http://www.catholicnews.com/data/stories/cns/0505798.htm
VATICANII-FREEDOM Oct-12-2005 (990 words) xxxn
Religious freedom: Vatican II modernizes church-state ties
By Agostino Bono
Catholic News Service
WASHINGTON (CNS) -- One of the final documents approved by the Second Vatican
Council was perhaps its most controversial text, the Declaration on Religious
Freedom, which catapulted Catholicism into the modern world of church-state
relations.
It set the foundations for church dealings with secular, religiously
pluralistic Western democracies and for Pope John Paul II's ringing
denunciations of church persecution in communist-ruled countries.
The declaration, "Dignitatis Humanae," also lent credibility to the council's
call for ecumenical dialogue and dialogue with non-Christian believers.
In the process, it rehabilitated the declaration's main drafter, Father John
Courtney Murray, a U.S. Jesuit who in the 1950s was barred by the Vatican from
writing on church-state relations, especially on efforts to reconcile
Catholicism with U.S.-style separation of church and state. The priest
eventually was invited to joint the Vatican's Secretariat for Promoting
Christian Unity, the Vatican agency that drafted the document.
The Declaration on Religious Freedom stated that, because of human dignity,
each person had the civil right to religious liberty and to practice religious
belief in community with others. This was a sharp departure from centuries of
church teaching that complete religious freedom belonged only to the Catholic
Church as an institution because it contained the fullness of divine truth.
In a commentary after the council, Father Murray noted the implications of the
declaration's groundbreaking stance.
"The church does not deal with the secular order in terms of a double standard
-- freedom for the church when Catholics are a minority, privilege for the
church and intolerance for others when Catholics are a majority," said his 1966
commentary, published a year before his death.
"The declaration has opened the way toward new confidence in ecumenical
relations and a new straightforwardness in relationships between the church and
the world," Father Murray wrote.
The declaration said that "the right to religious freedom is based on the very
dignity of the human person as known through the revealed word of God and by
reason itself." This freedom must be recognized and protected by nations as a
civil right because the exercise of religious freedom requires "immunity from
external coercion," it said.
"The right to this immunity continues to exist even in those who do not live up
to their obligation of seeking truth and adhering to it," said the declaration.
It was approved by a vote of 2,308-70 Dec. 7, 1965, the last day votes were
taken and the day before the council ended.
But the approval came after "vehement debate" with strong opposition from many
Vatican officials and bishops from strongly Catholic countries such as Spain
and Italy, where Catholicism was the state religion, said Gregory Baum, an
expert at the council for the Secretariat for Promoting Christian Unity. The
secretariat drafted the religious freedom document because of its significance
for ecumenism. At the time, Baum was an Augustinian priest.
"The Catholic Church had condemned religious freedom in the 19th century," said
Baum, now a retired religious studies professor at McGill University, Montreal.
Opponents of the declaration "didn't want to admit that the church was wrong,"
he said.
The previous position was that "truth has all the rights and error has no
rights," said Baum.
In practice this meant that because they were following an erroneous religion,
non-Catholics had no right to religious freedom and at best could be tolerated
in society, he said.
"But this is nonsense," said Baum. "Truth is an abstract concept. People have
rights."
Baum noted that the declaration caused the Vatican to revise its treaties with
many heavily Catholic countries to remove Catholicism as the state religion.
Opponents of the declaration argued that by accepting the principle of
religious freedom the church would be contradicting itself. This view was
counter to the view of other theologians, such as Father Murray, that church
teachings can evolve based on changing circumstances, a process called
"development of doctrine."
Father Murray's 1966 commentary said that resistance to development of doctrine
was behind much of the opposition.
"The notion of development, not the notion of religious freedom, was the real
sticking point for many of those who opposed the declaration even to the end,"
wrote Father Murray.
When the declaration was finally approved, it also included a confession of
past church transgressions against religious freedom.
"Although in the life of the people of God ... there has at times appeared a
form of behavior which was hardly in keeping with the spirit of the Gospel and
was even opposed to it, it has always remained the teaching of the church that
no one is to be coerced into believing," said the declaration.
This confession was suggested by Cardinal Josef Beran of Prague in the then
communist-ruled Czechoslovakia. Noting the burning of heretics and the forced
conversions to Catholicism in his country's history, Cardinal Beran asked that
the council approve the declaration "in a spirit of atonement for past sins."
Cardinal Beran and other council fathers from communist-ruled countries joined
the U.S. bishops as strong supporters of the declaration. Bishops behind the
Iron Curtain saw it as necessary to preserve some semblance of church life in
their homelands because the declaration did more than establish the principle
of religious freedom: It also was a strong call for church independence from
the state and for protections against state encroachment against organized
religion.
"If it (civil authority) presumes to control or restrict religious activity, it
must be said to have exceeded the limits of its power," the declaration said.
Among the declaration's Soviet-bloc supporters was Archbishop Karol Wojtyla of
Krakow, Poland, elected Pope John Paul II in 1978. On the council floor in
1965, the 45-year-old archbishop argued that no state has the power to dominate
religion.
Archbishop Wojtyla was "keen on the document" and it "converted him to human
rights," said Baum. "He became a champion of human rights around the world --
not just religious rights -- based on the human dignity of the person."
END
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