humanae, §1.

12. Acta Synodalia Sacrosancti Concilii Oecumenici Vaticani II, vol 4, part 6, p763.

13. Immortale Dei, §36.

14. Nutt and De Salvo, “The Debate over Dignitatis Humanae at Vatican II: The Contribution of Charles Cardinal Journet,” 178–179.

15. Pius XI, Encyclical on the Kingship of Christ in A Reader in Catholic Social Teaching Quas Primas (11 Dec 1925), §17 (Tacoma, WA: Cluny Media, 2017), 164.

16. Quas Primas, §18.

17. Quas Primas, §32.

18. Leo XIII, Encyclical on Church and State in France in A Reader in Catholic Social Teaching Au Mileu Des Sollicitudes (20 June 1891), §28 (Tacoma, WA: Cluny Media, 2017), 131.

19. Immortale Dei, §36.