Dignitatis Humanae and the Rediscovery of Religious Freedom

This special Summer–Fall 2013 double issue of Communio takes up various aspects of the question of religious liberty.

“[T]he juridical idea of freedom, in abstracting the negative meaning of a right from its positive link with truth, so far . . . renders the right to religious freedom arbitrary; while the Declaration’s idea of freedom, in affirming freedom’s positive . . . obligation to seek the truth . . . demands a genuinely universal right to religious freedom.”

“[The longing for truth] respects the freedom of all, even of the person who calls himself agnostic, indifferent, or atheist.”

"The province of the Church is the world."

"We have all heard quite a bit about the dictatorship of relativism. Perhaps it is time that we also discuss the despotism of tolerance."

" Dignitatis humanae had a rough passage through the rocks and shoals of conciliar politics, the effects of which may still be seen . . . [but it has had a] complex, and sometimes unforeseen, impact on both Church and world."

"Despite the pressure of ideologies and political systems . . . the Pope called on us never to lose heart for the good of man and society."

“Understanding the meaning of human existence in light of God’s revelation in Christ opens up a new sense of the idea of freedom in relation to truth as well as a new sense of the distinct integrity of the political order.”

“In trying to understand the meaning of religious freedom [the] problem is [one] of admissible forms of public discourse, given the culture generated by political and juridical liberalism.”

"We are facing a radical change of civilization."

"[T]he centrality of religious freedom to the protection of human dignity is, in fact, key to the coherence and viability of the entire human rights project."

"The first Christian cultural revolution is precisely the Christian whose existence is held together and moved by the love of Christ."

“Christians are called to form a Christian civilization, not in the first instance a pure civilization, but one where the Christian message has been brought to bear on the saeculum .”

“[A] liberal vision of the world and society in which all of the members of society are, as citizens, fundamentally equal units is one that is constantly in danger of succumbing to a totalitarianism that obliterates all true plurality.”

“Autonomy, severed from obedience . . . ‘is an ontological lie,’ but also a ‘political and practical lie’ that leaves us at the mercy of majority consensus. It is, rather, the calling of Christ and the eternal destiny he opens for us that makes obedience, and thus true freedom, possible.”

“[T]he Catholic view [of politics] in fact is more catholic, more inclusive, more respectful of the meaning of man and the human condition, of contemporary pluralism, than liberalism.”

“The true ground condition for religious liberty is not official indifference to religion, but rather an insistence upon the pervasive presence of a belief in, and practices, of what DH calls ‘true freedom.’”