Pope John Paul II and religious liberty.

AuthorBradley, Gerard V.

Pope John Paul II will deservedly be remembered as one of the previous century's great champions of freedom. He championed the cause of all peoples oppressed by their governments, especially those nations enslaved behind the Iron Curtain. (1) He championed the cause of human rights, most especially the right of each person to immunity against certain wrongs--torture, intentional killing, and exploitation of various sorts. (2) John Paul II's encyclical Veritatis Splendor is justly regarded as a profound meditation on the deepest relation between human freedom and objective moral truth. (3)

Pope John Paul II was no less committed to the cause of religious freedom. He was (as we shall explore below) a leader during the Second Vatican Council's development of its document on religious freedom, Dignitatis Humanae. (4) He often spoke in favor of the individual freedom that the religious quest requires, and even presupposes. (5) But John Paul II did not really develop, along either philosophical or theological lines, the doctrines of Dignitatis Humanae concerning the civil right of religious liberty, the whole complex of problems regarding religion and the state. (6) He was, moreover, almost silent about the most difficult question of meaning and interpretation in Dignitatis Humanae: whether it is ever morally licit for the state to affirm that Catholicism is true?

This Article explores that question in light of Pope John Paul II's thought, Dignitatis Humanae, and arguments based on sound reason. In Part I of this Article, I will introduce, as a background to the discussion at hand, the thought of Pope John Paul II on religious liberty, as expressed both in Dignitatis Humanae and in his own works. In Part II, I will demonstrate that in the official conciliar and post-conciliar teaching, there is an ambiguity with respect to the permissibility of official state recognition of Catholicism. In Part III, I will refine the central question of this Article further, distinguishing my position from one that would hold recognition of the faith by a state to be obligatory. Finally, in Part IV, I will introduce four common arguments that seek to prove that state recognition of Catholicism is incompatible with the contemporary Magisterium or with the Faith itself. I will then rebut each of these four arguments in turn, so as to show that, at least under certain circumstances, state recognition of the true faith is permissible and appropriate.

  1. BACKGROUND OF POPE JOHN PAUL II'S THOUGHT ON RELIGIOUS LIBERTY

    In Tertio Millennio Adveniente, Pope John Paul II said: "The best preparation for the new millennium ... can only be expressed in a renewed commitment to apply, as faithfully as possible, the teachings of Vatican II to the life of every individual and of the whole Church." (7) The Pope had already made the Second Vatican Council ("Council") his personal compass: "Vatican II has always been, and especially during these years of my Pontificate, the constant reference point of my every pastoral action, in the conscious commitment to implement its directives concretely and faithfully...." (8)

    The core of Pope John Paul II's understanding of the Council is the Declaration on Religious Liberty, Dignitatis Humanae. (9) Before he became Pope, Bishop (and later, Archbishop) Karol Wojtyla attended all four of the Council's sessions. (10) He "participated vigorously" in the debate over the religious liberty document, making one oral and two written interventions. (11) Wojtyla believed, according to his sometimes collaborator and intellectual biographer Rocco Buttiglione, that the heart of the Council was the "acknowledgment of freedom of conscience as a natural and inalienable right of the human person." (12) Along with certain portions of the Constitution on the Church in the Modern World--Gaudium et Spes--John Paul II considered Dignitatis Humanae to be an interpretive key to the entire Council. (13)

    This "key," however, was a fragile one. Wojtyla was concerned that the freedom of conscience recognized at the Council could, if "exercised improperly," lead people into a relativistic worldview that included religious indifferentism, wherein one religion is more or less as true (or useful or valid) as another. (14) In fact, by the end of the Council in 1965 (15) the "demand" of a growing number of people to exercise "their own judgment" subject to no coercion was increasingly morphing into a demand for antinomian freedom from moral restraint. (16) The Council also called for dialogue with contemporary philosophies. (17) Wojtyla worried, though, about a "misunderstanding of philosophical pluralism within Catholicism." (18) He feared that "if certain living elements of classical philosophy did not survive, then there [would be] very little chance of maintaining the link with traditional affirmations of the faith." (19)

    These concerns underlie Pope John Paul II's abiding concern to persuade his untold number of hearers not only of the compatibility of true freedom with truth, but that apart from the truth there can be no real freedom. These are the themes of perhaps John Paul II's greatest papal writing, the 1993 encyclical letter, Veritatis Splendor--The Splendor of Truth. (20) John Paul II's most illuminating work on religious freedom took up the burden of Veritatis Splendor: religious liberty is best understood, most cogently justified, and exercised most capaciously only in relation to religious truth--which is, uniquely, Catholicism. (21)

    John Paul II taught that a person fully knows himself or herself only in and through faith as a disciple of Jesus Christ, called to build the Kingdom and thus to achieve salvation by, first, adhering to the objective moral law and, second, discerning and faithfully carrying out his or her unique vocation. (22) This destiny transcends earthly things and requires that the person be free. "[I]n constantly reaffirming the transcendent dignity of the person, the Church's method is always that of respect for freedom." (23)

    Why free? Because God, through Jesus, calls human beings to a response of faith by which they freely entrust themselves to the God revealed by Jesus. (24) Faith is thus comprised of two things: assent to revealed truths and personal adhesion to the Lord Jesus. (25) Neither of these two components of Catholic faith is effective save where the individual acts freely, for himself or herself. For no one can profess faith for another. This is theological faith.

    We can see the sharp contrast to "religious belief" in Dominus Iesus: "[T]hat sum of experience and thought that constitutes the human treasury of wisdom and religious aspiration, which man in his search for truth has conceived and acted upon in his relationship to God and the Absolute." (26) Religious belief is the experience of a continuing search for absolute truth, while still "lacking assent to God who reveals himself." (27)

    This natural searching, too, must be free. "[E]ach individual has a right to be respected in his own journey in search of the truth," Pope John Paul II wrote. (28) He also stated that there is a prior "grave" moral obligation to search for the truth and to adhere to it once known. (29) "In Christ," however, "religion is no longer a "blind search for God' but the response of faith to God who reveals himself ..., a response made possible by that one Man" by Whom, and in Whom, "all creation responds to God." (30)

    The picture presented thus far by John Paul II is that of natural humanity, reaching up to God, seeking the truth about God and God's will for us. This human reaching is limited in its fulfillment to the truths and rewards of natural religion. Natural religion includes the truths that there is a greater than human source of meaning and value, that this source is somehow responsible for the existence of contingent beings and matter, and that human beings are therefore dependent, in an important way, upon this source for their well-being, even for their existence. (31) John Paul II maintained that humanity naturally wants God, or wants to want God, and will seek God if not deterred or prevented by disorder. (32) Human beings are spiritually native fliers; they are hardwired to soar after things hidden beyond the skies.

    Evangelization seeks to fulfill and perfect this natural urge by the light of revelation in Jesus. "Those who obey the promptings of the Spirit of truth are already on the way of salvation. But the Church, to whom this truth has been entrusted, must go out to meet their desire, so as to bring them the truth." (33) In this way revelation in and through Jesus perfects and fulfills religious liberty, understood as a good human effort.

    At the heart of Pope John Paul II's "Church-state" doctrine is, then, freedom--freedom of the individual seeking and of the Church preaching. He repeatedly affirmed the Council's teaching that:

    It is only right ... that at all times and in all places, the Church should have true freedom to preach the faith, to teach her social doctrine, to exercise her role freely among men, and also to pass moral judgment in those matters which regard public order when the fundamental rights of a person or the salvation of souls require it. (34) Though nothing in what I have described--nor anything else in his papal writings and teachings, as far as I know--amends, changes, or modifies the doctrines of the Council, the late Pope's work constitutes an unsurpassable enrichment of that doctrine, indeed an irreplaceable explanation or meditation on it.

  2. OFFICIAL CONCILIAR AND POST-CONCILIAR TEACHING: AMBIGUITY ON STATE RECOGNITION

    Pope John Paul II said very little about religious liberty as a civil right; that is, as a norm of action by public authority, its extent and limits within political society. The interpretive key here, too, is the Council. According to Weigel, the religious freedom debate at Vatican II was "stalled" at the level of "Church-state" theory when...

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