ESSAY: VERITATIS SPLENDOR AND STATE ACCOMMODATION OF RELIGIOUS FREEDOM.

• Author: Kolenc, Antony Barone

It is my honor to speak at this conference, which has reflected so wonderfully on the theology and life of Saint John Paul the Great. I am by no means a scholar of Pope John Paul II. I was only a boy when he became Pope but, like many of you, he influenced my life growing up.

In addressing the topic of religious accommodation and John Paul II's encyclical, Veritatis Splendor (August 6, 1993), I will build on the groundwork already laid at this conference. (1) Several talks have focused on John Paul II's teachings about conscience. In fact, the formation and role of conscience constitute a large portion of the relevant teachings in Veritatis Splendor. (2) That encyclical, in turn, builds upon teachings found in Vatican II's Declaration on Religious Freedom, Dignitatis Humanae (December 7, 1965). (3) Another of John Paul II's encyclicals, Redemptor Hominis (March 4, 1979), also addresses the issue of religious freedom and conscience. (4) I will attempt to connect these various teachings on conscience with some of the topics I discuss in my legal scholarship dealing with the freedom of religion.

To that end, in our short time together I will focus on two conscience issues I see at the forefront of religious freedom litigation before the U.S. Supreme Court and the European Court of Human Rights. We have heard much in this conference about these two courts, especially the European Court. The courts have important similarities. They both oversee sovereign nations (or states). Further, they are designed with limited powers and with a duty to act deferentially toward the actions of those states.

My reflections today are a tale of some of the cases coming out of those two courts and, of course, a tale about Pope John Paul II.

THREE PRINCIPLES DRAWN FROM JOHN PAUL II'S TEACHINGS

I will start the discussion with three principles I have drawn from the Church's teachings on conscience, some of which have already been explored by others at this conference.

The first principle involves the idea of the dignity of the human person in obeying God's will. John Paul II explains that our freedom--our dignity as persons--is drawn from obedience to our conscience, properly formed:

The relationship between man's freedom and God's law is most deeply lived out in the "heart" of the person, in his moral conscience. As the Second Vatican Council observed:... "[M]an has in his heart a law written by God. To obey it is the very dignity of man...." (5) That is God's will: writing His law in our hearts. What a beautiful concept.

John Paul II later talks about this freedom being a gift that has been given to us... this gift to obey. It is the basis of our dignity as persons created in God's image:

Human freedom... is given as a gift, one to be received like a seed and to be cultivated responsibly. It is an essential part of that creaturely image which is the basis of the dignity of the person. (6) So, conscience and religious freedom are critical concepts.

The second principle, which Veritatis Splendor addresses extensively, is the importance of forming our conscience appropriately because conscience can err. What we cannot do is use our conscience as an absolute value, saying that because my conscience tells me something, that is now the absolute morality that I can live by:

Certain currents of modern thought have gone so far as to exalt freedom to such an extent that it becomes an absolute, which would then be the source of values.... The individual conscience is accorded the status of a supreme tribunal of moral judgment.... [S]ome have come to adopt a radically subjectivistic concept of moral judgment. (7) John Paul II spends a good deal of time in the encyclical trying to disabuse us of that modern notion of conscience. He seeks to help us understand what it means to develop our conscience properly in relation to the teachings of the Magisterium of the Church. Otherwise, we become a law unto ourselves and ignore moral objective truth--in other words, each person has their own truth (which may be where we have ended up in today's culture).

The third principle--regardless of how well we form our conscience--is that, when it comes to the individual vis-a-vis the State, the State is supposed to respect our conscience as part of our religious freedom. Even if our conscience is ill-formed, the State must still respect it (within limits, of course):

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