I recently heard some lectures on religious liberty aimed at showing that there was no contradiction between the teaching of Dignitatis Humanae and earlier magisterial documents. They were learned and plausible. But they seemed to me to have a defect. They appeared to assume that it would be enough to demonstrate the absence of any such formal contradiction, in order to affirm that Dignitatis Humanae, taken to be declaring a right not previously taught by the Church, was a legitimate “development of doctrine”.
But such absence of contradiction is not enough. If I were to say, for example, that it is more virtuous to sit on the epistle side of church than on the gospel side, or more important for an island nation to have a good army than a good navy, then neither of these statements would contradict earlier magisterial teaching, as far as I know. Yet neither of them could therefore become objects of later magisterial teaching. Why not? Because they are not part of the revealed deposit that was complete with the death of the last apostle.
Since the revealed deposit cannot grow, development of doctrine can only mean expressing more clearly something which was found really, but less clearly, in the earlier tradition of the Church. One has to imagine someone at an earlier stage in the Church hearing the later formulation, for example St Ignatius of Antioch reading the Tome of Leo. If the earlier person would have said, “Yes, that’s just what I meant, only I never put it so well”, then we have a legitimate development. But if the earlier person would have said, “Well, I never heard anything like that before”, or “what on earth are you talking about?”, then it is no legitimate development, even if it is not in contradiction with what came before, and even if it is true.
Those who want to want to maintain that the earlier and later teachings on Church and State are both true and both authentic magisterial teachings, but that the later teaching is nevertheless importantly new, are faced with a problem. If it is new, how can it be the object of a magisterium whose sole duty is to expound the revealed deposit given once for all to the saints? They sometimes seek to resolve this problem by appealing to the notion of human dignity. The thought seems to be this. “Human dignity is part of the revealed deposit, and has always been upheld by the Church. In more recent times, the Church has become more conscious of the demands of human dignity. So at Vatican II she was able for the first time to teach the right to religious liberty. So the teaching is new, but we do not thereby fall into the error of continuing revelation, since the notion of human dignity, from which the teaching comes, was there from the beginning.”
There are two problems with this. First, there is the rule-of-thumb already mentioned. If the Fathers of the Church would have said “I never heard anything like that before”, then it is not a legitimate development. But if Vatican II was saying, as many people think, that pagans and heretics have a God-given right to be allowed to meet together for their worship and to be allowed to encourage others to join them, albeit a right that in some cases may be trumped by other rights, then I think the Fathers of the Church might well have said “where on earth do you get that idea from?” At least I know of nothing in them to think that they would have said, “yes, that’s just what I think, but I had never expressed it so clearly.”
Secondly, how, precisely, are we supposed to go from the notion of “human dignity” to the notion of religious liberty just outlined? Human beings have three modi sciendi, as far as I know: that is, three ways of going from less clear to more clear knowledge. These are traditionally called definition, division (e.g. triangles are isosceles, scalene or equilateral) and inference. Which one of these three is employed in going from “human dignity” to “right to religious liberty”? Is this right a part of the definition of human dignity? But people have had a concept of human dignity for centuries without grasping it by means of this right; and people today can still have the concept without accepting the right; so it does not look like part of the definition of an idea that was already generally accepted as belonging the revealed deposit. Again, “division” seems to have no place here. In what sense would one divide the notion of “human dignity” into “the right to religious liberty”, and what would the other members of the division be?
That leaves only the last modus sciendi, inference. Inference is either induction or deduction. But induction belongs to the world of experimental, empirical science, which is out of place here. So it must be deduction. But in that case, what are the two premises, certainly contained in the deposit of faith, from which the right to religious liberty is deduced?
It seems in reality as if the proponents of this kind of development of doctrine are imagining a kind of angelic intuition, whereby one would contemplate an essence (“human dignity”) and behold in it a property (“right to religious liberty”). But that is not given to mortals to do.
Laodicea 
November 8, 2015 at 6:31 pm
We should consider the opinions of all the people who were killed by order of the Pope and the Magisterium for the centuries before American religious liberty began to spread — for owning Bibles, baptizing adults, holding to the belief that the Scriptures were superior to Papal decrees, etc., as to whether the Church always recognized the individual right of religious belief. And while we’re at it ask them if they think the Church was always against capital punishment.
November 8, 2015 at 9:04 pm
The Church doesn’t recognise the right of anyone to a false belief, and she recognises her own right to call on the State to use force to bring baptised heretics back to their senses. Likewise, the Church is not against capital punishment in her official teaching, though many prelates are.
November 11, 2015 at 10:53 pm
Pope Francis is against capital punishment and he said as much in his statements to the U.S. Congress. So is he infallible or not? And you’re saying that if a National government would do it Church officials would support them executing heretics for them? Give me a break — no one in the hierarchy even excommunicates them anymore unless they are running for some big public office.
November 12, 2015 at 3:15 am
The Pope is infallible when he addresses the universal church as Pope in a matter of faith or morals and makes a definitive judgement not otherwise. (Don’t you think its a bit late to start using a pseudonym?)
November 9, 2015 at 2:06 am
I was at a similar series of lectures recently (or the same ones?) and a striking feature was that the interpretations of Dignitatis Humanae as agreeing with previous teaching did not agree with one another. This implies that although the document may have a meaning, it does not have a teaching; for a teaching, in order to be binding, must be accessible at least to specialists in the topic – and disagreement over it after 50 years means that this is not the case here.
November 9, 2015 at 5:40 am
Let me have a go at arguing to a right to religious liberty that genuinely follows from the perennial teaching of the Church and which Ss Justin, Augustine and Thomas would recognise… Human dignity comes from man’s creation in the image of God. Our knowledge of the natural law is one of the foremost expressions of this dignity for, as the psalmist says, “’The light of Thy countenance, O Lord, is signed upon us’: thus implying that the light of natural reason, whereby we discern what is good and what is evil, which is the function of the natural law, is nothing else than an imprint on us of the Divine light.” IaIIae,91,2 We must all fulfil the first commandment. Even those without the revealed law know this from their hearts. This requires us to discover and embrace the true religion. Certain pseudo-religious (i.e. idolatrous) acts are never conducive to the accomplishment of this task and thus the state should proscribe them. Defection from the true religion is likewise never conducive to the accomplishment of this task and cannot be sincerely undertaken because of the subjective certainty given by God to those who adhere to the true religion. All other things being equal the state cannot encroach any further upon the autonomy of the subject in discovering and embracing the true religion because which religion God has appointed in this order of providence is a contingent question which cannot be deduced from reason and nature alone but must be investigated so that subjective certainty can be acquired and ascent given to the true religion. If someone who was not baptised as an infant and raised in the faith is not given the freedom to pursue this question in society then the state would be impeding the ability of the subject to fulfil the first commandment and thus exceeding its authority. This autonomy might nevertheless be mitigated by extrinsic considerations of public order/morality etc. but that is another consideration.
November 11, 2015 at 10:56 pm
If the American Protestants who founded this Country held to your standards no Catholics would have been allowed to emigrate here — no less hold the highest public office in the land.
November 12, 2015 at 3:19 am
As heretics, Protestants lack supernatural certainty concerning their beliefs which are consequently mere opinions which it would be irrational to enforce by law.
November 9, 2015 at 12:51 pm
This seems like a right to free discussion among the unbaptised about which is the true religion rather than a right to be allowed to adhere publically to and practice a false religion.
November 9, 2015 at 4:35 pm
Yes, that is what I am saying. It is “a right to free discussion among the unbaptised about which is the true religion”. This includes the right to adhere to publicly and practice among the unbaptised whatever monotheistic cult they provisionally suppose to be the true religion. This restriction on the coercive power of the state exists (as St Thomas says) lest there be “some hindrance to the salvation of those who if they were unmolested might gradually be converted to the faith”. But everyone agrees there is per se no right to adhere to and practice a false religion. There is just a right to the autonomy necessary to discover and embrace the true religion. For this reason it does not apply to those who have already discovered and embraced it or to idolatry.
November 9, 2015 at 5:46 pm
But St Thomas doesn’t assert here a per se right to be allowed to practise any monotheistic cult, but only a duty of toleration that may per accidens exist for the State in certain circumstances (“nisi forte”, “quando erat magna infidelium multitudo”). He says that all non-Christians sin in their rites and per se may be repressed – though he doesn’t say who by.
Does a natural civil right to free discussion imply a natural civil right to erroneous adhesion? Isn’t this a bit like saying that the right to free discussion of students at a seminar would imply a right not to be corrected by the teacher if they agree on a falsehood?
November 9, 2015 at 6:39 pm
But remember this not a right to “to practice any monotheistic cult” but a right to freedom from coercion by the civil power in that regard. The erring monotheists are corrected by the civil power because the state officially asserts that they are wrong and prevents them from proselytizing among Catholics and prohibits any public expression of their false conclusions that might imply the state thinks the question (of which religion is in fact appointed by God) is uncertain. So it is only a presumption in favour of toleration to give erring monotheists the psychological freedom to convert. It is not an unrebuttable presumption but the presumption always exists. So there is a per se right against the state to the autonomy necessary to discover and embrace the true religion but what the extent of that necessary autonomy is will depend on circumstances. For example in Spain it was judged that permitting the practice of non-Catholic monotheistic cult in the Kingdoms of Castile and Aragon would give scandal by implying that the truth of the Catholic faith was an uncertain question. Thus the rights of the non-Catholic monotheists were judged to conflict with the rights of Catholics to discover and embrace the true religion because it was held that in the conditions of sixteenth century Spain tolerance of non-Catholic monotheism would imply the state thinks the question uncertain and lead Catholics astray. Therefore the Spanish crown expelled all non-Baptized monotheists. If we assume for the sake of argument that the Spanish crown was correct in its factual judgment then it acted within the terms of DH.
November 9, 2015 at 7:04 pm
I’m not sure about cordatus’s reference above to the Church’s “right to call on the State to use force to bring baptised heretics back to their senses”. To me, this seems uncomfortably close to the practices of the religion of the crescent, both in spreading by force across the previously Christian lands of North Africa and continuing down to the present-day behaviour of Isis et al.
Moreover, and more importantly, it seems to be at odds with the approach used by Our Lord Himself – “Come, follow me.”
November 9, 2015 at 7:27 pm
Certainly forcible conversion is forbidden but baptized heretics are already followers of Christ who have lapsed from their baptismal obligations. “If any one saith, that those who have been thus baptized when children, are, when they have grown up, to be asked whether they will ratify what their sponsors promised in their names when they were baptized; and that, in case they answer that they will not, they 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, until they repent; let him be anathema.” Or, as St Paul says “When you are assembled, and my spirit is present, with the power of our Lord Jesus, you are to deliver this man to Satan for the destruction of the flesh, that his spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus.“
November 9, 2015 at 8:55 pm
I wonder, though – if someone leads a Christian life merely through compulsion of the civil law, out of fire of losing his life or some other temporal punishment – where is the virtue in that? It might be said to be “good works without faith”.
November 9, 2015 at 8:56 pm
“out of fear of losing his life or some other temporal punishment…”
November 9, 2015 at 8:58 pm
But when one is baptized one receives the infusion of faith, hope and charity so one has no need of compulsion. If one falls away it can only be out of malice.
November 9, 2015 at 9:02 pm
Yes, agree 100%. So my question is – if a heretic recants his heresy or starts going to Mass again on pain of pain (so to speak), but inwardly clings to his heresy, surely that is not a path to heaven? So I question the prudence of resorting to temporal punishment as a way of imposing, or re-imposing, an abandoned faith or praxis.
November 9, 2015 at 9:14 pm
But we use coercion to induce people to return to the observance of the natural law because they have reason and so should know better. Therefore it is reasonable to suppose they will come to their senses if threatened or punished. We cannot use coercion to bring people to adhere to the divine law because prior to that adherence they only have probable opinion in such matters not the certainty that demonstrative reason brings. But when they have adhered and been baptized they have gift of faith and they have the sacrament of penance. The certainty that faith gives is greater than that of reason. Thus when they commit formal heresy they know with more certainty that they act against the truth and so act with greater malice than any other criminal. Even after they lose the faith through heresy they still know that they once had certainty on this point so they remain culpable and they must be punished for their crime which does more harm and entails more malice than any other.
November 9, 2015 at 9:42 pm
“It is only a presumption in favour of toleration to give erring monotheists the psychological freedom to convert.” This seems unproblematic to me; but the language of ‘right to freedom from coercion’ seems to be asserting something different, namely a duty of justice to the erring person; on your picture it seems that the State would be acting from prudence and charity rather than justice.
St Thomas doesn’t just say that the unbelievers may be repressed when there could be scandal to the Christians, but rather because ‘they sin in their rites’; that is true per se, and the toleration is per accidens.
November 9, 2015 at 9:47 pm
On another point, article 12 of the same question is often quoted as a sort of precedent for the right to non-coercion; St Thomas is cited as saying that non-believers have a right not to be prevented by the state from educating their children as Jews/Muslims etc. In fact all he says is that they have the right not to have their children taken away from them by the State, or to have things (e.g. baptism) done to them against their wishes. So the right of the non-believing parents does not, formally, have ‘not to be prevented from educating their children as non-believers’ as its object; but only materially.
November 9, 2015 at 9:55 pm
Do you agree that:
a) the state is obliged by natural and divine law to allow the individual as much autonomy as is necessary to for him discover and embrace the true religion
b) the degree of this autonomy will vary according to circumstances but all other things being equal it will encompass genuine (even culpably) erring attempts by the individual to fulfill the first commandment socially even if these conflict with divine (but not natural law) law.
c) It also encompasses genuine (even culpably) erring attempts by the individual to communicate his provisional conclusions as to how to fulfill the first commandment even if these conflict with divine (but not natural law) law.
d) per se the state has the power to suppress false monotheistic religion but it is impeded from doing so by (a) -(c) unless reasons of public order/morality overpower this presumption.
?
November 10, 2015 at 11:33 am
My 2p on this is that:
1) As a general principle, the scope for the State to intervene between parents and their children should be as restricted as possible.
2) I would worry that, if the State takes upon itself the role of suppressing false monotheistic religion, or enforcing orthodoxy in belief, doctrine or practice, it would be to the detriment of the Church because it would give statesmen (with no special expertise or spiritual authority) a role in spiritual matters. The inevitable messy political compromises and temptations of worldy power faced by a temporal statesmen do not seem to me to be conducive to good spiritual leadership, which is a role that the State would be taking upon itself by intervening in religious matters. Nor do I think it would be a good thing for churchmen to become statesmen, for similar reasons.
3) I would very much be in favour of a State which understood itself to be subject to God and whose laws and norms reflected Catholic teaching, but I think that is a slightly different point.
November 10, 2015 at 3:50 pm
1) I don’t think Cordatus disagrees with this he is just saying the basis of parental rights is a right to autonomy not to religious error. The religious error that would ensue is incidental. (But he can speak for himself).
2) In Christendom none of these functions were exercised by the state but by the Church (with the exception of capital punishment for treason consequent upon the Church’s judgement of formal heresy).
3) Unless such a state recognised the Church as a sovereign power with the right to legislate for and coerce the baptised it would not be recognising revelation as a valid source of law or it would be usurping the authority to interpret it from the Church.
November 10, 2015 at 2:51 pm
[ad Aelianum]
(a) sounds right. I’m not sure that (b) or (c) follow from it; is it part of the autonomy needed to discover the true religion that one should not be corrected upon embracing a false one? The State could say, ‘no, that’s not right; try again..’
I’m not sure how (d) could be true. Can there be a per se right to do something if other per se considerations forbid it to be done?
Would you agree that St Thomas in the article you cite does not teach (d), but rather simply the per se right of suppression?
Do you think there could be a non-Christian monotheistic religion (in this order of providence) whose adherents do not ‘sin in their rites’? If there could be, then presumably St Thomas’s argument would not apply to that.
November 10, 2015 at 3:37 pm
I think that if I was considering a very important important question that could not be settled by deductive reasoning but required attention to various probabilistic arguments (similar to those considered by a jury) and I was not allowed to consider any other perspective than that of the state and in the meantime I was prevented from acting according to my conscience regarding my provisional conclusions in the matter I would be incapable of reaching moral certainty that the state’s view in the matter was correct. In fact, I would be very resistant to accepting it.
There is a clear parallel with adultery. The state per se has a right to suppress adultery but it also has an obligation to allow the necessary autonomy for the family to function with the autonomy proper to it. In some societies it will be possible to do both but if (as in many societies) it has to chose between the two then it will have to refrain from suppressing adultery (while still making its disapproval clear).
November 10, 2015 at 8:55 pm
Maybe I’m missing something but it still seems to me that there would be two per se rights contrary to each other: a right of the State to suppress the erroneous monotheistic cult and a right of the citizen not to be suppressed.
November 11, 2015 at 1:27 am
What we have are a right on the part of the individual and the family to autonomy in a certain sphere (discovering the true religion, family life) and right on the part of the [Catholic] state to suppress certain evils (false religion, adultery) which may accidentally conflict so as accidentally to bestow immunity from suppression upon those evils.
November 11, 2015 at 2:49 pm
But the right not to be prevented from practising the false religion seems to be built into the first kind of autonomy in a way in which the right not to be prevented from committing adultery is not built into the second. The first autonomy is defined as the per se right not to be prevented by the State from practising that monotheistic religion which seems to oneself to be well-founded (thus abstracting from truth and falsity), whereas the second autonomy is the right not to be prevented by the State from associating with fellow citizens in public and private. The former kind of autonomy can only be used to reach one correct goal (the true religion) and many incorrect ones, and so since autonomy is a choice between alternatives, it includes as part of its definition a right not to be prevented from choosing an incorrect one; by contrast, the right of free association can be used in many good ways, and so autonomy here does not per se imply a right not to be prevented from doing something sinful.
November 12, 2015 at 2:08 pm
The basis of American Constitutional Rights have spread and are spreading throughout the globe — and that is that you are free to do just about anything except that which infringes upon the rights of another –aka “crimes”. This is especially true of religious practice. The government has no interest in preventing and punishing the “sins” of an individual — only his “crimes”. Every Christian denomination has a somewhat unique lexicon of sinfulness — but no longer does any Church have the consent and support of the arm of the government to enforce them.
November 11, 2015 at 6:58 pm
But surely a chap has the right to decide wether he prays the office goes to weekday mass, prays the rosary, joins the legion of Mary or wears the Brown Scapular without the state getting involved? What’s the difference?
November 12, 2015 at 1:49 pm
I don’t follow.
November 12, 2015 at 6:48 pm
Well there is plenty of room for autonomy from the civil power in religious matters which does not involve error just as there is plenty of autonomy in family life that does not involve immortality. Nevertheless, per accidens immorality and error end up being protected from suppression by the state in these areas in order to give space for the good.
November 12, 2015 at 9:13 pm
Oh I see. Yes, this begins to look more plausible.
November 13, 2015 at 2:21 pm
That is, I have been conceiving of the choice as a choice between discrete religions whereas you seem to be conceiving of it as a choice between many different religious practices.
November 13, 2015 at 6:29 pm
Yes, but because it excludes the civil power from this area it creates room for erring religious practices (if it would require public revelation to know they were erring). Obviously the baptised have no such room but that is because they are regulated in this area by the Church.
November 13, 2015 at 6:35 pm
The definition of “regulate” includes the concept of “control”. Obviously the Catholic Church has lost the ability to control anyone but the Religious communities — and as denominations go it does very little of that either
November 11, 2015 at 11:17 pm
The whole argument hinges on who it is that can determine who is “practicing true religion”. The right of religious freedom in America was founded on the principle that only God is qualified to determine that for the individual. And so any religious organization has the right to ban individuals from its services — just as any private citizen can remove another from his or her property — as long as that individual’s rights are not violated in the process. But no governmental entity can endorse any particular religious organization by it’s laws and/or practices. No religious organization allows this level of religious freedom within its walls. But this guaranteed freedom allows all of them in the great tree that is the United States to “find shelter in its branches” as no individual or group can solicit the help of the government to ban or hinder in anyway the religious beliefs or practices of another. This right has spread from the halls of the U.S. Congress and Supreme Court to most of the world to one degree or another. The contention that it has actually originated with the teachings and practices of the Roman Church is laughable.
November 12, 2015 at 3:43 am
Were one’s religion of human origin and a mere matter of opinion (as is the case with protestantism) it would make sense to legislate in the manner the eighteenth century freemasons who founded the the US did for a general freedom of cult. However, as it would be irrational to hold that God would not supply certainty to accompany the religion He has appointed logic drives persons living under such a constitution either to atheism or towards the adoption of the Catholic faith and the eventual purging of erroneous masonic principles from the public law of the society in question. As De Tocqueville observed, “America is the most democratic country on earth, while, at the same time the country where, according to reputable reports, the Catholic religion makes the most progress. At first sight this is surprising. Two distinctions must be made: equality persuades men to judge for themselves. On the other hand, it gives them the taste for and conception of a single simple social power which is the same for everyone. Men who live in Democratic times are, therefore, predisposed to slide away from all religious authority. But if they agree to such an authority, they insist at least that it is unique and of one character for their intelligence has a natural abhorrence of religious powers which do not emanate from the same centre and they find it almost as easy to imagine that there is no religion as several.….our descendants will tend increasingly to divide into only two parts, some leaving Christianity entirely and the others embracing the Church of Rome.” That religious liberty is only on a very particular interpretation compatible with the Catholic faith was the whole point of this discussion.
November 12, 2015 at 1:54 pm
You are obviously uninformed as to the character of the development of religious freedom in America. Freemasonry was never a part of the discussion. The Protestant countries had continued the the same kinds of persecution of those deemed to be “heretics” (from a Greek word meaning “opinion”) that the Roman Church had made into an art form. This crossed the “pond” and was policy in some of the American colonies America where most had an official church. In Virginia a law had been passed jailing those who openly preached without a government permit. These were Anabaptists — adult baptizers who had fled Europe as both the Protestant and Catholic Countries persecuted them severely in Europe. Spurred on by the Church leaders the Kings hired men as Anabaptist hunters and when captured they were publicly burned at the stake — the more egregious offenders with green wood to prolong the suffering. They did show “mercy” on those who recanted their faith by beheading them instead. Thomas Jefferson came to be the lead defender of the rights of the Anabaptist in Virginia even though he did not agree at all with their charismatic brand of belief. What developed was the argument that is employed today in the 12 Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous — that each person has the inalienable God given right to believe in God as he or she understands Him — that that, in fact, is the only God that an individual can actually believe in. This corresponds to Jesus’s revelation to the Samaritan woman in John 4: “Yet a time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in the Spirit and in truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks.” v23 He explained to her that the teachings and traditions of human religious “authorities” as to the how where and when of individual worship do not please God. “God is a Spirit and those that worship him must do it in Spirit and Truth.” v24
As to the change in profile name — it just became easier to post with a different account.
November 12, 2015 at 7:51 pm
Actually Jesus quite explicitly tells the Samaritan woman that she errs in supposing that acceptable sacrifice can be offered to God elsewhere than the Jerusalem temple. “Salvation” the Lord says “comes from the Jews”. He goes on to say that soon acceptable sacrifice will no longer be tied to one geographical location. In chapter six He explains what this sacrifice is: the Mass (cf Malachi 1:11, Matthew 8:11). In Matthew 18:17-18 the Lord specifies that those who do not submit to the power of the keys on moral or doctrinal grounds are to be excluded from the Church. In Luke 22:38 the Lord instructs the Apostles to employ coercive power for the defence of the Church. We see this in action in 1 Corinthians 5:5 where St Paul excommunicates a member of the Church for incest and instructs the Corinthians to hand him over to the civil power for the destruction of the flesh. Once the civil power submitted to Christ’s Church as it should and as it had been prophesied it would “with their faces to the ground they shall bow down to you, and lick the dust of your feet” (Isaiah 49:23) the bishops were able to hand over formal heretics as well for exemplary punishment by the secular arm. Those baptized persons therefore who, for example, espouse the masonic error that Divine Revelation should play no part in public policy and public law, could, in a properly ordered state, be arrested and interrogated to verify that they knowingly reject the teaching of Christ’s Church and then, if obstinate, handed over to the civil authorities for salutatory public execution (Leo X, Esurge Domine 33). Naturally, as St Paul teaches, one continues to pray that such persons will repent of their folly before they are finally consumed.
November 12, 2015 at 9:51 pm
Man, did you twist that up — a complete and total misread of John 4. So for you it’s “freedom of religion” as long as its the enforced religion of the Church authorities. You can’t even see that you are following in the footsteps of your forbears the Pharisees. Anything at all can be justified by quoting Scripture. And by making that the acceptable form of religion you get nothing but divisiveness and conflict. The uncanny unity of the United States with all its diversity stems from the government enforced acceptance of the rights of all to their own experience with the Divine, the right to express that experience (or non-experience) and to live it out. And hence we have here the absolute fulfillment of the parable of the wheat and the tares. Our First Amendment guarantee of religious liberty is the geopolitical fleshing out of the admonition to not pull out the tares “lest while you gather up the tares you uproot the wheat with them.” But you insist in making universal eternal doctrine out of specific incidents that the Early Church leaders were faced with in a situation, time and place as far removed from the present as can possibly be imagined.
Besides all that — you guys are deciding cosmic questions in a tiny fishbowl. The only people in the world who believe that what you think has any impact on anything and anyone are yourselves.
November 12, 2015 at 9:56 pm
Do you actually care whether your beliefs correspond to the teaching of the Church?
November 12, 2015 at 10:31 pm
“The teaching of the Church according to whom?” — is the question.
November 12, 2015 at 9:04 pm
‘Heretic’ comes from the Greek word for choice.
November 12, 2015 at 9:31 pm
“Choice” as regards to belief is the same thing as “opinion”.
November 12, 2015 at 9:59 pm
“‘When I use a word,’ Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, ‘it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.’”
November 12, 2015 at 10:30 pm
You disagree that the word “Choice” with regard to religious beliefs has a different meaning than “opinion”?
November 12, 2015 at 11:00 pm
You obviously believe that when God speaks to the individual believer all He ever says is,”Believe the teachings of the Church.” To believe anything else is “angelism” and “heresy” you say. You cling to that because you are of the learned intelligentsia and that puts you in charge (self-appointed as you are) of interpreting “the teachings of the Church” for the “baptized”. Do you really think that the Messiah who said “Allow the little children to come unto me,” and when they came to Him in their unsophisticated faith, trust and understanding he said “Unless you receive the Kingdom of heaven like a little child you will never enter it” — you really believe that he has put you in charge of telling people who accept his privately understood invitation to “come as a little child” how they must do it? Or that because it doesn’t conform to the doctrinal box you have confined the Almighty to that he is pleased that you accuse us of heresy and angelism? Wake up!
November 12, 2015 at 11:42 pm
Christ gave the keys to Peter and gave the power to define doctrine to Peter and to the Twelve. Their successors the popes and the bishops define in Ecumenical Councils and Ex Cathedra statements. If you do not submit to those statements then the faithful are commanded by Christ Himself to treat you as outside the one fold of salvation (Matthew 18:17-18). You have already explicitly rejected one dogmatic canon of Vatican I and from what you have said it seems you reject many more. All I can recommend is repentance.
November 13, 2015 at 12:23 am
You are engaging in eisegesis all over the text. You have inserted an entire man created rational into the single word “sin”. It is so obvious — but yet you don’t see it. This is unabashed, unadulterated pharisee-ism. You are doing exactly that and proclaiming it as the Revelation of Jesus Christ. And you imagine you are experiencing God’s pleasure — when you are really just very pleased with yourself.
November 13, 2015 at 12:27 am
Do you actually care whether your beliefs correspond to the teaching of the Church?
November 13, 2015 at 12:46 am
I contend that I am as much a member of the Church as is the Pope and the bishops of the Magisterium. Therefore what I hear and understand from God is a teaching of the Church — and the only teachings I need to conscientiously adhere to.
November 13, 2015 at 12:39 am
You miss the entire point of Peter’s reward. He was bestowed with those Divine public honors because “flesh and blood had not revealed it to him, but the Father in Heaven.” It is the pattern for all the heroes of faith in the Scriptures. Nothing in their background or experience including the rote “will of God” as accepted by the prevailing religious culture gave them any indication that what they were hearing privately and directly from God was true. And yet they did believe and acted upon that belief despite the fact that no one else heard what God had told them and that they would now appear to be crazy and/or heretics. But this is what God pours out His cornucopia of blessings for. You make a universal doctrine out of a particular interpretation of Peter’s reward and then call anyone who follows in Peter’s footsteps (and that of Noah, Abraham, Mary, all the prophets, etc.) a heretic engaging in angelism. This is the holy beauty of American religious liberty confirming that the United States is that “company of nations” promised to come in the Last Days to Abraham and his sons and prophesied by Jacob and Moses — for the first time in human history a Nation has guaranteed and protected by Constitutional Law the right of every individual to become a true child of God.
November 13, 2015 at 1:17 am
If, hypothetically, you were to discover a conflict between the teachings of Christ and the principles of the US Constitution or Declaration of Independence which would you chose to follow?
November 13, 2015 at 1:23 am
I’m having trouble coming up with such a scenario — give me an example.
November 13, 2015 at 1:32 am
the U.S. Constitution establishes our form of government and its Bill of Rights protects individuals from unreasonable intrusion on individuals within its borders — including my right to follow Christs teachings as I understand them. Where’s the conflict?
November 13, 2015 at 1:54 am
I wasn’t asking about any particular conflict only about what you would do if you believed in conscience that one had arisen.
November 13, 2015 at 1:24 am
The Declaration of independence does not carry the weight of law.
November 13, 2015 at 1:26 am
I agree with what Kim Davis is doing if that’s what you mean.
November 13, 2015 at 1:54 am
So you agree that Divine Law and American civil law can conflict and when they do Divine Law takes precedence?
November 13, 2015 at 1:54 pm
Again — who is it that interprets Divine Law for me? In the United States we have three representative branches branches of government. The legislative branch enacts the laws, the judicial branch interprets them, the executive branch enforces them. But with God we’re talking about a Monarchy. American religious freedom was founded on that principle — that the King of Heaven does not delegate any of these aspects. The individual has the right to decide who he or she is going to listen to — and if I choose God then there is no committee — no go between.I choose God. You can quote Scripture, Popes, the Doctors of the Church. I check it all out with the Paraclete who is always with me and always gives me the right answer. Even silence is the right answer because “When the thing is uncertain you are free to choose.” Thomas Merton
November 13, 2015 at 6:34 pm
So you accept that Kim Davis is right to violate what the US Supreme court says is the law of the USA because she holds it to be contrary to Divine Law. In that case were the civil authorities (individually and collectively)
1. acting immorally in imprisoning her?
2. Acting illegally in imprisoning her?
I ask the second question because the implication of your acceptance of Kim Davis’s actions is that immoral laws do not have the force of law.
November 13, 2015 at 6:44 pm
Actually as it is coming out she did not break any law — at least that has not been decided yet. She was imprisoned for contempt of court and then was let out and did not change her actions or her position — and is challenging the federal district court judge’s decision in the circuit court of appeals. Tell me — which set of “immoral laws” did Jesus challenge? And did Peter or Paul ever instruct the new Christian Church to disobey the “immoral laws” of Rome? Did not Jesus tell Pilate as he was about to condemn Him to death that he would have no authority over Him if the Father had not granted it?
November 13, 2015 at 6:52 pm
Did not Jesus tell His disciples to do what the Pharisees told them to do, but not to be like them? Remember, Judea was a religious fundamentalist monarchy under the umbrella of Roman rule — the Sanhedrin was the local government.and the Mosaic Law as they deemed it was the law of the land. But Jesus basically taught and acted in a way to make us believe that He had huge problems with how they were interpreting the Scriptures and had come to establish a whole new Regime — a Kingdom established in the hearts of the believers — not another one given over to a hierarchical institution made up of self-appointed religious authorities to interpret for the laity — such as yourselves.
November 13, 2015 at 10:02 pm
So the signatories of the US Declaration of Independence sinned when they rebelled against George III?
November 13, 2015 at 11:34 pm
As I posted earlier — when God inspires you to do something that appears to all the world — including your own learned thinking — to be wrong, you must obey God and risk all.
November 13, 2015 at 3:30 pm
[…] my discussion with Aelianus in the com-box of a recipient post, I am inclining toward the view that a more liberal reading of Dignitatis […]
November 13, 2015 at 11:38 pm
There is no rationale — no established doctrinal construct that can in any way limit God. Whatever God wills is by definition Good, no matter how it appears to religious authority. This is the very basis of the argument that prevailed in the enactment of American religious liberty.
November 14, 2015 at 12:06 am
So if you were a Catholic or a Muslim and you were morally certain that the state should be subjected to Divine Law then it would be fine to use all necessary means (including violence if you were a Muslim) to bring that about?
November 14, 2015 at 12:55 am
You can’t even hear yourself — you are asking the kinds of questions the Pharisees kept trying to trip Jesus up with. You did not even come close to understanding my answer. God is the Absolute Monarch — but unlike a human potentate He is not separate from His precepts — God is His precepts. There is no judging His decrees — and they need no interpretation. The Hand of God is not shortened. To your logic ridden mind this sounds like chaos — but it is the Divine order.
November 14, 2015 at 12:58 am
Everything in the world is proceeding exactly as planned — there is nothing out of place. God always gets what he wants. It is part of the job description.
November 14, 2015 at 12:59 am
And it is still all Good.
November 14, 2015 at 1:28 am
So whatever the United States government decrees is the will of God and, God being identical with his decrees, authentic worshipers of God (such as yourself) recognise the divinity of the United States and worship it accordingly? Am I getting this right? I apologise if I am being too logical I have not managed to emancipate myself from reason as you have done.
November 15, 2015 at 5:48 pm
So, all non-baptised get freedom, which can include making errors, so as to allow them to discover the true faith, but all baptised get no such freedom as their baptism already gives them certainty?
Just to be clear: baptised Protestants are included in the group that have no freedom to practice faiths other than the Roman Catholic faith? Their baptism gives the same certainty as to the truth as the baptisms of Catholics?
Thank you for any help clarifying all this.
November 15, 2015 at 7:30 pm
The non-baptised are not under the jurisdiction of the Church, and they have not promised, in person or by proxy, to live a Christian life, so their freedom in religious matters is not be curtailed by the Church. They are under the jurisdiction of the State, and, as I should argue, their religious freedom can be legitimately curtailed in various ways by the State, for example if they should commit idolatry or seek to dissuade other people from holding revealed truths. The baptised are under the jurisdiction of the Church, and have promised, in person or by proxy, to lead a Christian life, and the Church can therefore oblige them to fulfil this promise even under threat of temporal sanctions (just as the State obliges us, or should oblige us, to live according to the main principles of natural law.)
Baptised Protestants are included among the group who are subject to the Church’s jurisdiction (although the Church does not in the circumstances of the present day seek to exercise this jurisdiction over people who were baptised in a non-Catholic community and who have never been received into the Catholic Church). Their baptism, provided the matter and form were correctly applied, is exactly the same as a Catholic’s baptism, and indeed, babies baptised in a Protestant church are considered members of the Catholic Church until they reach the age of reason and adhere to a non-Catholic body. Therefore per se it gives the same certainty about faith as a Catholic’s. In practice, a child will not, barring a miracle of grace, come to have a certain knowledge of the faith unless his baptism is supplemented by teaching.
The Church therefore has the right to use temporal sanctions to oblige a baptised Protestant to fuflfil the obligations of his baptism; she can’t renounce this right, though she can decided not to exercise it, since it is part of the divine constitution of the Church as established by Christ. Whether or not the Church exercises it depends on the judgement of the pope and bishops as to what is most likely to be conducive to the common good of the Church, including of course the souls of the Protestants in question, and it also depends on the existence of co-operating civil authorities.
November 15, 2015 at 7:44 pm
That makes sense. Thank you for replying so quickly and comprehensively.