In disentangling the question of religious liberty it seems useful to distinguish four typical cases of coercion:-
(1) Coercion by the spiritual power of the baptised
(2) Coercion by the spiritual power of the unbaptised
(3) Coercion by the temporal power of the baptised
(4) Coercion by the temporal power of the unbaptised
It is a matter of faith that (1) is licit. According to the 14th Canon of Trent on baptism, the baptised can be coerced to a Christian life by certain penalties, other than by simple refusal of the sacraments. The present Code of Canon Law allows for certain people to be deprived of their jobs or confined within a monastery as a punishment for heresy. In a Catholic society, the bishop could call on the civil power to help enforce such penalties. That would, however, still be an example of coercion (1) in my schema, since I am considering who the prime mover is in the coercion.
(2) is generally illicit, since the unbaptised are not subject to the jurisdiction of the Church. Nor can she ask the civil power e.g. to freeze the bank accounts of Muslims so that they will be induced to convert. However St Thomas believes that the Church has the radical power to deprive independent pagan rulers of their jurisdiction over the faithful (IIa IIae 10,10), only she doesn’t use it, so as to avoid scandal. He says that the Church has the radical power to do this, ‘having the authority of God’, and pagan rulers have merited – since they would not even be negative infidels without some mortal sin – to lose their dominion. I am not quite sure how this fits with the idea of baptism as what gives the Church jurisdiction over people. Perhaps one could say that she would not be exercising her own jurisdiction, but being a pure instrument of God’s jurisdiction. In any case, it is purely hypothetical, as St Thomas explains, never being done ‘so as not to scandalise them’.
(3) appears to be illicit in the sense that the civil power cannot legitimately impose penalties for heresy, schism and apostasy except at the will, implicit or explicit of the ecclesiastical power. From the very fact that the spiritual power is higher than the temporal power, the latter must yield to the former when they deal with the same subject-matter.
(4) is perhaps the most controversial point. St Thomas teaches (IIa IIae 10,11), in words that are used by Leo XIII for discussing the same subject, that the rites of pagans (the Jews are a special case) are per se to be suppressed because they are sinful, except when this would lead to some greater evil or prevent some greater good. But from whom is the initiative to come, ecclesiastics or politicians? Since the pagans would be under the jurisdiction of the latter, it would seem to come from them. The civil ruler is the one who has the charge of the temporal common good, and so it seems to be he who must decide, e.g. if a small group of Muslims who have taken refuge in his Catholic country after a civil war back home should be allowed a mosque or not. The question then arises of how a refusal by the civil ruler of the Muslims’ request would square with Dignitatis Humanae. I think it can do if you take into account the clause about ‘public morality’ in DH as a reason to limit religious liberty. In the actual order of providence, every non-Catholic cultus tends to weaken the clarity with which the average citizen, not specially firm in the faith, grasps the truth of the Catholic Church as the one ark of salvation; which surely is a ‘moral’ truth, and therefore a matter of public morality. Only, unlike the case with (1), the civil rulers here cannot aim at coercing the beliefs of the pagans, since, as DH teaches, no merely human power has jurisdiction over the conscience as such.
Laodicea 
July 8, 2012 at 9:14 pm
I couldn’t find any other way to contact you but you had left a comment on James Chastek’s blog just under a year ago:
berenike said,
September 2, 2011 at 1:36 am
I have copies of some of Bill’s recordings of Berquist. Somewhere. Unless I gave them back to the chap who left them in my keeping. If you can see my email and are interested, drop me a line in about a month (have overload of overdue work at the mo.)
http://thomism.wordpress.com/2009/05/04/the-predicable-universal-as-mental-word/
I was wondering if you indeed have these recordings of Berquist and would be able to pass them along.
You can email me at mjdubroy AT gmail DOT com
Thank You.
July 8, 2012 at 9:49 pm
Cordatus, I answered your post and your comment here.
July 23, 2012 at 1:42 pm
Point of order: the 14th canon of Trent on baptism does not, in fact, state that “the baptised can be coerced to a Christian life by certain penalties, other than by simple refusal of the sacraments”, nor does it anathematise anyone for disagreeing. It anathematises people who both disagree and assert that people baptised as infants should be formally asked whether their baptism actually counted. (Note the repeated use of “and” in the anathema to indicate that the various clauses are to be considered as a combined proposition, as opposed to anathemas which use “or” to separate individual propositions which are anathema-worthy on their own, for example the 12th and 13th canon of Trent on baptism.)
Thus, it is possible to disagree with the anathematised proposition (and avoid falling under anathema) while still asserting that those who wish to leave the Faith “are to be left to their own will; and are not to be compelled meanwhile to a Christian life by any other penalty, save that they be excluded from the participation of the Eucharist, and of the other sacraments.”
July 23, 2012 at 7:50 pm
That is a manifestly absurd interpretation of the canon. The canon says nothing about whether Baptism ‘actually counted’. It talks about ‘whether they will ratify what their sponsors promised in their names ‘. On your reading therefore the canon would mean that the Council only objects to the attempt to invite adult lapsi to return to the faith without the use of non-sacramental punishments, and that so long as the church doesn’t attempt to return them to the faith at all that is ok. You are indulging in mere sophistry in order to avoid assenting to the solemn teaching of the Church.
July 26, 2012 at 2:52 pm
“The canon says nothing about whether Baptism ‘actually counted’. It talks about ‘whether they will ratify what their sponsors promised in their names‘.”
Poor phrasing on my part. But the proposition in question amounts to formally asking adults (who were baptised as children) whether to stay in the Faith or whether to lapse, thus treating (aspects of) their baptismal ceremony as provisional, and imposing no moral obligation. To me at least this seems a little dubious: baptism does come with moral obligations, and I don’t see that you can deny those obligations without undermining the idea of baptism. I’m not certain who was proposing this position exactly, but it looks suspiciously like a compromise with the anabaptist critiques that started cropping up at the Reformation. (That baptised children may reject the Faith when they grow up is clear, but those baptised as adults can too, and the Church does not formally ask adult converts every few years whether they still want to be bound by their vows or whether they want to disavow them and return to paganism or whatever.)
The rest of your comment I have a hard time parsing. I assume the church would want adult lapsi to repent and return, why wouldn’t they?
July 29, 2012 at 2:53 pm
The error condemned by the canon presupposes that those baptized as infants do have obligations because it proposes their punishment with spiritual penalties. What it seeks to abolish is their punishment with non-spiritual penalties. This is what is condemned and to this day the Church in its canon law upholds her right to punish erring member of the faithful with temporal penalties. For the background to the Tridentine canon see:
http://kcl.academia.edu/ThomasPink/Papers/647475/What_is_the_Catholic_doctrine_of_religious_liberty