Guidance from Cardinal Dulles from beyond the grave

Okay, he might not be quite “in the grave” yet, but I certainly found reading this paper by Cardinal Avery Dulles in First Things very useful to the discussion on the doctrine of religious freedom.

Challenged by Josh on the point that I might be veering away from the teaching of Catholic Tradition and Magisterium on this matter and “not quite sentire cum ecclesia” (SHOCK! HORROR! GASP!), I think I can make a small adjustment to my guidance system that will get me back on track.

In particular I found this helpful:

It is clear, according to DH, that “society will itself benefit from the fruits of justice and peace that result from people’s fidelity to God and His holy will.” These religious responsibilities are in line with what Leo XIII designated as the “care of religion.”

Vatican II did not adopt the liberal concept of the religiously or morally neutral State—one that concerns itself only with civil peace and material prosperity. Many bishops at Vatican II feared that the Council would deny the duty of the civil government toward the one true religion as affirmed by a whole series of popes. DH stated explicitly that the one true religion subsists in the Catholic Church and that it accepted “the traditional Catholic teaching on the moral obligation of individuals and societies toward the true religion and toward the one Church of Christ.” The question was raised whether this meant that the obligation rested on the citizens, as distinct from the State. On this issue, as on the supposed right to profess error, Bishop De Smedt in his final relatio gave a decisive answer. He explained that the text, as revised, did not overlook or deny but clearly recalled Leo XIII’s teaching on the duties of the public authority (potestatis publicae) toward the true religion. These words may be taken as an official commentary on the text-indeed, the only official commentary we have on this particular point.

We may therefore conclude that DH does not negate earlier Catholic teaching on the duties of the State toward the true faith.

So. Okay. Let’s get this clear.

1) The State is not to be religiously or morally neutral
2) The obligation “toward the true religion and toward the one Church of Christ” does not rest only with citizens (what I have been calling “society”) but also with the State
3) The State therefore does have a duty of a “care of religion” which is directed twoard the advancement of “the true faith”.

I concede all that. The question is: HOW?

How is the State – and I don’t think it is helpful to talk in the abstract – so let’s be specific – how is the State of the Commonwealth of Australia to carry out this duty of care toward the one true faith?

Dulles answers that in the next couple of paragraphs:

Speaking to a worldwide community in a period of rapid flux, Vatican II wisely refrained from trying to specify exactly what kind of help the Church ought to expect from the State.

That question must be variously answered according to the constitution of the State, the religious makeup of the population, and the traditions of the society. No one formula could be suitable for all countries today, though any legitimate arrangement must, as I have already said, respect the rights of all citizens.

The main difference between the doctrine of the nineteenth-century popes and that of DH is in the means that each envisages. Pius IX and Leo XIII, writing in an age when paternalistic monarchies were still normal in most Catholic countries, evidently preferred to see the Catholic Church in a legally privileged position.

Vatican II, speaking within a more democratic and religiously pluralistic situation, placed greater reliance on indirect support. If the State would simply establish conditions under which the Church could carry on its mission unimpeded, it would do more for the Church than many Christian princes had done in the past.

On the final day of the Council, December 8, 1965, Pope Paul VI addressed to temporal rulers the question: “What does the Church ask of you today?” And he answered: “She tells you in one of the major documents of this Council. She asks of you only liberty, the liberty to believe and to preach her faith, the freedom to love her God and serve Him, the freedom to live and to bring to men her message of life.”

That, to me is the answer to the question “How can we expect the Australian State to carry out its duty of care to the one true religion”.

In short, it is to provide that degree of liberty for all its citizens which make it possible for every member of society to seek and find the Truth which alone can make us free. The State cannot legally impose religious practice or belief – this is fundamental. But by not in any way restricting the Church’s freedom to preach and teach the Gospel, by actively protecting the Church’s right to conduct her activities in Australian society and her members the right to participate fully in the public square, and by freely cooperating with the Church to enable her to fulfil her mission in our land, the Australian State fulfils its duty toward the one true Church.

The fact of the matter is that in our Australian context (I do not speak of any other context anywhere else – although I dare say it applies fairly universally) this freedom and protection and cooperation is best achieved where ALL CITIZENS AND RELIGIOUS COMMUNITIES are granted the same freedom and protection and cooperation of the State. In doing this the State is not acting in a “religiously or morally neutral way” nor need it endorse a “relativistic” understanding of the metaphysical validity of all religious ideas and creeds. It is simply enabling that liberty that is necessary for all her citizens to seek and to find the Truth that the Church proclaims.

Pope Benedict Prays for Freedom of Religion for OTHER Religions in Apostolic Exhortation

Okay, it’s not an infallible definition or a Papal Encyclical, but it’s pretty high up on the level of magisterium. Here, I think, is the final and qualitative proof that Cardinal Pole is wrong when he asserts that Pope Benedict “has never specified that false religions can be the object of a right to free religious activity.”

Here too, I would like to reaffirm the solidarity of the whole Church with those who are denied freedom of worship. As we know, wherever religious freedom is lacking, people lack the most meaningful freedom of all, since it is through faith that men and women express their deepest decision about the ultimate meaning of their lives. Let us pray, therefore, for greater religious freedom in every nation, so that Christians, as well as the followers of other religions, can freely express their convictions, both as individuals and as communities. Sacramentum Caritatis p.87

What IS "religious freedom"?

Cardinal Pole, on these pages and on his own blog, has put forward the following idea with regard to religious liberty:

To say that “everyone has a natural right to the free exercise of religion” (call this proposition A) is not erroneous, since it does not specify the object of this right. But if one were to add the words ‘any’ and ‘whether Catholic or non-Catholic’, so that the proposition becomes “everyone has a natural right to the free exercise of any religion, whether Catholic or non-Catholic” (call this proposition B), then this would indeed be erroneous.

I have ridiculed this interpretation of religious freedom as being basically non-sensical. It is the equivalent of the man who is told by the waiter that he is free to order anything he likes on the menu and then handing him a menu with only one dish on it. It would be a marvel of ingenuity and originality to apply such an hermeneutic to Vatican II’s Declaration on Religious Freedom (Dignitatis Humanae).

Nevertheless, Cardinal Pole has insisted that Pope Benedict himself “has never specified that false religions can be the object of a right to free religious activity.”

Well, let us see what the Pope means when he speaks of “Religious Freedom”. Here is Papa Benny in his address to the Curia in December 2005.

First, he reitterated the point (which is challenged by some readers on this blog) that:

The Church, both before and after the Council, was and is the same Church, one, holy, catholic and apostolic, journeying on through time; she continues “her pilgrimage amid the persecutions of the world and the consolations of God”, proclaiming the death of the Lord until he comes (cf. Lumen Gentium, n. 8).

Second, he said that

Those who expected that with this fundamental “yes” to the modern era all tensions would be dispelled and that the “openness towards the world” accordingly achieved would transform everything into pure harmony, had underestimated the inner tensions as well as the contradictions inherent in the modern epoch.

But how is it possible that, in facing the “inner tensions…inherent in the modern epoch” the Church could take a stance with respect to religious liberty that was so contrary (or had the appearance of being contrary) to the statements of the Church in former times? Benedict explains:

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 (cf. Mt 22: 21), 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 (cf. I Tm 2: 2); but while she prayed for the emperors, she refused to worship them and thereby clearly rejected the religion of the State.

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.

This was, of course, his famous discourse on the “hermeutic of continuity”, and thus he addressed the fact that there could be such strong apparent differences between the “before” and “after”:

It is precisely in this combination of continuity and discontinuity at different levels that the very nature of true reform consists. In this process of innovation in continuity we must learn to understand more practically than before that the Church’s decisions on contingent matters – for example, certain practical forms of liberalism or a free interpretation of the Bible – should necessarily be contingent themselves, precisely because they refer to a specific reality that is changeable in itself. It was necessary to learn to recognize that in these decisions it is only the principles that express the permanent aspect, since they remain as an undercurrent, motivating decisions from within. On the other hand, not so permanent are the practical forms that depend on the historical situation and are therefore subject to change. Basic decisions, therefore, continue to be well-grounded, whereas the way they are applied to new contexts can change.

I don’t think the Holy Father could be clearer on this point. It is no coincidence then that he goes on to speak of Religious Freedom as a case in point.

Thus, for example, IF religious freedom were to be considered an expression of the human inability to discover the truth and thus become a canonization of relativism, then this social and historical necessity is raised inappropriately to the metaphysical level and thus stripped of its true meaning. Consequently, it cannot be accepted by those who believe that the human person is capable of knowing the truth about God and, on the basis of the inner dignity of the truth, is bound to this knowledge. It is quite different, on the other hand, to perceive 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.

At this point I think Cardinal Pole must concede that Benedict IS referring to the freedom of all persons to follow the creed of their conviction, Catholic or otherwise. What else can he mean when he says that religious freedom is a “need that derives from human coexistence”? I concede, as I think I have done before, that we cannot claim religious liberty as a “right before God” (what Pope Benedict calls raising it “inappropriately to the metaphysical level”) but it is a right of the human being with respect to the State – precisely because, as Papa Benny points out, religion “cannot be externally imposed”.

Via several links to conversations that Cardinal Pole provided elsewhere on the net, I eventually found this statement from the dearly departed Cardinal Avery Dulles which puts it very well:

Over the past fifty years we have seen a strong and welcome development of the doctrine of religious freedom. Articulating the principles of the gospel in new situations, the Church has found a new voice. She speaks with a fresh awareness of the dignity and freedom that God wills for all human beings and with a deeper realization of the limited competence of civil governments. As the Church adapts her social teaching to changing political and social circumstances, she comes to a sharper perception of certain aspects and consequences of the gospel. The teaching of the nineteenth-century popes was not erroneous, but was limited by the political and social horizons of the time. In the words of DH, Vatican II brought forth from the Church’s treasury “new things in harmony with those that are old.” This process of development must continue as the Church faces the new problems and opportunities that arise in successive generations. (Source: First Things)

I do so like it when I discover my own independantly formed ideas expressed by wiser and greater people than myself.

[PS. As a simple example of how things have changed at a practical level regarding Church and State, need one cite any thing else than the contrast between a Church that once endorsed an Albert, elector and archbishop of Mainz and archbishop of Magdeburg (1490-1545) and a Church which censured a Bishop Fernando Lugo, now President of Paraguay?]