Sunday, November 8, 2009
Liberal Democracy, the Right to Religious Freedom, and the Roman Catholic Church
This paper, to be published soon in a symposium issue of Notre Dame's Review of Politics, may be of interest to MOJ readers.
Liberal Democracy and the Right to Religious Freedom
Michael J. Perry
Emory University School of Law; University of San Diego - School of Law and Joan B. Kroc School of Peace Studies (2009-2012)
The Review of Politics, Vol. 71, pp. 1-15, 2009
Abstract:
The Roman Catholic Church was
famously late to embrace the right to religious freedom. Some have plausibly
argued that when the Second Vatican Council, in 1965, overwhelmingly adopted the
Declaration on Religious Freedom - known by the first two words of its official,
Latin version: Dignitatis Humanae - the Church betrayed one of its most
traditional and established theological teachings. Did the Church, at Vatican
II, capitulate to, or at least compromise with, "liberalism?"
The right
to religious freedom, according to international law, rests in part on respect
for the "inherent dignity" of every human being. Thus there is a prima facie
link between the liberal-democratic justification and the Church's 1965
justification. But as I argue in this essay, the appeal to human dignity is not
an exclusive preserve of modern liberal democracy. Indeed, we can imagine a
government that refuses to affirm the right to religious freedom because it
wishes to save souls, and this precisely out of respect for human dignity of
every human being. Such a view was proclaimed by the the pre-Vatican II Church.
Thus the appeal to human dignity is not evidence of a fundamental shift by the
Church. What then does account for the Church's undeniable U-turn - its
undeniable change of direction?
Respect for human dignity by itself
cannot provide the fundamental justification for the right to religious freedom.
Another ingredient is needed: distrust, born of long historical experience, of
government competence to adjudicate contested questions of religious truth. The
Church in Dignitatis Humanae finally came to accept this lesson of history - a
lesson available to believers of various faiths, including Catholics, as well as
to nonbelievers.
[The paper can be downloaded here.]
https://mirrorofjustice.blogs.com/mirrorofjustice/2009/11/liberal-democracy-the-right-to-religious-freedom-and-the-roman-cathoilic-church.html