On Saturday, June 12, the Catholic Theological Society of America, the largest professional association of Catholic theologians in the world, named Professor Susan Wood of Regis College at the University of Toronto as the recipient of what amounts to their lifetime achievement award. This prestigious honor is named after John Courtney Murray, S.J., one of the most famous American theologians in history.
Father Murray was famously the architect (largely in collaboration with Yves Congar, O.P.) of Dignitatis Humanae, the Second Vatican Council’s groundbreaking document on “religious freedom.” Father Murray’s most famous book is probably “We Hold These Truths,” which was published in the same year that John Fitzgerald Kennedy was elected the first Catholic president. In it, Father Murray sought to argue that the Catholic intellectual tradition and the fundamental premises of the political experiment of the United States were not antithetical to one another, including on notions like the separation of church and state.
Father Murray’s vision faced ferocious backlash from some quarters of the church, who countered that it was ludicrous to deny that nations were obligated to promulgate and protect the “right worship” of God according to the apostolic witness, warning that religious “indifferentism” was sure to follow.
Church authorities in Spain were, in particular, deeply skeptical of Father Murray’s arguments. Others, most notably perhaps the future Pope John Paul II, disagreed and saw the freedom to choose one’s religion as a foundational cornerstone of the dignity of the person and full human flourishing.
The debate vacillated, as it does now, between the approach in countries where the majority of the population was Catholic (like much of Western Europe) or Christian (like the United States) who wished to defend and maintain an inherited culture, over and against those in areas where sometimes only small Christian communities existed in pockets amidst other dominant religious or ideological traditions (North Africa, the Middle East, India and China, for example). If Christians wanted the right to worship as they saw fit in the latter, it only stood to reason that they must demand the state to provide the same freedoms for others in the former. Thus, “religious freedom” could not and cannot apply only to Christians. It must also speak to the experiences of Muslims, Hindus, Confucians, Jews and indigenous religious people, as well as to those who profess to be agnostic or atheistic. The free act of expressing belief privately and publicly must also de facto include the right to express doubt.
In the end, Dignitatis Humanae was approved by a final vote of 2,308 placet (yes), 70 non placet (no), and 8 “invalid” votes (perhaps some of these being placet juxta modum, which was akin to a qualified yes, but wasn’t allowed at this stage of the proceedings). On Dec. 7, 1965, Paul VI promulgated the document as part of official church teaching, breaking new ground on the relationship between the church and national governing bodies, and between individual consciences and the political order. The church was arguing in a new way that the right to liberty includes a moral duty to combat both religious exclusion and religious coercion by the state.
Its closing statement is as resoundingly true today as it was a half-century ago, on the verge of what would come to be an increasingly shrinking world: “All nations are coming into even closer unity. Men [sic, passim] of different cultures and religions are being brought together in closer relationships. There is a growing consciousness of the personal responsibility that every man has. All this is evident. Consequently, in order that relationships of peace and harmony be established and maintained within the whole of mankind, it is necessary that religious freedom be everywhere provided with an effective constitutional guarantee and that respect be shown for the high duty and right of man freely to lead his religious life in society.”
This certainly applies to Christians, but also to others in our and every nation and culture.
Originally from Collingswood, Michael M. Canaris, Ph.D., teaches at Loyola University, Chicago.
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