Catholicism and Religious Freedom

Transcription

1 Karl Gabriel Christian Spiess Katja Winkler Catholicism and Religious Freedom Renewing the Church in the Second Vatican Council With a Foreword by José Casanova Ferdinand Schöningh

2 Umschlagfoto: Lothar Wolleh Bibliografijische Information der Deutschen Nationalbibliothek Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek verzeichnet diese Publikation in der Deutschen Nationalbibliografijie; detaillierte bibliografijische Daten sind im Internet über abrufbar. Alle Rechte vorbehalten. Dieses Werk sowie einzelne Teile desselben sind urheberrechtlich geschützt. Jede Verwertung in anderen als den gesetzlich zugelassenen Fällen ist ohne vorherige schriftliche Zustimmung des Verlags nicht zulässig Verlag Ferdinand Schöningh, ein Imprint der Brill Gruppe (Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, Niederlande; Brill USA Inc., Boston MA, USA; Brill Asia Pte Ltd, Singapore; Brill Deutschland GmbH, Paderborn, Deutschland) Internet: Einbandgestaltung: Evelyn Ziegler, München Herstellung: Brill Deutschland GmbH, Paderborn ISBN (paperback) ISBN (e-book)

3 Contents Foreword vii José Casanova Introduction 1 1 Dignitatis humanae: Development of the Text. The Genesis of the Declaration of the Second Vatican Council on the Right of the Person and of Communities to Social and Civil Freedom in Matters Religious The Document of Fribourg (27 December 1960) The Second Document in the Preparatory Phase (18 June 1962) The First Conciliar Version of the Text (19 November 1963): The Fifth Chapter of the Decree on Ecumenism The Second Conciliar and First Independent Text Version: De libertate religiosa (23 September 1964) Religious Freedom at the Height of the Council Controversies: The Revised Text of the Declaration (17 November 1964) Further Uncertainty and Turbulent Discussions: The Fourth Conciliar Version of the Text (15 September 1965) On the Way to Promulgation? The Fifth Conciliar Version of the Text (18-25 October 1965) The Eighth Text on Religious Freedom in the Final Weeks of the Council (17-19 November 1965) 47 2 Modernity Religion Catholicism The Concept of Modernity Religion and Modernity Catholicism and Modernity Summary 65 3 Religious Freedom The Concept of Religious Freedom Religious Freedom in the Doctrine of the Catholic Church prior to the Second Vatican Council Religious Freedom as Interpreted by the Second Vatican Council Summary 94

4 vi Contents 4 Continuity Change Break? Attempts at Explaining the Path Taken by Catholicism to Recognizing Religious Freedom Strict Continuity of Church Doctrine as a Theological Prerequisite: Arthur Fridolin Utz s Thesis Autonomy and Theonomy: Walter Kasper s Thesis of a Constitutional and a Theological Level Qualitative Change in the Course of a Learning Process: Rudolf Uertz s Thesis of a Personal-Ethical Turn Transfer of Religious Freedom from Secular-rational Law into Catholic State Doctrine: Ernst-Wolfgang Böckenförde s Thesis of a Break in Tradition Factors of Change National Socialism and the Second World War Declaration of Human Rights and Global Organizations Economic Development: The Golden Age, East-West Confrontation and the Cold War US Catholicism and John C. Murray s Contribution Plurality Internal to Catholicism Political Catholicism, Catholic Parties, and Christian Democracy The Catholic System of Clubs and Associations Council Dynamics and Papal Charisma The Path to Recognizing Religious Freedom as a Two-stage Learning Process 257 References 265 Acknowledgements 293

5 Foreword José Casanova, Georgetown University It is a pleasure to have the opportunity to offfer some prefatory remarks to the English edition of Catholicism and Religious Freedom. The book offfers what is arguably the most comprehensive account of the tortuous road through which the Catholic Church arrived at the offfijicial recognition of the modern principle of religious freedom as an inalienable individual human right grounded in the sacred dignity of the human person. The Declaration on Religious Freedom, Dignitatis Humanae, was in fact the last offfijicial document of the Second Vatican Council. The highly revised and amended fijinal draft was fijinally voted upon and approved by an overwhelming majority of the Council Fathers and was offfijicially promulgated by Pope Paul VI on December 7, 1965, the last day before the closing of the Council. The account is comprehensive in its interdisciplinary approach, its multifaceted and multivariable analysis, and its nuanced and balanced interpretation of the complex historical processes, before and during the Council, which culminated in the Declaration. Nobody can seriously question the fact that the Declaration represents a historical watershed in the offfijicial doctrine of the Catholic Church vis a vis church-state relations, the modern secular world, the use of coercion in upholding Truth, constitutional civil liberties and individual rights. In this respect, the Declaration can be interpreted rightly as a paradigm shift from the right of Truth and tolerance of error to the rights of the person, as well as a shift in emphasis from the defense of libertas ecclesiae to libertas personae. What has remained controversial and highly contested since the end of the Council until the present is whether such historical watershed and paradigm shift ought to be interpreted as an accommodation to liberal secular principles, which amounts to a radical rupture with the Catholic tradition, as famously argued by the German Constitutional Judge and legal scholar Ernst-Wolfgang Böckenförde. Or, alternatively, whether it represents a theological reformulation which maintains nonetheless strict continuity with the Church s teachings, as argued by the German scholar Arthur Fridolin Utz. The argumentative thrust of the book through its many layers is to show that the alternative of rupture vs continuity entails a simplistic and false dichotomy. Instead, the book reconstructs the historical path that led Catholicism to the recognition of religious freedom as a complex collective learning process,

6 viii Foreword which was historically contingent and open-ended. The argument emphasizes three diffferent though interrelated important points. First, one should not regard Catholicism as a self-contained unity, apart from and untouched by its socio-historical surroundings, nor should one assume an internally homogeneous Catholicism that changes at the same time in its entirety. That means recognizing the plurality of hierarchies and actors, of traditions and theological interpretations, of religious and lay organizations, of socio-cultural and socio-political milieus of the many diffferent local churches, which together constitute the global Catholic Church. Only then can one take into account the crucial relevance that the experience of American Catholicism, the argumentation of the American theologian John Courney Murray and the interventions of the North American bishops had for the redefijinition of the meaning of religious freedom for the entire Catholic Church at the Council. This could explain how the position of the Church s periphery suddenly seemed more plausible than the traditional position held by the Church s center. Secondly, one needs to take into account the entire context of world-historical transformations from the catastrophic experience of National-Socialism and World War II, to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights by the United Nations, the Cold War between the Free World and Atheist Communism and the triumph of Christian Democracy within Catholic Western Europe, which made possible the redefijinition of the meaning of religious freedom, outside as well as within Catholicism, and prepared the ground for the convocation of the Second Vatican Council by Pope Johannes XXIII as a process of aggiornamento. Finally, one must take into account the crucial relevance of the collective experience of the Council itself as a contingent yet highly relevant world-historical event full of unintended consequences for the history of the Church and one can say confijidently today for the history of the world. The book reconstructs in detail the history of the seven preliminary drafts of the Declaration, the fijirst two pre-conciliar drafts and the four diffferent drafts that were produced by diffferent committees with much bureaucratic intrigue, theological disputation and factional divisions throughout the sessions of the Council. It also emphasizes the role of Johannes XXIII s 1963 encyclical Pacem in Terris in fijirst legitimating the modern discourse of human rights in general and religious freedom as a human right in particular. No less relevant for the fijinal conciliar debates on religious freedom was the discourse of Pope Paul VI before the United Nations General Assembly on October 4, In his address the Pope praised and supported the United Nations for its proclamation of the fundamental rights and duties of the human being, of his dignity and freedom,

7 Foreword ix and above all of religious freedom. For precisely in this is expressed the sacred character of human reason and existence. There is little doubt that ultimately it was the experience of the Council itself that explains how the majority of Council Fathers came to support the paradigm shift from the traditional defense of tolerance of error to the unambiguous defense of religious freedom, not as a break with the Catholic tradition, but as a new revelation of the fundamental truth always present in Biblical revelation and in the authoritative tradition of the Church, namely, that God s gift of salvation can only be accepted freely and without coercion. In theological language, this means that the Council itself was experienced by the Council Fathers, in the words of Pope Johannes XXIII, as a new Pentecost. In Durkheimian sociological language, one can explain the same phenomenon as the experience of creative collective efffervescence which serves as the social foundation for new moral norms and sacred values. While the book s analysis recognizes the role of the American Catholic periphery in transforming the Catholic center, the entire argument is still framed within a predominantly German and Western European perspective, which fails to recognize sufffijiciently the role of all the other global Catholic peripheries from Latin America and the Caribbean, from Africa, from Asia and from Oceania in the great paradigm shift that all the Documents of the Second Vatican Council, and not just the Declaration on Religious Freedom, represent for the Catholic tradition and for the tradition of ecumenical councils of the Church. The great German theologian, Karl Rahner, was the fijirst to call attention to the fact that this was the fijirst truly global ecumenical council of the Church, with tremendous repercussions for the experience of all the Council Fathers, for the synodal dynamics present in the lengthy drafting and debates that accompanied most of the documents, and most particularly the last three Documents of the Council: the Declaration on Religious Freedom, Dignitatis Humanae; the Declaration on the Relation of the Church to non-christian Religions, Nostra Aetate; and the Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World, Gaudium et Spes. The drafting and the passage of Dignitatis Humanae cannot be understood or explained properly without reference to the drafting and passage of Nostra Aetate and Gaudium et Spes. The drafting of all three documents was closely interrelated. The draft of the document on religious freedom was originally intended as chapter 5 of a decree on ecumenism, of which the draft of the Decree on the Jews, which eventually became Nostra Aetate, was going to serve as chapter 4. Both drafts and the debates on the entire document on ecumenism became from 1964 till the end of the Council also closely related with the

8 x Foreword famous and equally contested and controversial Schema VIII, On the Church in the Modern World. All three documents went through lengthy and heated debates through various sessions of the Council. This meant that they were not so much drafted before the Council, but truly emerged from the floor of the council itself in the synodal debates. All three were the last documents to be approved in the last and fijinal session of the Council: Nostra Aetate on October 28, 1965, and Dignitatis Humanae and Gaudium et Spes literally on the last working day of the Council, on December 7, All three were passed by similar overwhelming majorities, while being opposed by the same traditionalist minority. Nostra Aetate was passed with 2,221 votes in favor and 88 against. Gaudium et Spes was passed with 2,307 votes in favor and 75 against, while Dignitatis Humanae was approved with almost identical support, 2,308 yes and 70 nay. The opposition came from the same core group of traditionalist Curia cardinals, a large number of Italian bishops and the majority of Spanish bishops, who came to the Council convinced that the Franco authoritarian National-Catholic regime represented the ideal Catholic traditional model of church-state relations. What united the three documents moreover was the similar hermeneutic of discerning the signs of the times, to which all three refer. Gaudium et Spes in the introduction states that the Church has always the duty of scrutinizing the signs of the times and interpreting them in the light of the Gospel. Nostra Aetate, the document which recognizes religious pluralism as an irremediable fact and as signs of the times of our global age, begins with the words, In our time, when day by day mankind is being drawn closer together, and the ties between diffferent peoples are becoming stronger, the Church examines more closely the relationship to non-christian religions. In her task of preaching unity and love among men, indeed among nations, she considers above all in this declaration what men have in common and what draws them to fellowship (#1). Interreligious dialogue would seem to follow naturally from such fellowship and thus, the text continues, The Church, therefore, exhorts her sons that through dialogue and collaboration with the followers of other religions they recognize, preserve and promote the good things, spiritual and moral, as well as the socio-cultural values fund among these men. (#2) It is obvious that the defense of religious freedom here has a very diffferent source than the secular reason of the liberal state or of European secular modernity. European secular modernity advocates freedom of religion as the freedom of individual conscience from the confessional state church but has little interest in or experience of religious pluralism, as the Westphalian principle, cuius regio eius religio, led throughout Western Europe fijirst to homogeneous

9 Foreword xi religious confessionalization and then to homogeneous secularization without the recognition, preservation or promotion of religious pluralism. Dignitatis Humanae recognizes the same reality of a post-secular global age characterized by religious pluralism, when in its concluding paragraph it discerns among the signs of the times, the fact that men of the present day want to be able to freely profess their religion in private and public and that therefore religious freedom is greatly necessary especially in the present condition of the human family All nations are coming into even closer unity. Men of diffferent cultures and religions are being brought together in closer relationship. (#15) Without yet having a word for it, the global Council Fathers were clearly recognizing the reality of globalization among the signs of the times, that humanity was entering indeed a new global age distinct from the preceding age of hegemonic Western secular modernity. The entire text of Gaudium et Spes can be read as a critical and prophetic discernment of both the positive dynamics and the negative consequences brought by globalization: This Second Vatican Council, having probed more profoundly into the mystery of the Church, now addresses itself without hesitation, not only to the sons of the Church and to all who invoke the name of Christ, but to the whole of humanity. (#2) Today the human race is involved in a new stage of history Never has the human race enjoyed such an abundance of wealth, resources and economic power, and yet a huge proportion of the world citizens are still tormented by hunger and poverty. Although the world of today has a very vivid awareness of its unity and of how one man depends on another in needful solidarity, it is most grievously torn into opposing camps by conflicting forces (#4) The history of the human community has become all of a piece, where once the various groups of men had a kind of private history of their own. (#5) This was not a self-referential church, nor one still obsessed with its conflict with liberalism and Western secular modernity. It was rather a global church, open to the entire world in dialogue with global humanity, a church scrutinizing prophetically global trends decades before those ideas became platitudes in global media and in social science jargon. This fact, better than anything else, explains in my view the paradigm shift which the Declaration on Religious Freedom represents in the history of the Church s proclamation of Catholic doctrine.

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11 Introduction Fifty years ago, in its declaration on religious freedom at the Second Vatican Council, the Catholic Church renounced coercion as a means of enforcing its claim to truth. This renunciation of coercion in Dignitatis humanae is an act of self-imposed restriction regarding religious claims to truth that is exceptional in the history of religions. It is still extremely difffijicult to explain even today how an institution so steeped in tradition as the Catholic Church could have altered its position so fundamentally. The sincerity of the turn to religious freedom is hardly disputed, and its efffects are obvious the church s role as an advocate of human rights is widely accepted, as is its role as the engine of the so-called third wave of democratization in the 1980s and 1990s. But what is disputed still is how the church arrived at such a position, what reasons and motives led it to reposition itself, what shape this process of change took, and the steps that comprised the process. The characteristics, conditions and dynamics of the path taken by Catholicism to recognizing religious freedom in all its diversity were the object of research of the project Renouncing coercion in religious traditions: modern Catholicism in the fijield of tension between distinction and integration, which was carried out in the Cluster of Excellence Religion and Politics at the University of Muenster. This volume, which appears as Volume 2 in the series Catholicism between religious freedom and coercion, draws on the fijindings of the previous volumes, which were compiled as part of the research project. We shall discuss the following working hypothesis (already formulated in Volume 1): On the one hand, the increased identity of each religious tradition influences how it can behave with regard to contextual factors and therefore determines to some extent the range of possibilities in which development [in this case, modernization] can be realized. On the other, diffferent contextual embeddings can lead to very diffferent developments on the part of religious traditions and therefore determine to some extent the realization of one particular possibility from the range of potentialities (Gabriel/Spiess/Winkler 2010a, 13-14)1. It has become apparent that we should recognize two factors in particular as being decisive when it comes to analyzing and interpreting the modernization process undergone by Catholicism. First, we cannot regard Catholicism as a self-contained entity; we can therefore not assume an internally homogeneous 1 Where we cite a text published originally in German in this volume, the English version given is our translation. Verlag Ferdinand Schöningh, 2019 doi: / _002

12 2 Introduction Catholicism that changes in its entirety all at the same time (Gabriel/Spiess/ Winkler [Eds.] 2012). Rather, Catholicism comprises a plurality of actors, lines of reasoning and contexts, which means that processes of modernization occur at diffferent times and also sometimes unintentionally. It has become apparent, for example, that the opposition between anti-catholic liberalism and antiliberal Catholicism is much less clear and unambiguous than is sometimes assumed in the research. A multilayered approach to investigating the conditions that led to the paradigm shift concerning religious freedom both inside and outside Catholicism therefore seems appropriate (Gabriel/Spiess/Winkler [Eds.] 2013). Second, we must assume that a collective learning process, such as the one undergone by the Catholic Church, was, and still is, a contingent and open-ended historical process. We have to bear in mind that the process of establishing religion as an autonomous entity can certainly not be regarded as an intentional process. This is why we have also not, or not only, chosen to approach the subject through the logic of diffferentiation.2 Political calculation and motivational charisma, for example, had a decisive influence on the course taken by the learning process; but neither can really be explained by pointing to the logic of diffferentiation. A more general approach, one that takes into account the whole discursive process in its various facets and temporally bound dynamics, and that pays particular attention to the prevailing conditions, therefore appears necessary. Our interpretation emphasizes neither break nor continuity. Instead, we describe a collective learning process that in character is both multidimensional (with manifold links within Catholicism on the one hand, and between the framework conditions and church groups and actors on the other) and openended. The thesis that we wish to develop here therefore describes a historical process that leads into the debates at the Council. Diverse factors facilitated and drove the shift to religious freedom up until the Second Vatican Council; at the Council itself, a window of opportunity opened in a sense, and it became possible to argue for religious freedom and to build a majority for that argument. Since the events at the Council constitute, as it were, the culmination of the learning process, we will begin by presenting in our fijirst chapter the stages of development of Dignitatis humanae. Besides describing dynamic processes within the Council and the tenacious struggle for majorities, we will focus on the question of what arguments played a role in the course of the Council, and what efffect they were able to have in the diffferent conciliar phases. 2 See the contributions in: Gabriel/Spiess/Winkler (Eds.) 2010.

13 Introduction 3 In order to be able to describe the learning process undergone by Catholicism adequately, we will explain key terms in our second and third chapters. We can of course only deal with the vast theme of religion and modernity in a very limited way that is, by restricting ourselves to a number of developments that concern the Catholic Church. Since Dignitatis humanae is concerned with the renunciation of political coercion, we will discuss in our second chapter the church-state relationship in the modern period (2.1), and present the changes to the religious landscape in increasingly pluralistic contexts (2.2), especially where this afffects Catholicism (2.3). We will develop in our third chapter a concept of religious freedom (3.1), so that we can then discuss the diffferent interpretations of religious freedom and tolerance within the church. Since we distinguish between church state doctrine regarding religious freedom before the Second Vatican Council (3.2) from its state doctrine at the Council (3.3), we can already begin at this stage to make clear the lines of development and changes in how Catholicism interpreted the relationship between the religious claim to truth and political coercion. Our fourth chapter provides a kind of typology of the theses that have been put forward to answer the question of how it was that the Catholic Church embraced religious freedom. The spectrum ranges from the view of almost complete continuity (4.1: Arthur Fridolin Utz), through the view of a theological mediation between continuity and change (4.2: Walter Kasper), to the thesis of a fundamental normative reorientation (4.3: Rudolph Uertz), and fijinally to the idea of a complete break with tradition (4.4: Ernst-Wolfgang Böckenförde). Building on these foundations, we will then present in our fijifth chapter certain factors of change that have proven relevant in the discourse around Catholicism and religious freedom. We will fijirst focus on the importance of National Socialism and the Second World War (5.1). After 1945, there was an attempt to strengthen international organizations, as well as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. This must also have had an impact on the church s position on human rights (5.2). Economic development in the shape of the post-war boom (5.3), and the East-West conflict (5.4), both promote a tendency on the part of the church and Catholicism to embrace from the 1950s onwards a specifijic form of ties to the West in political and economic terms, as well as a fundamental, albeit hesitant and gradual, turn to a liberal and democratic political model. Alongside, or indeed even because of, these external framework conditions, changes also take place within the Catholic Church: US Catholicism (5.5) has a fundamentally positive experience of the separation of religion and politics, of religious freedom and ideological pluralism and itself develops a positive attitude to liberal democracy. This experience and this position could still be kept under control from the Roman center before the

14 4 Introduction Council; but, at the moment that they were presented at the Council, they were able to gain importance across the whole church. The position of the church periphery suddenly seems more plausible than the traditional position of the center. However, the factor of plurality internal to Catholicism (5.6) shows that liberal and democratic principles were already in place in diffferent parts of Catholicism before they were approved by the church s magisterium. There was to a certain extent a practice of freedom and democracy that preceded the magisterium s position. This applies in parts to political Catholicism (5.7), and especially to the Catholic clubs and associations (5.8), which enabled and promoted the integration of the church and Catholicism into modern, diffferentiated and ideologically plural societies, and (where they existed) into modern, secular constitutional states. There was therefore not only in the US, but also, for example, in the emerging post-war democracies of Central Europe something like a de facto renunciation of political coercion among Catholic organizations (and also among some national bishops conferences), without the church s magisterium having already beforehand endorsed this renunciation. This did not happen until 1965 and the Second Vatican Council, within whose dynamics (5.9) the framework conditions and developments mentioned interacted and driven forward at decisive moments by the two conciliar popes, especially John XXIII, but also Paul VI fijinally led to the overdue renunciation by the church of political coercion in the state, and thus to the recognition of religious freedom. This volume appears more than 50 years after the fijinal vote and promulgation of the declaration on religious freedom on 7 December 1965, one day before the end of the Second Vatican Council. It takes stock of the diffferent interpretations of this major event of church history in the 20th century. It also reconstructs the developments both before and during the Council that made this decision possible. It places the decision in a matrix of contextual factors that together opened a window of opportunity for this turning-point in the relationship of the church to the liberal state. The aim of the volume is to contribute to a broader and deeper understanding of the learning process undergone by the Catholic Church a process unexpected in many respects. It is only when learning processes are understood and internalized that they can be deemed irreversible. Whether our analyses tell us something about further steps that need to be taken to change the Catholic Church, or about processes of change undergone by other religious traditions, is something that only time can tell.

15 chapter 1 Dignitatis humanae: Development of the Text The Genesis of the Declaration of the Second Vatican Council on the Right of the Person and of Communities to Social and Civil Freedom in Matters Religious What is revealing for the issue of the Catholic Church s doctrinal development from rejecting to recognizing the human right to religious freedom is the development of the text that was fijinally promulgated as the declaration on religious freedom at the Second Vatican Council. It is in fact a text that was initially pieced together from two source texts and then developed in a relatively steady and straightforward way although the document did undergo considerable expansions and deletions. The individual phases of development and intermediate stages of the text reflect the debate within the church about religious freedom, and sometimes also the influences that came from outside. The intentions and means of argumentation used by proponents and opponents of the turn to recognizing religious freedom become just as clear as the problems that actually existed with regard to the compatibility of the new position on religious freedom with the tradition. In this chapter, we will diffferentiate eight individual versions of the text: two were developed prior to the Council, fijive were presented, discussed, and again modifijied during the Council, and one was fijinally adopted as Council decision, and announced by Paul VI on 7 December The Document of Fribourg (27 December 1960) One document that can be regarded as the fijirst preliminary text to the later Council declaration on religious freedom was discussed in Fribourg in the last days of December 1960 by two bishops and two theologians namely, by Franz Charrière, bishop of Fribourg, and Emil-Joseph De Smedt, bishop of Bruges, as well as by Georges Bavaud, professor of dogmatics in Fribourg, and Jérôme Hamer, already since 1960 consultant to the Secretariat for Promoting Christian Unity, and also a theologian teaching in Fribourg, but sometimes in Rome and at a faculty of Dominicans in France, too. The group did not conceive this text out of nothing, of course, but rather on the basis of one text on The freedom of conscience and another on Religious freedom (see Hamer 1967, 59). Three Verlag Ferdinand Schöningh, 2019 doi: / _003

16 6 Dignitatis humanae: Development of the Text questions were at the centre of the considerations that marked the three major challenges that the Catholic Church saw itself as facing. First, the question of tolerance; second, the question of the church s relationship to persons and collectives who did not share its beliefs; and, third, the question of the relationship of the Catholic Church to the societies in which it existed, as well as to governments and to the international community and its organizations. The question of tolerance offfered on the one hand an obvious point of entry to the issue of religious freedom, since it is thematically at least adjacent to it, and was traditionally chosen in doctrinal teaching as a means of dealing with the phenomenon of diffferent ideological beliefs and resulting questions of coexistence or its legal organization (see, for example, Pius XII 1954) we will return repeatedly to the church s doctrine on tolerance in the period prior to the Second Vatican Council. On the other, it was also precisely here that the difffijiculty of approaching the idea of religious freedom lay, since the doctrine of the church had up until then shaped the idea of tolerance in such a way that it was very strongly opposed to a fundamental and comprehensive right to religious freedom (in the sense of a liberal right to freedom). The thesishypothesis formula of the Catholic doctrine of tolerance tended to provide arguments against religious freedom rather than a bridge to its recognition; and taking up the idea of the doctrine of tolerance brought very much into play the problem of doctrinal continuity. However, it would have been barely possible, and let alone credible, to speak about religious freedom from a Catholic point of view without also talking about tolerance precisely because the church always spoke about tolerance when it wanted to talk about questions of religious freedom. The second focus (the question of the relationship to persons or collectives with diffferent beliefs or with no beliefs) points already to the relationship between religious freedom and ecumenism, a relationship that was also purely externally discernible in the further course of the Council since the statements on religious freedom were initially supposed to be part of an ecumenical constitution. However, ecumenism raised profound theological questions that would in fact later lead to considerable conflict at the Council. Religious freedom was justifijied in the further course of discussions in a more or less theological way, but the question of religious freedom was no longer seen as an essentially theological problem, but rather as a constitutional issue and many interpreters of the Catholic Church s positioning on religious freedom place great value on this fact. Against this background, it was then appropriate for both strategic and substantive reasons to remove religious freedom at a later date from the ecumenical context and to deal with it in its own declaration.

17 The Document of Fribourg 7 But the early Fribourg document still shows the relationship between the two issues (namely, the theological and the constitutional). Finally, the third focus of the Fribourg document was the aspect that was later intended to be the focus of the proclaimed declaration. The relationship to societies, governments, and the international community of states was the problem that Dignitatis humanae largely clarifijies: What is the position of the church with regard to the (legal) shaping of the phenomenon of ideological plurality? How does the church relate to the democratization and liberalization of politically constituted communities? How does it defijine its political claim to power and its role within ideologically plural societies and its status vis-à-vis states? The fijirst chapter of the document sees tolerance as a virtue that should govern the relationships between human persons who are not agreed in their beliefs (see Hamer 1967, 60). This rather vague approximation to the concept of tolerance, which barely allows us to think of a basic right to religious freedom, is followed by a closer specifijication by means of three references: to the nature of the human being, to the nature of belief, and to the contemporary development of the world. The nature of the human being is explained in its relevance to the present question as follows: Natural law, the objective sense of interpersonal relationships, leads us to see the other not as an object, as a means or thing, but as a subject, as a being who consciously and freely takes his life into his own hands, as master of his actions, as source of initiative and responsibility. The human person, who must consciously and freely realize his destiny according to the judgment of his conscience, is as a subject irreplaceable and inviolable. Quoted from Hamer 1967, 60 Clearly, then, the reorientation in relation to religious freedom (at least in this Fribourg document) is preceded by a reorientation in regard to the philosophical manner of argumentation. It is noticeable in any case that the line of reasoning chosen at this point is neither from traditional natural law and nor is it resolutely theological; rather, it is a line of reasoning that reminds us of liberal moral philosophy, and results logically in the further course of the document to the sentence: This inviolable dignity of the human person determines the positive content of tolerance (Ibid.). This fundamental opening-up to a liberal political philosophy is not altered by the fact that a longer passage on freedom of conscience follows, and that religious freedom is strongly tied in the third

18 8 Dignitatis humanae: Development of the Text chapter to freedom of conscience. It is written in the context of a list of human rights that must be protected: In the religious sphere, the person has equally the obligation and the right to be faithful to his conscience, since he can live the exigencies of his relationship to God only to the extent that he accepts this relationship into his conscience: this right is called religious freedom. Ibid. The increasing reflection on human dignity in connection with the autonomy of conscience leads inevitably to a rejection of practices that contradict or violate the self-determination born of freedom, and ultimately to the recognition of the right to religious freedom as an inalienable human right because it is rooted in human dignity. Both human dignity born of autonomy, and freedom of conscience will still undergo a development full of change in the further course of the writing of Dignitatis humanae. It is important to note that both aspects play a central role in the earliest phase, too. It is in some ways fijitting that the second theological reference has a clear liberal-theological tendency: faith is a fruit of grace, something that one obtains not through force, but through prayer. From the point of view of the human, faith is a free answer to the free initiative of God. A prescribed faith is thus a contradiction in terms (Hamer 1967, 60). This theological line of reasoning therefore also results in rejecting any practice that disavows the free and self-responsible decision of faith. The third reference seems to fijit less well to these fijirst two references and in two respects. One, reference is made to the doctrine of tolerance of Pius XII; and, two, tolerance is assigned and subordinated to love. The thesis that love stretches much wider than tolerance is to be maintained; for, it explains certain aspects of the later development of the text, and in particular its wording (see Hamer 1967, 60). Overall, the impression emerges that the fijirst reference of the fijirst chapter goes furthest on the path to recognizing religious freedom, while in contrast the third part of the fijirst chapter still remains almost entirely within the conventions of the old doctrine of tolerance. The second part can in a way be understood as a link between the two parts, as perhaps a theological attempt to mediate between the church tradition of the 19th century and the liberal ethos of freedom. It is as though they wanted to say: we have attained norms of dignity and freedom through theological reflection, without abandoning the ground of traditional church and theological self-understanding.

19 The Document of Fribourg 9 But there can already be no doubt about the intended direction of development in this fijirst document, with its authors by no means avoiding making clear statements. The formula of the right of truth is not simply ignored, but subtly withdrawn from circulation; not of course by denoting the formula as false, but by denoting it as ambiguous. The church has therefore always meant the right thing; because of the ambiguity of how it expresses itself, however, it might have been misunderstood. Thus, the relevant formulation represents a revealing and (to some extent) seminal example of the delicate problem of dealing with the tradition and with the danger of breaking the tradition: This formula is ambiguous. Taken literally, it means that truth has no rights. The real subject of the law is the human person and are human communities insofar as they consist of human persons. Truth is that persons have duties with regard to the truth. Quoted from Hamer 1967, 61 In the second chapter, the ecumenical challenges are in essence evaded, with the authors making their argument by pointing to the duties that all people have towards the Creation, and including therefore Christians of every denomination. In the third chapter, they argue in the context of an initially Biblical line of reasoning (namely, a comparison between the theocracy of the Old Testament and the Church of the New Covenant ) that the relationship between church and state is shaped by a separation of areas of authority. They fijirst make clear that the religious claim and mission of the church is universal. But, following the state doctrine of Leo XIII, the authors make a sharp and fundamental distinction between the secular power of the emperor and the spiritual authority of the church. But, just as religion or the church clearly recognizes and acknowledges its limits on the one side, so must the state do the same on the other. The state must refrain from making direct religious statements, and may through acts of law give direct support to those citizens and communities that represent a spiritual authority and its values. The right to religious freedom is therefore in essence absolute; nonetheless, it can and must be limited in actual communities according to the common good and public morality. Apart from the obvious problem of defijining what is meant by the common good and public morality (we would at least have to know whether this defijinition is ceded entirely to the society that forms itself democratically, or whether the church does not in fact believe that it can formulate prior and, indeed, religiously motivated criteria), the privileging of the common

20 10 Dignitatis humanae: Development of the Text good over worldviews and professions of faith is of crucial importance; and not least because this caveat of the common good is of course equally valid for all worldviews and professions of faith. The state owes worship to God in these two respects: by fulfijilling its own duties as determined by the common good; and by ensuring religious freedom according to the requirements defijined by the common good. Understood as the practice of a cult, however, the worship of God is not a matter for the state, and nor is it a civic act; rather, it is a matter for the church and a spiritual act. In addition, the Fribourg document rejects the wording the state owes worship to God as ambiguous and misleading precisely because the interpretation of this wording sketched above brings more confusion than clarifijication. The document manages better in this third chapter (when it comes to defijining the relationship between church and state) than it does in the fijirst chapter (in relation to the actual justifijication of religious freedom) to reconcile theological tradition and church self-understanding on the one hand, with a decisive recognition of the separation of religion and politics, and the recognition of religious freedom, on the other and it does so by referring to the Bible and to the state doctrine of Leo XIII. The diffferences in the line of reasoning point to a fundamental problem: while the new line of reasoning (renunciation of political violence, separation of religion and politics, recognition of religious freedom on the basis of human dignity) is certainly compatible with some parts of the tradition, there are discrepancies and contradictions in relation to other parts, and these can barely be concealed with clever reasoning. This concerns above all the clear and unequivocal rejection of liberal rights of freedom in around the middle of the 19th century, but also the doctrine of tolerance that was prominent up until the middle of the 20th century. This doctrine of tolerance still assumed the ideal case of an alliance between politics and the Catholic faith, but provided for the toleration of the practice of diffferent religions in the case of when the Catholic faith found itself in a minority position (see also 2.2 and 3.2 below). It is precisely with regard to this thesis-hypothesis formula, as it was still developed and reinforced by Pius XII, that the Fribourg document discovers in the end, and unlike in the third part of the fijirst chapter, a clear positioning. The distinction between thesis and hypothesis that formed the backbone of the Catholic doctrine of tolerance may have been rejected for several reasons: because it is unclear, misleading and ambiguous; because it leaves itself open to the accusation of opportunism (whether this accusation is justifijied or not); and because it contradicts the rejection of theocracy anchored in the Biblical, theological and church tradition, and the necessary separation of secular power and spiritual authority.

21 The Second Document in the Preparatory Phase 11 The document sets the course. On the one hand, by basing human dignity on the autonomy of the subject, by presenting a theology of free decisionmaking in terms of faith, by clearly separating the areas of responsibility of secular and spiritual authority (and thus of politics and religion). And, on the other, by clearly rejecting formulations of the right of truth, the obligation of the state to worship God, and the thesis-hypothesis distinction used in the doctrine of tolerance. It sets the course both at the practical level of giving legal recognition to religious freedom, as well as at the theoretical level of grounding this recognition in the dignity of the human person. 1.2 The Second Document in the Preparatory Phase (18 June 1962) The Fribourg document was discussed and altered by the subcommittee led by the bishop Emile-Joseph De Smedt and the Dominican theologian Jérôme Hamer in 1961 and The presentation of the Fribourg document was thought to have shown in particular that the relationship between religious freedom and the church s doctrine of tolerance still required further clarifijication, and that the Fribourg document had created connections between the two that were somewhat cumbersome. The president of the Secretariat for Promoting Christian Unity presented a schema on religious freedom to the Central Commission on 18 June This schema builds on the Fribourg document, but also difffers from it in important ways. The church s position on religious freedom had in the meantime become a topic of discussion in the press, which led the church to make repeated statements of clarifijication. Reiterating the Fribourg document s cumbersome connection between religious freedom and the doctrine of tolerance, the press statement relating directly to the schema of 18 June 1962 is unclear: The Secretariat [for Promoting Christian Unity] has dealt in relation to (religious) freedom with the right of the human to follow also in the fijield of religion his own, appropriately formed conscience; it discusses equally the rights and obligations that arise from this in civil society, which is obliged to respect this right of its citizens in practice. This was the question that Pius XII dealt with in his well-known address to Catholic jurists on 6 December Easy to see is that this is an extremely relevant and difffijicult question for our contemporary pluralistic society. Quoted from Hamer 1967, 63-64