Dignitatis humanae: the
Council affirms the right to religious liberty
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| An image from the Second Vatican Council |
In the past, there was discussion about the interpretation
of the conciliar texts. Now, the Vatican documents themselves are sometimes
being called into question. Let’s look back at a document that has left its
mark on the history of the Church.
By Andrea Tornielli
“This Vatican Council declares that the human person has a
right to religious freedom.”
Fifty-five years ago, on 7 December 1965, the Bishops
assembled in Saint Peter’s Basilica approved one of the most-discussed
conciliar documents, the Declaration Dignitatis humanae, On Religious Freedom.
"This freedom means that all men are to be immune from
coercion on the part of individuals or of social groups and of any human power,
in such wise that no one is to be forced to act in a manner contrary to his own
beliefs, whether privately or publicly, whether alone or in association with
others, within due limits. The council further declares that the right to
religious freedom has its foundation in the very dignity of the human person as
this dignity is known through the revealed word of God and by reason itself.
This right of the human person to religious freedom is to be recognized in the
constitutional law whereby society is governed and thus it is to become a civil
right” (DH, 2).
Pope Paul VI's contribution
The text of Dignitatis humanae underwent radical
transformation over the course of five different drafts before it was finally
approved. The fundamental problem, which created the greatest difficulty, was
how to define this freedom. In the second preliminary draft, it was presented
as a positive right: a right to act and a right not to be prevented from
acting. “But already in the schema,” Dominican Cardinal Jérôme Hamer, one of
the expert theologians who collaborated in the drafting process, recalled, “the
ambiguity of a religious freedom defined as a positive and negative right had
disappeared. There was now talk of a right to immunity, a right to not be
subject to coercion on the part of any human power, not only in the formation
of the conscience in religious matters, but even in the free exercise of
religion.”
A decisive contribution to the formulation of the Document
and the definition of religious freedom as immunity came from Pope Paul VI. On
28 June 1965, during a public audience, the Pope described religious freedom,
saying, “You will see a large part of this capital doctrine summarized in two
famous propositions: in matters of faith, let no one be compelled! Let no one
be prevented!” (nemo cogatur, nemo impediatur).
The order to vote on the draft
The debate in the council hall was heated. There were more
then 62 spoken interventions, and around one hundred written contributions.
Difficulties remained, and the governing authorities of the
Council decided not to hold a vote on the text, despite the request of the
Secretariat for Promoting Christian Unity. The fears expressed were always the
same: that the document conferred equal rights on “those who are in the truth
and those who are in error”; the it proposed a model of a “neutral State,”
which had been condemned by the Church; that it adopted a doctrine opposed to
the traditional teaching of the Church in this area.
It was Pope Paul VI who, on 21 September, intervened to
break the deadlock, ordering the Council Fathers to vote on whether the prepared
text could serve as a basis for the future declaration. Of the 2,222 Fathers
present for the vote, 1,997 voted in favour, while 224 were opposed; one vote
was null. Cardinal Pietro Pavan later defined the papal intervention ordering a
vote on the draft as “historic.”
The dignity of the human person
In the first paragraph of the definitive text of the
Document, we read, “Religious freedom… which men demand as necessary to fulfill
their duty to worship God, has to do with immunity from coercion in civil society.
Therefore, it leaves untouched traditional Catholic doctrine on the moral duty
of men and societies toward the true religion and toward the one Church of
Christ.”
The affirmation of the right to religious liberty,
therefore, is not tantamount to putting truth and falsehood on the same level,
nor of affirming indifference or arbitrariness in the religious sphere. “Since
the duty to form a true conscience remains,” Fr Gianpaolo Salvini observed,
“there is no opposition with the Church’s awareness of being the only true
religion. The foundation of religious liberty was expressed in an assertive
manner and based on the Catholic doctrine of the dignity of the human person.
Moreover, the relationship to the biblical data and to revelation was seen in a
new way, which, although it does not speak expressly of this right (which is a
civil and juridical determination), nonetheless reveals the dignity of the
human person in all its fullness in a manner congruent with the freedom of the
act of Christian faith.”
Against the atheism of the State in Eastern-bloc countries
“The personal contribution of Paul VI on that Conciliar
Document was decisive,” said Cardinal Pavan. The Pope had intervened to have
the working draft voted on, and had contributed to the definition of religious
freedom as a right to immunity.
Pope Paul’s contribution should also be read in light of his
important visit to the United Nations in October 1965, as well as the initial
contacts with the Eastern-bloc regimes, which aimed at improving in some way
the conditions of Christians, and the general population, living under
Communist dictatorships. The Declaration Dignitatis humanae, On
Religious Freedom, would prove a useful instrument for asserting
this fundamental right in countries where the state was avowedly atheistic.
John Paul II: Dignitatis humanae one of the
most revolutionary texts
In an Address on 7 December 1995, the thirtieth anniversary
of the approval of the Declaration, Pope John Paul II — who, as a Council
Father had followed the drafting of the document, and had even contributed to
it himself — affirmed, “The Second Vatican Council constituted an extraordinary
grace for the Church, and a decisive moment of her recent history. Dignitatis
humanae is undoubtedly one of the Council’s most revolutionary texts.
It has the specific and important merit of having cleared the way for that
remarkable and fruitful dialogue between the Church and the world, so ardently
proposed and encouraged by that other great Council document, the Pastoral
Constitution Gaudium et spes, issued on the very same day. Looking
back over the last 30 years, it must be said that the Church’s commitment to
religious freedom as an inviolable right of the human person has had an effect
beyond anything the Fathers of the Council could have anticipated.”
Four years earlier, in his Message for the World Day of Peace in 1991, Pope John
Paul had stated, “No human authority has the right to interfere with a person's
conscience.” Conscience is, in fact, “inviolable”, “inasmuch as it is a
necessary condition for seeking the truth worthy of man, and for adhering to
that truth once it is sufficiently known.” It follows that “each individual's conscience
be respected by everyone else; people must not attempt to impose their own
‘truth’ on others… Truth imposes itself solely by the force of its own truth.”
Benedict XVI and the example of the martyrs
Pope Benedict XVI’s remarks on this theme, in his
first Address to the Roman Curia, on 22 December 2005, should
also be noted. On that occasion, he made the invitation to consider “religious
freedom as a need that derives from human coexistence, or indeed, as an
intrinsic consequence of the truth that cannot be externally imposed but that
the person must adopt only through the process of conviction.”
He continued:
“The Second Vatican Council recognizing and making its
own an essential principle of the modern State with the Decree on
Religious Freedom, has recovered the deepest patrimony of the Church. By so
doing she can be conscious of being in full harmony with the teaching of Jesus
himself, as well as with the Church of the martyrs of all time. The ancient
Church naturally prayed for the emperors and political leaders out of duty; but
while she prayed for the emperors, she refused to worship them and thereby
clearly rejected the religion of the State.”
Pope Benedict also stated:
“The martyrs of the early Church died for their faith in
that God who was revealed in Jesus Christ, and for this very reason they also
died for freedom of conscience and the freedom to profess one's own faith — a
profession that no State can impose but which, instead, can only be claimed
with God's grace in freedom of conscience. A missionary Church known for
proclaiming her message to all peoples must necessarily work for the freedom of
the faith.”
A challenge to the globalized world
In an Address to the participants at the International Conference
on "Religious Freedom and the Global Clash of Values,” Pope Francis
stated:
“Reason recognizes in religious freedom a fundamental
human right which reflects the highest human dignity, the ability to seek the
truth and conform to it, and recognizes in it a condition which is
indispensable to the ability to deploy all of one’s own potentiality. Religious
freedom is not only that of private thought or worship. It is the liberty to
live, both privately and publicly, according to the ethical principles resulting
from found truth. This is a great challenge in the globalized world, where weak
thought — which is like a disease — also lowers the general ethical level, and
in the name of a false concept of tolerance, it ends in persecuting those who
defend the truth about man and its ethical consequences.”
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