COMMENTARY: The early history of the landmark document manifests the significant doctrinal development, which led the Catholic Church to proclaim the vital importance of religious liberty for modern society.

On Dec. 7, 1965, on the penultimate day of the Second Vatican Council, Pope Paul VI gave his official approval to the Council’s declaration on religious freedom, Dignitatis Humanae, along with three other documents. This document is brief and, as a “declaration,” is more limited in scope than the four constitutions. Nonetheless, the text was the fruit of an intense process of elaboration and forms a key part of the Council’s teaching. 

The topic of religious liberty emerged in the Council in connection with the topic of the Church. One of the early drafts for the Constitution on the Church — the text that would eventually become Lumen Gentium — contained a chapter that dealt with religious tolerance in the context of describing the relations between Church and state.

The immediate precursor to Dignitatis Humanae was a text on religious freedom produced within the Secretariat for Christian Unity, a body that promoted the cause of ecumenism during the Council. The text responded to the desire on the part of non-Catholic Christians that the Catholic Church affirm its commitment to religious freedom to advance the cause of ecumenical dialogue.

Some of the Council authorities were uneasy about dealing with the subject. Belgian Church historian Claude Soetens notes in his account of the early history of Dignitatis Humanae that, in July 1963, religious freedom was removed from the Council’s agenda, apparently because the topic — along with the broader issue of the relationship between Church and state — was considered “insufficiently mature.” 

In view of the complexities of the Church-state issue, the Commission for Coordinating the Work of the Council decided to deal with religious liberty from the perspective of ecumenism.

Despite this decision, the Doctrinal Commission — the Council body responsible for approving the draft on religious freedom — was slow to act. The bishops of the United States, and in particular Cardinal Francis Spellman of the Archdiocese of New York, played a key role in insisting to the Council authorities — also apparently before Pope Paul VI himself — that the Council move forward with the text. 

The proposed draft advanced through the Doctrinal Commission, despite the objections of a few important members, and on Nov. 19, 1963, the text “On Religious Liberty” was distributed to the Council Fathers. 

Belgian Bishop Émile-Joseph De Smedt, speaking on behalf of the Secretariat for Christian Unity, gave a lengthy speech explaining the draft to the Council. Bishop De Smedt’s discourse reflected the thought of American theologian, Jesuit Father John Courtney Murray, who in April of 1963 had been appointed to serve as an expert in the elaboration of the document.

The Belgian bishop, while acknowledging that religious liberty was a difficult subject, asserted that the topic was an important issue in modern society that the Council could not ignore in its decree on ecumenism. He went on to specify the precise meaning of the term. 

Religious liberty would not imply, he stated, that a person can simply decide religious questions on his own, nor that he is free of moral obligation toward God, nor that there is no objective truth in this area. Rather, religious liberty refers to the “right of the human person to the free exercise of religion according to the dictates of his conscience,” as well as to freedom from external coercion in one’s relationship with God. 

After outlining this philosophical notion of religious freedom, Bishop De Smedt went on to describe a specifically pastoral problem, vital to the modern world, which the document proposed to address: “How should Catholics, on account of their faith, conduct themselves towards persons who do not hold to the Catholic faith?”

The spokesman for the secretariat went on to give an answer deeply grounded in the Church’s Tradition: “All Catholics are invited by Christ to prayer, penance, and witness, and evangelization in the Holy Spirit,” to bring their fellow non-Catholics to the light of the Gospel and to the Church. At the same time, along with these evangelizing efforts, Bishop De Smedt enumerated another key principle, also rooted in the Church’s Tradition: that Catholics must avoid every “direct or indirect coercion.” 

The ultimate reason for such freedom, he explained, is to be found in the very nature of the act of faith, which on one hand is a gift of God “most freely” granted by the Holy Spirit, and on the other hand a response which man “most freely” gives to God. 

The Belgian bishop went on to comment on how the Church’s contemporary awareness of religious freedom fits into the Church’s previous teaching. During the 19th century, as the speaker noted, Pope Pius IX — following in the footsteps of Pope Gregory XVI — condemned the freedom of conscience and worship.

Later, Pope Leo XIII cautioned against “unrestrained freedom of thinking” and against the state holding different kinds of religion in equal favor. In making such statements, Bishop De Smedt remarked, the Church was condemning specific errors: the rationalistic idea that the individual conscience is free from divinely given norms, a concept of freedom of worship based on religious indifferentism, and a notion of separation of Church and state according to which the Church would remain subject to a supposed supreme power of the state. 

Such condemnations, the bishop continued, would need to be understood alongside the Church’s constant teaching regarding the dignity and freedom of the human person. Such freedom would come not from a modern idea of man’s radical autonomy with respect to God, but rather — as the speaker went on to observe — from the truth of man being a creature made in the image of God, who remains absolutely dependent upon God. 

Such was the perspective from which the Church, in the decades before the Council, came to gradually articulate religious freedom within the circumstances of modern society. In the late 19th century, Pope Leo XIII spoke of “tolerance” of other religions in a context in which religious freedom was understood in an anti-religious context. 

In the 20th century, during the pontificate of Pius XI, from 1922 to 1939, Bishop De Smedt observed that the doctrinal development of the Church had arrived at a new stage. The danger was no longer a false concept of freedom, but rather the risk that in the face of the ominous power of the totalitarian state, “every kind of human and civil freedom” would be destroyed, religious freedom in the first place. 

In such changed conditions, the speaker said, the Church began a new advocacy for the causes of human freedom and dignity, which it has always supported. Popes Pius XI, Pius XII and John XXIII each progressed in formulating the idea of religious freedom as a right of the person with regard to the state.

With this description of doctrinal development, “under the light of the Holy Spirit,” Bishop De Smedt brought his historic speech to a close. He presented the text to the consideration of the Council Fathers, reminding them that the “whole world awaits this decree” and expressing the hope that the document might be approved by the end of the Council’s session that same year. 

This hope was vastly premature, as the Council would not in fact approve the decree until the very end of the Council, more than two years later and after several rounds of revision. Nonetheless, the Council had directed its attention to some critical aspects of freedom that are profoundly rooted in God’s revelation. These truths would be echoed in the declaration Dignitatis Humanae and continue to have deep relevance for the contemporary world.

This article was originally published by NCRegister.