From a reader…
QUAERITUR:
Could you explain how the definition of religious liberty in Dignatis Humanae is the same as how Popes defined it previously before the Second Vatican Council, I don’t quite understand how it can be said to be the same.
Mind you, I am not an expert on this question. After reviewing to help me understand it, I think I can break it down. It is important, because this difficult question is close to the heart of the resistance of the SSPX with the Vatican over the documents of Vatican II (not Vatican “eleven”), particularly concerning religious liberty.
The difficulty is real, and it should not be waved away. Also, when there are true difficulties, we should have greater freedom, as John XXIII reminded:
“In necessariis unitas, in dubiis libertas, in omnibus caritas.”
Please, God, let those in the SSPX and in the Holy See take this to heart.
Ad ramos.
If by “religious liberty” one means the proposition that man has a natural moral right to religious error as such, or that the State has no duty toward God and the true religion, then that is condemned by pre-Conciliar popes.
Bl. Pius IX condemned the view that the best civil society is one in which no distinction is made between the true religion and false religions, and he also condemned the claim that “liberty of conscience and of worship” is an unrestricted right to be proclaimed in every well-ordered society.
Leo XIII – who should be canonized – likewise rejected the theory that the State may treat all religions as though they had the same public title before God, since civil society must acknowledge God and cannot be “godless.”
There is a tension, which even careful traditional writers have acknowledged. Michael Davies, for example, (via Fr. Harrison) while remaining respectful toward the Holy See, wrote that he did not claim a contradiction existed, but that he did not see how the traditional teaching and Dignitatis humanae could be reconciled and asked the Magisterium to clarify the matter. (We are still waiting.)
The key point is that Dignitatis humanae can be taken to define religious liberty in a deliberately restricted juridical sense.
It says: “Religious freedom… has to do with immunity from coercion in civil society,” and adds that 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.” HERE
In other words, Vatican II did not define religious liberty as a moral right to error, nor as a denial of the social Kingship of Christ, nor as a denial that individuals and societies have duties toward the true religion. It defined the right in question as a civil immunity from coercion by merely human power within due limits.
That is why the Council grounds the right in the dignity of the person as a rational and free being who is morally obliged to seek the truth, adhere to it once known, and order his life according to it. This is decisive. The right is not founded on the subjective sincerity of the person, nor on the supposed equal truth of all religions. Dignitatis humanae says that the right “has its foundation not in the subjective disposition of the person, but in his very nature.”
Popes condemned a false “liberty of conscience” understood as indifferentism, religious relativism, social atheism, and the unrestricted public license of error. Vatican II affirmed a civil immunity from coercion in religious matters, within the limits of public order, while preserving the duty of all men and societies toward the true religion.
Those are related issues, but they are not identical.
Leo XIII supplies part of the distinction. In Libertas 30, he condemns false liberty, but he also says that if “liberty of conscience” means that a man may follow the will of God and obey His commands “free from every obstacle,” then “this indeed is true liberty,” the liberty loved by the Church, the Apostles, the apologists, and the martyrs. He also teaches that public authority may tolerate what is contrary to truth and justice for the sake of avoiding a greater evil or preserving a greater good, while never approving evil as such.
That does not yet amount to the full formulation of Dignitatis humanae, but it shows that the older teaching already distinguished moral approval from civil toleration or immunity.
John XXIII, before the Council, moved the discussion further in Pacem in terris. He taught that man has the right to worship God according to “the right dictates of his own conscience” and to profess religion both privately and publicly, while citing Leo XIII on true freedom. This is important because Pacem in terris stands between Leo XIII and Vatican II and uses the language of human dignity, conscience, and public religious profession without adopting religious indifferentism.
Dignitatis humanae also limits the right.
It says that religious freedom is exercised in society and is subject to the moral law, the rights of others, the common welfare, public peace, and public morality. The State may restrain abuses committed under the pretext of religion, but it must do so according to juridical norms conforming to the objective moral order. Thus the Council did not teach an absolute license. It taught a presumptive civil immunity, limited by just public order.
The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith later explained the same. Its 2007 Doctrinal Note on Some Aspects of Evangelization rejects the idea that respect for religious freedom means religious indifferentism. It says that respect for religious freedom “must not in any way make us indifferent towards truth and goodness,” and that love impels Christians to proclaim saving truth. At the same time, it insists that evangelization must avoid coercion or improper persuasion and that witness to the truth does not impose by force. This is very close to the logic of Dignitatis humanae: truth must be proposed, preached, defended, and embraced, but the act of faith itself must be free.
Benedict XVI gave perhaps the most concise hermeneutical key. The CDF’s 2007 note cites him in his famous 2005 Christmas Curia Address to the effect that religious freedom cannot be understood as the “canonization of relativism.” Rather, it must be understood as an intrinsic consequence of the truth, because truth cannot be externally imposed, but must be personally adopted through conviction.
That is the Catholic distinction: truth binds the conscience, but coercion cannot produce faith.
Fr. Brian Harrison has defended the position that Dignitatis humanae can be read in doctrinal continuity with traditional Catholic teaching on Church and State. His work explicitly aims at “upholding the doctrinal continuity between the Vatican II Declaration on Religious Liberty, Dignitatis humanae, and traditional Catholic doctrine regarding Church, State, and religious toleration.”
Thomas Pink, from a more integralist and traditional political-theological perspective, argues that Dignitatis humanae changes the Church’s policy concerning the State’s use of coercion in religion, without denying the older doctrine that coercive religious authority belongs properly to the Church rather than to the State.
The answer, then, is this: Dignitatis humanae is “the same” as previous papal teaching only if one is speaking about the principle that no one may be forced into faith and that the civil power may not command the interior religious act. It is also in continuity with the older doctrine insofar as it preserves man’s duty to seek and embrace the true religion, and society’s duty toward Christ and the Church.
It is a development, however, in its juridical formulation of a civil right to immunity from coercion for persons and religious communities within due limits.
So we can’t say, “Vatican II says exactly what the earlier popes said.”
Vatican II did not repeat the older doctrine in the older political idiom. It narrowed the question to civil immunity from coercion, explicitly refused to deny the older doctrine concerning the duty of men and societies toward the true religion, and developed a juridical doctrine of religious freedom grounded in the dignity of the person and the free nature of the act of faith.
Whether every phrase of Dignitatis humanae is as clear as it could be is another matter.
But the orthodox reading depends on that distinction.
That said, Dignitatis humanae is a declaration of the Second Vatican Council, hence an act of the authentic magisterium. But it did not define a dogma.
Paul VI explicitly said that Vatican II “avoided pronouncing in an extraordinary manner dogmas endowed with the note of infallibility,” while nevertheless giving its teaching the authority of the supreme ordinary magisterium, to be received according to the “mind of the Council” and the nature of each document.
The Council itself presents Dignitatis humanae as a limited doctrinal development concerning “immunity from coercion in civil society,” while adding that 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.”
That means the document’s binding force cannot be treated as though it had definitively settled every Church-State question previously addressed by Gregory XVI, Pius IX, Leo XIII, Pius XI, and Pius XII.
Canonically, non-definitive teachings call for “religiosum voluntatis et intellectus obsequium … religious submission of will and intellect” but not the assent of divine and Catholic faith.
The CDF’s Professio fidei commentary cites canon 752: “While the assent of faith is not required,” religious submission is owed to non-definitive authentic magisterial teaching.
Therefore, even on standard post-conciliar principles, Dignitatis humanae does not require the same irrevocable assent as defined dogma or doctrine proposed definitively by the ordinary and universal magisterium.
Moreover, the CDF’s Donum veritatis admits that, in prudential or historically conditioned interventions, “some Magisterial documents might not be free from all deficiencies,” because not every aspect or complexity of a question may have been considered. This is certainly the case with Dignitatis humanae.
That does not authorize contempt or casual dissent. It does leave room for serious, reverent difficulty, especially where a non-definitive text appears hard to reconcile with prior papal teaching. Dignitatis humanae does at least leave that room.
This is precisely why traditional writers have treated Dignitatis humanae as debatable.
Michael Davies concluded cautiously that there remains an “apparent contradiction” between traditional papal teaching and Dignitatis humanae, while refusing to declare a formal contradiction.
Thus the strongest conclusion is: a Catholic may not simply sneer at Dignitatis humanae or ignore it.
However, because it is non-definitive, pastorally framed, historically conditioned, and difficult to harmonize with prior papal doctrine, it does not require unconditional interior consent from all Catholics in the way a dogma does. A Catholic may respectfully withhold full assent from disputed formulations while maintaining adherence to the prior magisterium and awaiting clarification from higher authority.
(Of course we have seen even quite recently blatant clown-car attempts to bury prior magisterium with the shovel of the “recent” magisterium”.)
So, that begs another question.
Has there been “clarification from higher authority”?
Yes, there has been clarification from higher authority, but not the kind that would satisfy everyone.
The post-Conciliar Magisterium has repeatedly clarified that Dignitatis humanae must be read as teaching religious freedom as immunity from coercion, not as moral indifferentism, relativism, or a “right to error.”
The strongest official clarification is the Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church, which says that religious freedom means that society and the State must neither force a person to act against conscience nor prevent him from acting according to conscience, but then adds explicitly: “Religious freedom is not a moral license to adhere to error, nor as an implicit right to error.”
Benedict XVI gave the key interpretive clarification in his 2005 address on the “hermeneutic of reform.” The CDF later quoted that address in its 2007 Doctrinal Note on Some Aspects of Evangelization: religious freedom cannot be understood as “a canonization of relativism”; rather, it is “an intrinsic consequence of the truth” because truth cannot be imposed externally but must be embraced through conviction.
The CDF also clarified that religious liberty does not abolish the missionary duty of the Church. In 2008, Benedict XVI told the CDF that Dignitatis humanae itself affirms that “this one true religion continues to exist in the Catholic and Apostolic Church,” and that interreligious dialogue does not dispense the Church from evangelization or from asking men to accept salvation in Christ. This is reinforced by Dominus Iesus, which rejects relativistic theories that treat religions as salvific paths in principle and reaffirms the unicity and universality of Christ and the Church.
There has also been an extensive 2019 treatment by the International Theological Commission, Religious Freedom for the Good of All. It directly acknowledges “difficulties in receiving the new orientation from Dignitatis humanae” and says the post-conciliar Magisterium has interpreted the declaration through “homogenous evolution” and Benedict’s “hermeneutic of reform.” That document explains the Council’s argument: religious liberty is founded on human dignity, the duty to seek truth, the nature of religion, and the limits of civil power in religious matters.
However, here is the important qualification: there has not been, so far as I have seen, a definitive doctrinal reconciliation showing precisely how Quanta cura, the Syllabus, Immortale Dei, Libertas, Quas primas, and Dignitatis humanae all cohere on the exact question of the civil status of false public worship in a Catholic State.
One might ask: Do they have to? A lot of water has run under the bridge since those documents, also themselves somewhat isolated in their own contexts, were issued. Where is there room for development? Development, of course, rooted in the correct perennial principles about “development of doctrine”.
That said, higher authority has clarified the intended reading: no relativism, no right to error, no denial of the true religion, no denial of evangelization, and no coercion into faith.
What has not been fully clarified is the precise relation between the older “toleration of false cults” framework and the conciliar “civil right to religious freedom” framework.
So the fairest answer is: yes, Rome has clarified the official hermeneutic. But, no, Rome has not produced the kind of exhaustive reconciliation that removes every serious difficulty.
This is getting way too long and it has absorbed a lot of time.
What of the SSPX? Isn’t that the point of the question at the top? Really?
The SSPX objects to Dignitatis humanae. This is a sticking point which could result in tears.
The SSPX argument against Dignitatis humanae is that the declaration turns what earlier popes treated as prudential toleration of error into a natural civil right and that it teaches what previous documents (mentioned above) condemned. Their fundamental objection – if I understand it correctly – is that false religion, because it is false, cannot possess a natural right to public propagation. Also, they say that that “within due limits” does not solve the problem, because the Council defines those limits mainly by “just public order,” rather than by the objective rights of Christ the King and the Catholic Church.
Thus, under the conciliar principle, a false religion may be publicly preached and organized unless it disturbs civil order. If Christ has rights over societies, then civil authority may not treat all religions as having the same public status.
FINALLY, I think the SSPX could accept Dignitatis humanae as a non-definitive conciliar declaration whose binding sense is limited by its own text and by prior magisterium.
The key is its statement that 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.”
On that basis, the SSPX could say: we do not accept any reading of Dignitatis humanae that denies Christ’s social Kingship, the objective rights of the Catholic Church, or the duty of civil society to acknowledge the true religion. We accept only the declaration’s narrower claim: that civil authority, as civil authority, must not coerce the interior act of faith, nor suppress religious activity by arbitrary force, provided public order, morality, and the common good are safeguarded.
Mind you, that would not require affirming a) a moral right to error, b) the equal public truth of all religions, or c) liberal indifferentism. It would allow the SSPX to read the text through Leo XIII’s distinction between true liberty and license, and through the traditional principle that coercion cannot produce faith.
Their assent could be qualified, namely, Dignitatis humanae is acceptable insofar as it teaches immunity from unjust coercion, while any interpretation contrary to prior doctrine is rejected.
Such a formula would make the document a matter of interpretive reservation, not an absolute obstacle to canonical union.
On that basis, those who are reasonable and grounded in charity in the Vatican would say,
“Hey, sure! You’re right. These are really hard issues and there’s a lot more to talk about. Meanwhile, have a couple of bishops … on me. You pick though we’d like to discuss them. You can even pick a consecrator of those bishops from a list you can help us draw up. And afterward we’ll send theologians to debate you on this and other questions you have until we all get to the truth… together!”
Please, Leo, do that. If you see this, please do that. What a great legacy and work of statesmanship and pastoral care.
You do NOT have more important things to do.
It remains to be seen if there is anyone in the Holy See – even the Holy See – willing to be so open minded as to accept that, for the sake of what is constantly being touted as of great importance – unity.
If I had the right, Father Z, I would award you a gold star??
Dr. John Lamont has an excellent article reconciling Dignitatis Humanae. The footnotes are huge, whomever put those together deserves a feast day. Lamont’s article stopped me from entering a SSPX religious order back in the day, I realized the Society’s theological stance wasn’t needed
Wow! You did some serious homework on this one! Thank you for an extensive and clear explanation of the conundrum.
Agreeing wholeheartedly with Fr. Z’s explanation of how Dignitatis Humanae can be squared, albeit with areas needing additional clarification, with the traditional teaching of the Church, and as a non-expert looking at it from a laymen’s comprehension, it seems to me the problems are:
-First, the wording of Dignitatis Humane itself, which invites an interpretation that all religions have equal rights by not being clearly structured in such a way as to say “these are the obligations the government has toward the Catholic Faith and Religion” and “these are the obligations the government has to not coerce non-Catholic religions.” It just keeps using “religion” over and over again without any distinction.
-Second, this declaration exists in the context of “Nostra Aetate” which uses such glowing terms to sing the praises of non-Christian religions, it would be easy to transfer the “tone” from Nostra Aetate to color Dignitatis Humanae.
-It’s pretty difficult to square the tone of “Nostra Aetate” with just about anything the pre-Vatican II popes were saying about religion indifferentism and non-Christian faiths. It’s also flat out wrong when it asserts things such as the notion that Catholics worship the same God as the Muslims and the Jews. It’s just not historically, theologically, philosophically, or metaphysically honest to claim this.
The fact that the documents of Vatican II are being treated as infallible is going to be problematic going forward. Somehow, the modern Curia and Papacy appear to view the entire legitimacy of their authority deeply rooted in Vatican II, and this does not appear to my uneducated eyes to be a firm bedrock upon which to stand. I think, though, this is why no matter what lunatic antics the progressive fringe undertake, the SSPX are viewed as the true danger because they refuse to blindly pledge unqualified allegiance to every jot and tittle of Vatican II.
Father, this is fantastic. Thank you so much for this. Many good references here, some I’ve never heard of (especially Pope Benedict’s address to the CDF in 2008). Thank you for this!
I have long subscribed to the reading that Dr. Thomas Pink puts forward, and now I would like to read Dr. Lamont’s. Maybe if Luke Welborn or someone has a link they could share it? But in any case, Father, I wholeheartedly agree with your plea and I hope the Holy Father somehow does read it. I also wholeheartedly stand by you in what you propose the SSPX should do:
“On that basis, the SSPX COULD SAY: we do not accept any reading of Dignitatis humanae that denies Christ’s social Kingship, the objective rights of the Catholic Church, or the duty of civil society to acknowledge the true religion. We accept only the declaration’s narrower claim: that civil authority, as civil authority, must not coerce the interior act of faith, nor suppress religious activity by arbitrary force, provided public order, morality, and the common good are safeguarded…
“Their assent could be qualified, namely, Dignitatis humanae is acceptable insofar as it teaches immunity from unjust coercion, while any interpretation contrary to prior doctrine is rejected.”
Who in the Holy See could object to that? It is in complete continuity with all prior declarations from earlier popes, while also in complete continuity with the clarifications made in recent decades which you cited!
However, I believe this is where the superiors within the SSPX are being too difficult. There was a commenter on another post here on this blog about a week ago about how he is losing almost all sympathy not for the faithful who must rely on the SSPX because they do not have access to the FSSP, ICKSP, etc., but rather for the superiors and “decision makers” within the SSPX. If they cannot say what you have posted above, Father, then they are not acting in good faith.
I further lost sympathy for the SSPX after an article from an anonymous priest appeared on Crisis Magazine a couple months ago, saying that, yes, “priests and laity commit a sin by celebrating and assisting at a Mass of Pope Paul VI”. This priest had the audacity to say, speaking on behalf of the SSPX, that “if a soul perceives the deficiency of the Mass of Pope Paul VI and has no sufficient reason to justify attendance, then that soul would sin.”
This is preposterous, and now knowing that is what SOME of the SSPX believe, I find it very unlikely that the SSPX would do what Father Z has suggested regarding Dignitatis humane.
It takes two to tango, as they say. Not only the Holy See has to make strides towards reconciliation in this situation, but so, too, does the SSPX. I’m praying that both do not set up any obstacles towards full canonical union, and work TOGETHER.
Sad that all we get in recent years are Popes meeting with other religions and make no effort to convert them to the One True Faith.
Whenever Fr. Leonard Feeney is mentioned, the caveat is always…”His strict interpretation of the Dogma of No Salvation Outside of the Catholic Church.”
Amen, from your keyboard to the Holy Father’s ear.
Perhaps a few pebbles next to your ‘El Capitan’ rock:
– It seems the discussion about ‘rights’ would be helped if people, from all sides, were more explicit about the rights they have in mind: rights are always with respect to someone or something, and that is rarely specified. Rights of the individual w.r.t. the secular state is a wholly other ball game than rights of the individual vs God (pretty much not applicable) or the Church (w.r.t. faith and morals or w.r.t. to, shall we say, the right amount of contribution to the poor or climate concerns, your milage varies). Rights ‘of a religion’ is in many views actually a meaningless term, as only individuals would have rights, and the rights of adherents of a false religion are not to be confused with – but seem to be – with the ‘rights of that religion’. Next, are we talking about positive rights (‘the right that someone else does something for me’) or negative ones (‘the right that someone won’t interfere with me or my actions’)…
– In the end, much of the SSPX situation could be better dealt with not from the prism of ‘Is document X of VII right or containing error’, but through the prism of ‘Can the document be read in a way that is consistent with earlier teachings?’ If the answer, according to the SSPX or adherents thereof, is ‘no’, then it’s never going to work. Theirs is not the right to define what Catholic is, so if their position would be ‘repudiate document X or we’re gone’, then go they must. But with good will I’m convinced the answer can be ‘yes’ – and then it becomes a matter of tolerating that some groups, like the SSPX but also others, would hold themselves to a stricter reading or older understanding. That should not be a problem (regardless of the gnashing of teeth among liberal bishops). As I – no expert – see it, the deal would in its essence be: you roundly admit that the council remained within the Catholic faith, and stop questioning that, we stop the (shameful, anyway) guerrilla against you and those of a more Traditional persuasion, and then we take a couple of decades to work out the theological details, which we in the meantime agree to disagree on, acknowledging we’re Catholics on both sides. Mind you, I have no doubt that at the end of that, an awful lot of confusion and poor writing will have fallen by the wayside, were such a process to happen. The SSPX c.s. will have a lot more staying power than the libs, besides the arguments.
– As for the bishops, perhaps the Holy Father might play it a bit differently. As in ‘well, I recognize that my traditionally-inclined flock could do with bishops. So I have (e.g.) a great guy of the ICKSP, one from the FSSP, one from Le Barroux, and we’re going to ordain them and task them to administer to those attached to the vetus ordo around the world. We’ll gladly add two more names to that list from your SSPX ranks you wish to propose (subject to some obvious vetting – of the first 4, some results no-one wants to repeat). Pick any bishop in good standing as consacrator, or I (the pope) will gladly do it, your call’.
This would help in the following ways: if the argument is about the pastoral needs of the tradition-adhering flock, the problem is solved regardless of what the SSPX answers. Let’s not have that problem nor give the society that argument. Secondly, it would emphasize that there are more lambs in that part of the flock than the SSPX alone. It would be necessary to deal separately with the SSPX in order to bring them into fully onboard (no need to be too precise about their status now or over a few months), but the issues that need to be worked out, both pastoral and regarding theological writing, are broader than just the society. They do not, and should not, have a monopoly on the work to solve those issues.
What a valuable resource this post is. Thank you, Father!
My recollection from SSPX seminary is that there was a major snag with the idea of not preventing someone from acting according to conscience because conscience can be malformed. Consideration of public order, morality, and common good immediately imposes significant restrictions on the idea. At that point, why propose the “not preventing from acting according to conscience” as a principle at all, unless one intends to leave loopholes for problematic interpretation down the line? I think SSPX reasoning goes something like that.
I offer this: A young child, raised and nurtured by two loving parents– one a man, the other a woman– has the best chance of being a normal human being as an adult. If raised by an animal for the first 3 years of his/her life– he is still human but– he cannot behave as one, esp re language and esp about grammar. Tarzan ‘s language in the movies, bad as it is, is not true as shown :)
Use that and consider the likelihood of someone raised in a different faith ever reaching heaven is low…not impossible, just unlikely. But, sadly in today’s Catholic Church itself? Do most of the faithful get good “nurturing”? My pretty bread experience says no and also predicts there will be many Catholic prelates and clergy who will have a lot to answer for when they hit the gate. No Bueno.
The problem is that these documents can be made to say almost anything. There was an article about this at Rorati Caeli recently – https://rorate-caeli.blogspot.com/2026/04/sacrosanctum-concilium-lawyer-examines.html
It points out that statements like Art. 36 – “. . . (1) The use of the Latin language, with due respect to particular law, is to be preserved in the Latin rites.” while appearing to be conservative, actually give permission for any language to be used by allowing themselves to be overruled arbitrarily by “particular law.” So it’s effectively saying, “you can use Latin. Or not.” Which is simply an abdication of responsibility.
Seems like this is the MO for all of Vatican II. Say something that sounds conservative but has an “escape hatch” for anything else. With religious liberty, that is the vague assertion of “immunity from coercion.” Clearly religions that practice human sacrifice aren’t immune from coercion so what does that actually mean? It’s just a punt from one form of stating the problem to another, not a solution.
Also, ironically, the “spirit of Vatican II” is actually conservative as you can see with the implied desire of preserving Latin above. It’s the “letter of Vatican II” that allows endless “particular circumstances,” exceptions and vague assertions of rights to override what rhetorically would appear to be the intent.
Responding to: “On that basis, the SSPX could say: we do not accept any reading of Dignitatis humanae that denies …”
Yes, the SSPX can take that tact which may allow them to continue with acceptance by the the Church leadership. A leadership that is clearly shaping the Church outwardly to a worldly institution of Liberation Theology (see the Martin Sheen movie “the Catholics” for a vision of that future) and a leadership that has abandoned the salvation of souls…
But it’s clear that this would be a bad compromise. I see the SSPX as the Catholic militant that did not retreat from the battle (as the Sede’s have done) and worked internal to the Church to keep hold of the deposit of faith.
Where would the Church be without their fight? I would say that we would be post Vatican III as mentioned in the above referenced movie (please watch it!).
If only the Sede’s would see that their abandonment of that internal fight was a cowardice, a cowardice that Lefebvre and others renounce by their actions.
I pray that the Holy Spirit guide the General Superior Pagliarani and keep the FSSPX united in this upcoming chastisement.
This is excellent. Very clear and pointed. Thank you!
I have evolved significantly on this question in the last 10 or so years, from initially very sympathetic to Pink’s imtegralist position into holding Benedict XVI’s view (as articulated by Ronnheimer). I think:
1. These are hard issues and we need charity in our disagreements (this includes the SSPX). I think Pink is wrong, not that he is a heretic.
2. Those of us sympathetic to tradition should remember that when Donum veritatis argues that magisterial statements may be deficient in some respects because they are historically conditioned, this applies just as much to the popes of the 19th century as it does to Vatican II. Anyone who doubts that should read O’Malley’s book on Vatican I.
@Not
Fr. Feeney managed to get both Garrigou-Lagrange and Rahner opposed to him.
That has to be some kind of award. Not the good kind, but some kind.
I feel that the question of religious indifferentism, or public equality of religions, or whether society has any moral duties towards God do not seem to be the crux of the dispute about Dignitatis Humanae.
It seems that the closest wording to Dignitatis is in the line of Quanta Cura where Pius IX condemned as a “totally false notion of social government”: “the best condition of civil society, in which no duty is recognized, as attached to the civil power, of restraining by enacted penalties, offenders against the Catholic religion, except so far as public peace may require.” So the crux of the dispute is the question of whether Dignitatis Humanae can be conciled with Quanta Cura’s duty of civil authority to restrain actions that are against the Catholic religion provided that public peace is maintained. In both Quanta Cura and Dignitatis, it is assumed that public peace must be maintained, but in the first, the state has a duty to penalize offences against Catholic religion, and in the second, the state seems to be forbidden from doing so. Please correct me if I am wrong, but it seems that even Dignitatis’ narrower claim that “civil authority, must not […] suppress religious activity by arbitrary force, provided public order, morality, and the common good are safeguarded” still seems difficult to reconcile with that duty in Quanta Cura, unless “morality and common good” can be said to include enacting penalties against the violators of the Catholic religion?
Since “A Catholic may respectfully withhold full assent from disputed formulations while maintaining adherence to the prior magisterium and awaiting clarification from higher authority”, why is it the case that Cardinal Fernández (and Müller as well previously) insisted on acceptance of the whole Council for there to be regularization? In my private conversations, I have gotten the impression that this insistence is leading the SSPX superiors to believe that the Vatican has no intention to negotiate in good faith.
I will add that the decrees of Vatican II require so much work, such nuanced readings, reference to so many footnotes, and so much context in order to be understood in a way that doesn’t flat out contradict the well established traditional teaching of the Church is somewhat damning in an of itself.
To echo Fr. Z’s plea – the SSPX issue, and the concerns that are driving the issue, really are the most important thing on the Pope’s plate right now. It really does merit his focused attention, for the good of the entire Church.
Father, excellent article and as someone raised in the Novus Ordo and now attends the SSPX Mass Centers (as well as FSSP), this helps clarifies some of the argument.
The practical implementation of DH (to the average or sub-average layman), is DH says your conscious dictates what you can believe, with no limits and all can be saved…or that is how it was presented & interpreted to my family as a child, young adult, adult and prior to me finding Liturgical & Theological Peace at SSPX mass Centers, where the pre-V2 catechisms are promoted.
I agree, the post-Council crowd really did fumble the interpretations, but with such loosely worded documents, it should not surprise anyone we now have a Crisis of Faith which has been raging since the end of the Council.
[Sorry for the length of this comment. It reflects my best understanding at the moment. I have unfortunately, not been able track down, again, some of the original documents, online – I should save a good reference when I find it. Also, I can’t preview this, so I hope it formats properly.]
Dear WVC,
You wrote:
“ It’s pretty difficult to square the tone of “Nostra Aetate” with just about anything the pre-Vatican II popes were saying about religion indifferentism and non-Christian faiths. It’s also flat out wrong when it asserts things such as the notion that Catholics worship the same God as the Muslims and the Jews. It’s just not historically, theologically, philosophically, or metaphysically honest to claim this.”
This, indeed, would be true if Nostra Aetate actually said that. This is a subtle point. The actual Latin says:
Ecclesia cum aestimatione quoque Muslimos respicit qui unicum Deum adorant, viventem et subsistentem, misericordem et omnipotentem, Creatorem caeli et terrae (5), homines allocutum, cuius occultis etiam decretis toto animo se submittere student, sicut Deo se submisit Abraham ad quem fides islamica libenter sese refert.
Which the Vatican website translates as:
Church regards with esteem also the Moslems. They adore the one God, living and subsisting in Himself; merciful and all- powerful, the Creator of heaven and earth,(5) who has spoken to men; they take pains to submit wholeheartedly to even His inscrutable decrees, just as Abraham, with whom the faith of Islam takes pleasure in linking itself, submitted to God.
They adore (adorant) is different than they worship. Adoration is a condition of reference: when you adore, you point to an object having specific properties. As such, since Jews, Christians, and Moslems, when they use the word , “God,” refer to that being who is omnipotent, omniscient, impassible, unitary, etc., they are referring to the same Godhead. That neither Jews nor Moslems recognize the additional attribute of the Incarnation, does not, in itself, change the nature of God – they fail to recognize a valid exercise of His power, while not denying that He could do it.
The notion that Moslems adore the same God comes from a letter written by a Medieval Pope (Pope Gregory VII, 1076, letter XXI) to the Moslem king, Anzir of Mauritania. The pope never met a Moslem, but relied on the reportage of an underling who met the king. The footnote in Nostra Aetate that references this letter points to Migne, Patrologia:
https://archive.org/details/patrologiaecurs02unkngoog/page/n228/mode/2up
The important Latin reads:
Hanc itaque charitatem nos et vos specialibus nobis quam cæteris gentibus debemus, qui unum Deum, licet diverso modo, credimus et confitemur, qui eum Creatorem sæculorum et gubernatorem hujus mundi quotidie laudamus et veneramur.
Roughly translated, this reads:
Therefore, we and you owe this love to those who are special to us rather than to other nations, who believe and confess one God, although in different ways, and who daily praise and venerate him as the Creator of the ages and the ruler of this world.
This letter does not say worship nor adore. The operative verbs are: credimus et confitemur and laudamus et veneramur, which are to believe, confess, praise, and venerate, respectively. Nostra Aetate glosses praise and venerate in Gregory’s letter as adore. The Latin is adorant in Nostra Aetate.
As such, this is not wrong. Christians, Jews, and Moslems refer to the same divine bring when they adore, because there can only be one God who qualifies as The Divine.
The use of the word, worship, is problematic, however. To worship comes with the idea of king hood as the offering of acts pleasing to the king. As such, the king has to tell you what he wants, otherwise, he has no moral authority to punish you for that which you could not know. This is referred to as The Justice of the King. It is a right of the subjects to know the king’s wishes. As such, worship must be revelatory in nature – the king has to speak. Here is why Christians and Moslems, while adoring the same God, do not worship the same God: the revelation of the acts of worship are different, implying two different revelation streams, implying two different kings. God cannot contradict himself. He cannot make two universal laws that oppose each other. Unfortunately, Christianity and Islam are both revelatory religions and while both claim that their revelations of what is pleasing to God comes from God, Christianity’s revelation claims to be directly from the mouth of God’s son, who is God, while Islam claims a merely indirect revelation through a man and denies the revelation from God’s son, whom they deny as being God. So, no, they do not worship the same God.
Fortunately, Nostra Aetate does not use the word for worship, although many people incorrectly translate adorant as worship. It is properly translated as adore, so is, technically, theologically correct, but it is an unfortunately vague statement which confuses the Faithful.
Now, the earliest reference we have about the theology of Islam comes from St. John of Damascus. He was the last of the Greek Fathers. In his work, The Fountain of Knowledge, in chapter three, On Heresies, in section 101, he has an extended treatment of Islam. To quote the discussion from Catholic 365 (you may read the entire article, here: https://www.catholic365.com/article/30037/saint-john-of-damascus-his-encounter-with-islam.html):
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The final chapter On Heresies identifies the Muslims as the “religion of the Ishmaelites that leads people astray and prevails up to the present.” He refers to Muslims as Ishmaelites from Ishmael and Hagarenes from Hagar. Sometimes he employs the term Saracens possibly meaning from Sarah or as a generic term for Eastern or Arab. During his time Islam was not seen by Christians as a universal religion but as the religion of the Arabs.
?Unlike today, Islam was in its infancy and identified with the Arabs who had been for centuries independent tribes conducting trade between Europe, Africa, and the Middle East (Near-East). Now under Islam they had joined together and began conquering Christian North Africa and the Syriac-Christian Near-East. Such had been the fate of Damascus, a once great Christian capital now during the life of “the Damascene,” under Arab Muslim rule.
Saint John mentions that they, the Arabs had been polytheists, then during the reign of the Eastern Roman Emperor Herakleios, a false prophet named Muhammad had arisen. For St. John the work of Muhammad consisted of a fashioning together a monotheism from the Old and New Testaments under the influence of an Arian Assyrian Christian Monk, Bahira, who he (Muhammad) was friends with.
?He sums up Muhammad’s teachings as: One God who is creator of everything, who neither begets or is begotten. Christ is a word of God and his spirit, created and a slave, born of the Virgin Mary. Christ in Muhammad’s teaching was nor crucified, did not die, but was assumed into heaven because God loved him. St. John criticizes the teachings of Muhammad as being claims of revelation without any witnesses, who made false comparisons with Moses and spoke of revelations in his sleep. St. John condemns the Islamic attacks on Christians with their teaching of shirk or idolatry for accusing Christians of actually worshipping the Cross (remember Muhammad did not believe Jesus had been crucified).
?Saint John’s Defense of Christianity:
St. John states that Sacred Scripture proclaims that Christ is the Son of God and God. If Christ is the Word of God, then to deny that Christ is God is to deny the divinity of the Word of God, as a result of which he calls the Muslims mutilators of God. He accuses the Muslims of worshipping the Ka’ba (the cubed shrine in Mecca) and discredits their Abrahamic traditions concerning the Ka’ba.
?Attacking the Qur’an (Koran) in the Surah entitled the Woman, he criticizes the Muslim allowance for polygamy and divorce.
?St. John says that Muhammad has no claim to prophetic authority and his descriptions of Paradise are unfounded.
?He ends with a list of Muslim teachings without comment: mandatory circumcision and circumcision of women, no sabbath and no baptism, dietary laws that only partially reflect the Old Testament and prohibition against the drinking of wine.
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Thus, a very different style of worship by a Christian heresy from traditional modes of Christian worship. Shame on Vatican II for being conciliatory with a Christian heresy. That passage in Nostra Aetate would read no differently is one substituted Arian for Moslem:
“Church regards with esteem also the Arians. They adore the one God, living and subsisting in Himself; merciful and all- powerful, the Creator of heaven and earth who has spoken to men;”
Who would think this right?
The Chicken
Most of us live in countries that do not prioritize the true faith, under rulers who do not follow the true faith. We have to deal with the practical realities of being in a pluralistic secular society.
In 15th century Catholic Spain, a heretic like Trump may have been arrested by the Inquisition. Rightly so many would argue. In the 21st century many traditional Catholics would vote for him for pragmatic reasons, despite traditional teaching that the state must prioritize the Catholic faith and suppress heresy.
The Cavalier, Fr. Feeney also had dinner across from Teilhard deChardin . He listened to him go on about evolution. He stood up , called him a heretic and left.
Woe to the Jesuits.
It’s always an honor to get scolded by the Chicken. I haven’t seen your comments here in a long while.
Dear WVC,
My old friend…I did not mean to sound like I was scolding you. One of the fastest ways to start a theological food fight online is to assert that Moslems do not worship the same God as Christians. Many years ago Ed Feser had a good article on adoration and I found a dissertation online (which I never saved, and I can’t find it, again) about the justice of the king. Then, in reading Nostra Aetate and looking at the latin reference about the passage we both referenced, I put it all together to make the distinction between adoration and worship and how they are treated in Nostra Aetate. I have been clarifying the situation to people whenever the topic comes up. In a moment of weakness I opened my mouth in the comments and made the long post, yesterday. Hopefully, it is correct and clarifies the important distinction between adoration and worship.
Worship belongs to a religion, whereas adoration does not. Religion is a binding of oneself to modes of thought and action in the service of a king. Adoration can be done even by pagans who look at the night sky and discover something greater than themselves. St. Paul as much says so in Romans. Moslems have a different worship than Christians, so they necessarily have a different type of religion.
What struck me as odd about Nostra Aetateis that the whole paragraph about the Moslems could be replaced by the word Arian and it would be indistinguishable in sentiment. I don’t know why the Church would seek a rapprochement the Moselms, but not the Arians (after all, Islam is an offshoot of Arianism). Either the Church has gotten softer as she ages, or the statement about Moslems is a political statement, a prudential pastoral statement for the sake of politics. I cannot say which, but is the Church going to apologize for the thousands of Arians who were persecuted in ages past? These are areas I have to keep my beak out of, but it still is strange to me. I would like to have been witness to the deliberations that went on in drafting the document. To find that obscure passage in Minges is impressive. There are 217 volumes in the Latin and 4 volumes of indexes.
Anyway, nice to get in touch.
The Chicken
Thanks to The Masked Chicken for these comments!
Something of interest I caught up with recently is Professor Sidney H. Griffith’s well-annotated English translation of the (Arabic) Letter to a Muslim Friend by Saint Paul of Antioch, Bishop of Sidon (of uncertain date: apparently after 1046 and before 1232!) – as published in The Orthodox Church in the Arab World, 700–1700: An Anthology of Sources, ed. Samuel Noble and Alexander Treiger (Ithaca: Cornell University Press/DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 2014). With any luck you and any other interested readers may find a good library nearby with a copy, like I did.