INSTITVTE
INSTITVTE
Dear participants of the colloquium on Religious Liberty for the 50th anniversary of Dignitatis Humanae, which is taking place under the auspices of the Dialogos Institute in Norcia! A theological colloquium on the topic of Religious Liberty in our days is indeed very necessary and up to date. We witness currently a situation of a widespread doctrinal confusion inside the Church from one side and of the growth of an almost global antichristian hostility in politics and in the media from the other side.
This shall impel all those who sincerely love the Divine truth, to offer to the Church a theologically mature and sound reflection on the primacy of Christ and on the ultimate goal of the life of each man and of the human society as a whole. The Church in our days has to proclaim unequivocally the following truth, as it did the Apostles, the Fathers of the Church and the constant teaching of the Church: Christ must have the primacy in all things on this earth, and also in the human society; every human being and the human society as such must worship God, and the true God is the Most Holy Trinity; truth and error can not be put at the same level; every human being has the right to be protected from physical, moral and spiritual evils; a predominantly catholic society has the right to be protected from the spiritual evil of heresy and idolatry.
In order to avoid doctrinal confusion it would be perhaps more appropriate to speak of Civil Religious Liberty instead of Religious Liberty tout court. May your colloquium bring more light in this topic and be a help so that the Church in our days may proclaim intrepidly: that every man and consequently every society have to observe the first commandment “Thou shall worship God alone”, and God is the Most Holy Trinity; and that Christ has to reign over all men and over all earthly realities, even over civil society. He reigns not by means of violence or compulsion, but by means of conviction and love.
May God bless abundantly you and the colloquium. Yours in Christ + Athanasius Schneider
The Second Vatican Council’s document Dignitatis Humanae, a declaration on religious liberty, touches upon an issue very pertinent to our times and increasingly so. At the time the document was promulgated it created some controversy in view of its seemingly novel approach, compared with the traditional teaching of the Church on the issue. Debate continues on the proper limits to freedom of religious expression in modern society, especially in an age when such expression can take forms that may present security and public order issues for public authorities and for the general public. The proper approach to be taken and adopted by the Church is therefore clearly of high importance and this colloquium is a very necessary contribution to that discussion, especially as it brings together those who have written and debated the subject on numerous occasions since the Council in the 1960s. I highly commend the organisers for what I have no doubt will be a very significant contribution to that on-going and important discussion.
In a period when pastoral accommodation is often prized above the doctrinal tradition, as if being human trumped being Christian rather than the other way round, the issue raised by this conference is of great importance. I hope it will clarify how, after the Second Vatican Council as well as before it, the ultimate aim of the Church's social action is the bringing into being of a pervasively evangelical order, a renewed Christendom.
The coherence of Catholic doctrine over time is fundamental to the credibility of the Church's unique truth claims. If indeed Dignitatis Humanae contradicts centuries of firmly proposed Catholic doctrine, promulgated in weighty papal encyclicals such as Quanta Cura and Immortale Dei, then today's liberal dissidents have a powerful case for arguing that the Church's calamitous self-contradiction over this 'human rights' issue sets a precedent for a 'progressive' pope or council to overturn other authoritative papal decisions on moral and liturgical questions of the utmost gravity, such as contraception, homosexuality, abortion, divorce, and women's ordination. This colloquium on DH concerns a truly burning issue for the Catholic Church in our time.
One of the fundamental tasks of those who recognize the need to separate the real errors of “modernity” from that which is simply “modern” is to demonstrate the pervasive confusions surrounding the use of the word "liberty" and its application to the individual, his dignity, and the role of the societies in which he moves along his pathway to eternity. This has been a problem that Catholics have had to confront since the late Middle Ages, and one that has frequently made of "liberty" a tool for the exact opposite of what it promises: namely, the victory of the strongest, irrational, wilful forces of any given place and time. How could a conference on a "religious liberty" that---properly defined---would be a blessing for Catholicism or---improperly defined---an invitation to Christian suicide be anything other than crucial in an age characterized by extraordinary self-satisfaction and self-deception?
In order to sustain the hope for radical future changes in the Catholic Church, especially in morals, it is often said that Vatican II has contradicted the previous magisterium of the Church, and therefore such changes through contradiction are possible. To demonstrate such an opinion, one usually argues that this is the case for the doctrine about religious freedom, taught in the declaration Dignitatis Humanae. Our colloquium aims at checking whether this reckoning is correct or not.
Dans le but de soutenir l’espoir de futurs changements radicaux dans l’Église catholique, en particulier dans le domaine moral, on affirme souvent que Vatican II a contredit le magistère antérieur de l’Église, et que par conséquent de tels changements par mode de contradiction sont possibles. Pour démontrer une telle opinion, on argumente en faisant remarquer que tel serait le cas pour la doctrine concernant la liberté religieuse enseignée dans la déclaration Dignitatis Humanae. Notre colloque se propose pour but de vérifier si cette appréciation est correcte ou non.
Nell’intento di appoggiare la speranza di futuri cambiamenti radicali nella Chiesa cattolica, specie nel campo morale, si dice spesso che il Vaticano II ha contraddetto il magistero anteriore della Chiesa, e che pertanto, tali cambiamenti a modo di contraddizione sono possibili. Per dimostrare un tale punto di vista, si fa poggiare l’argomentazione sul fatto che tale sarebbe il caso per la dottrina a proposito della libertà religiosa insegnata dalla dichiarazione Dignitatis Humanae. Il nostro colloquio mira a controllare se questa impostazione sia corretta o meno.
How can we reassert the ancient Christian doctrine of freedom of religious assent without confusing it with a liberal doctrine of the public indifference and lack of authority of religious truth? In a world newly threatened on the one hand by religious bigotry and on the other by atheist intolerance of public religion, this crucial colloquium will consider this pressing question.