Dignitatis Humanae

Colloquium

DIALOGOS INSTITVTE

Volume I

Introduction by Cardinal Burke

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Copyright © 2017 Dialogos Tnstitute

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ISBN: 1533187347
ISBN-13: 978.1533187345

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Dignitatis Humanae Colloquium

Dialogos Institute Proceedings

Volume I

DIALOGOS INSTITVTE

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Contents

Preface.
Fr Thomas Crean OP
Contsibutos
Introduction.,
HE Raymond, Cardinal Burke
He Who Loses the Past, Loses the Present: Putting Diguitatis Humanae in its
Full Historical Contest.
D John Rao
Reading Digiatis Himanae within a hermencutic of continuity.
Rev. Fr Brian W Hareison 08
Religious Liberty from a Historical Perspective...
Prof. Roberto de Mattci
Catholic Teaching on Religion and the State 7
D John Lamont
Dignitatis Humanae: continuity after Leo XITI 105
Prof. Thomas Pink
Dignitatis Humanae — contrary to tradition?, 147
Rev. Dom. Basile Valuet OSB
Digaitatis Humanac: authority, teadition and context — finding the sight
balance... 171
James Bogle Esq.
Does the Declaration Dignitatis hunane contradict the previous
magisterium?. 197
Rev. Fr Dominique-Maric de Saint-Laumer FSVE
An Augustinian Synthesis? . 215
Dr Alan Fimister

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Fr Thomas Crean OP i

Preface

Fr Thomas Crean OP

“This volume contains the papers delivered at a colloquium on Vatican II’s

“Declaration on Religious Liberty’, Dignitatis humanae, held in Norcia, Italy, in
the autumn of 2015, on the occasion of the 50 anniversary of that
document’s promulgation. The colloquium was organised by the Dialogos
Institute, and was attended by His Eminence Cardinal Raymond Burke,
whose opening address is the first paper in this collection.
The purpose of the colloquium was to understand the Church’s teaching on
religious liberty: to investigate the scope and limits of this right, and the ‘the
moral duty of men and societies toward the true religion and toward the one
Church of Christ’.! We did not desire either to praise or to bury that most
controversial document of the 21+ ecumenical council, but rather to grasp its
meaning and its degree of authority by studying it in a properly theological
manner, that is, in conjunction with other relevant magisterial documents and
in the light of the sources of revelation.

Since the promulgation of Digritatis humanac on 8 December 1965, many

studies on this document have appeared, and on the wider questions that it
raises.These studies have often been marred by excessive simplification:
cither they have passed hastily over the great prima facie difficulty of
reconciling Vatican II’s document with Catholic tradition, or they have
unduly belittled the authority of that tradition, or, on the contrary, they have
assumed too quickly that Dignitatis humanae must be rejected in the name of
tradition. Again, while other scholars have avoided such simplistic
approaches, their answers to the principal ques on ‘what does the Catholic
Church teach about religious liberty?” have often been divergent or even
incompatible. Tt was therefore providential that for three days in October and
November of 2015, the Dialogos Institute was able to bring together scholars
who had studied these complex questions deeply and with Catholic
principles, but who had not reached common conclusions, and to give them
the opportunity to discuss them face-to-face and at length. Although this
volume does not contain a record of those discussions — which were a part
of the colloguium perhaps as valuable as the talks themselves - the final paper
(‘An Augustinian Synthesis?) provides a good summary of the state of the
' Dignitatis humanae 1.

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i Dignitatis Humanae Colloquium

question at the end of the proceedings, as well as a bold proposal for uniting
the disparate positions of the different speakers.

1 should like to thank the Benedictine monks of Norcia for their hospitality
during the colloquium. In particular, T should like to thank Fr Cassian
Tolsom, then the prior of the community, for his encouragement and his
welcome, and Br Ignatius, then the guest-master, for the quiet but military
efficiency with which he made it possible for so many priests to offer Mass
in the Basilica of San Benedetto during our three days in the town. I should
also like to thank the Benedictine nuns for providing rooms for many of the
participants.
In llo tenpore.... Our colloquium opened on 30% October 2015, precisely one
year before the carthquake that destroyed all the churches in Norcia, and
made many of its houses uninhabitable. The basilica of St Benedict, built over
the place of his birth, is today a pile of rubble. The monks have moved out
of the town, and are living on the side of the mountain that overlooks it.
Simple, but permanent, structures have been built there, serving as oratory
and living quarters. There they intend to remain, praying for the inhabitants
of Norcia, and for the world; and they hope in time to build a monastic
chutch, and a monastery large enough to house a number of monks greater
than would have been possible in their old site in the town. After all, if our
home collapses, be it one monastery or the whole of Christendom, what else
shall we do but build it again? Magra gloria domus istins novissima plus quam prime.

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Fr Thomas Crean OP i

Contributors

Dr John C Rao obtained his doctorate in Modern European History from

Oxford University in 1977. His dissertation concerned nineteenth century
Catholic reactions to the Enlightenment and the French Revolution. He is
now Associate Professor of European History at St. John’s University in New
York City, and also director of the Roman Forum, a Catholic cultural
organization founded by the late Professor Dietrich von Hildebrand. Many
of his writings dealing with the relationship between Church and society
throughout history can be found on a website entitled For the Whole Christ
(jcrao.freeshellorg). Among his published works are Removing the
Blindfold, Americanism and the Collapse of the Church in the United States
and Black Legends and the Light of the World. Dr Rao is also editor of
Luther and His Progeny: 500 Years of Protestantism and Its Consequences
for Church, State, and Society.

Rev. Fr Brian W Harrison, OS, MA, STD was born in Australia and, after
being raised as a Presbyterian, converted to the Catholic faith in 1972, He is
a priest of the Society of the Oblates of Wisdom and is a retired Associate
Professor of Theology of the Pontifical Catholic University of Puerto Rico.
He is the author of three books and over 130 articles in Catholic books,
magazines and journals in the USA, Australia, Britain, France, Spain and
Puerto Rico. His special interest in theological and liturgical matters, in
keeping with the charism of the Oblates of Wisdom, is upholding a
‘hermeneutic of continuity’ between the teachings of Vatican Council 1T and
the bimillennial heritage of Catholic Tradition.

Professor Baron Roberto de Mattei has taught at the University of Rome-

La Sapienza, the University of Cassino, and the Furopean University of
Rome. From 2003 to 2011, he was vice-president of the National Research
Council of Ttaly (CNR), and from 2002 to 2006 he was a counsellor for
international affairs to the Italian government. He is president of the Lepanto
Foundation, director of the Radici Cristiane [Christian Roots] magazine, and
editor-in-chicf
of the Corrispondenza Romana news agency. He is the author
of more than twenty books translated into several languages.

Dr John R T Lamont is a Canadian Catholic philosopher and theologian,

and a research fellow in the Faculty of Theology and Philosophy at Australian
Catholic University. He studied philosophy and theology at the Dominican
College in Ottawa and at Oxford University, and has taught philosophy and
theology in Catholic universities and seminaries. He is the author of Divine
Faith (Ashgate, 2004), and of a number of academic papers; his academic

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iv Dignitatis Humanae Colloquium

website is at https:/ /acu-au.academia.edu/Johnlamont.

Dr Thomas Pink is Professor of Philosophy at King’s College London.

He is the author of Self-Determination (Oxford University Press 2017) and
has published articles on ethics, philosophy of law, on the history of
philosophy and on the free will problem. He is editing The Questions
Concerning Liberty, Necessity and Chance for the Clarendon edition of the
works of Thomas Hobbes. He has also edited a collection of Francisco
Suatez’s moral, legal and political writings for Liberty Fund.
Fr Basile Valuet OSB is a Frenchman, born in 1961 in Athens. He has
been a Benedictine monk since 1980, and a priest and prefect of studies of
his monastery since 1985. Tn 1995 at the Pontifical University of Holy Cross
(Rome), he received a doctorate in theology summa cum laude for his
dissertation La liberté religieuse et la Tradition catholique (Le Barroux, 3rd
ed., 2011, 6 volumes, 2525 pages, again available).
James Bogle Fsq. TD MA BL KM ACIArb is a barrister of the Middle
Temple, practicing for 20 years. He has appeared in a number of high profile
cases including the recent BREXIT case, the Dianne Pretty cuthanasia case
and the “morning after” pill case. He is a former Chairman of the Catholic
Union of Great Britain, a former President of the International Una Voce
Federation, a director of EWTN (UK), a trustee of Farnborough Abbey, and
the author of a biography of the last Habsbutg monarch, Emperor Blessed
Chatles T of Austria. A former cavalry officer, he is also a Knight of Malta
and of the Constantinian Order of St George. He has appeared on British,
US and other foreign media.
Rev. Fir Dominique-Marie de Saint Laumer FSVE was born on 13th May
1957. He is a graduate of the FEcole Polytechnique, and, along with Fr Louis-
Marie Bligniéres, was one of the founding members of the Fraternity of St
Vincent Ferrer, in 1979. He is a Master of Philosophy (Paris IV, Sorbonne),
and was for a long time sub-prior of the Priory of St Thomas Aquinas. In
2011, he was elected prior of the Fraternity.

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HIL Raymond, Cardinal Burke 1

Introduction
HE Raymond, Cardinal Burke
It is a distinct pleasure to welcome you to the “Dignitatis Humanae
Colloguium’ sponsored by the Dialogos Institute with its seat in this historic
city of Norcia. First of all, I express deepest gratitude to the Dialogos
Institute for its dedication to the renewal of Catholic philosophy and
theology, and, therefose, t the renewal of the Cheistian social order, through
fidelity to the united witness of the Fathers of the Church as that witness
found a particular flowering in Scholasticism.
Tn a particular way, T wish to thank the Dialogos Institute for organizing
the present colloquium on the Declaration Digritatis Hinanaz, “On Religious
Liberty”, of the Second Vatican Hcumenical Council, which was promulgated
some 50 years ago, on December T, 1965. While certainly not one of the
principal documents of the Second Vatican Council, as is seen in is status as
a declaration, not a constitution or decree, Dignitatis Humande treats upon a
matter which becomes ever more controversial in the various cultures in
‘which the Church finds herself, and it treats it in a manner which generated
a fundamental debate since the time of its promulgation. One of the great
benefits of the present colloquium is to hear scholars who have studied the
matter in depth and have reached different conclusions speak to each other's
argumentation.
1 recall the course in ius publicum ecclesiasticum which was one of the
sequied courses for the attainment of the licentiate in Canon Law during my
years of study in the Faculty of Canon Law of the Pontifical Gregorian
University from September of 1980 to April of 1984, The professor made it
clear that, in his judgment, Diguitatis Humanae represented a radical departure
from the Church’s classical understanding of her relationship to the state, as,
for example, elaborated in the classical manual
of the late renowned profssor
of the faculty, Father Felice M. Cappello, S. The professor’s treatment of
the subject matter ook its leave from the thought of Father John Coustney
Murray, S.]., especially as it was articulated in his best-known work, We Hold
These Truths: Catholic Reflections on the American Proposition, a collection of his
essays treating religion and public life. Murray himself, who had been
significantly involved in the drafting of the third and fourth versions of
Digaitatis Humanae, held the traditional understanding of the Churcl’s
relationship to the state to be inadequate for the Catholic of our time. His
position is intimately connected with the understanding of religious freedom
of the framers of the Constitution of the United States of America and
pasticularly of the First Amendment to the Constitution. In any case, the

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2 Dignitatis Humanac Colloquium

professor of the course on ius publioun ecclesiastionn certainly subscribed to
what Pope Benedict XVI, in his 2005 Christmas discourse to the Roman
Curia, described as the hermeneutic of rupture or discontinuity applied to the
Second Vatican Council.
But the Church, which is not our creation but comes to us from Christ
through the Apostolic Ministry, cannot accept any teaching which is not an
organic development within the Apostolic Tradition. Whatever good is to be
found in the thought of Father John Courtney Murray or others who have
written and spoken about religious freedom must, by definition, be a
development from what the Church has always taught and practised in the
matter. One of the central contents of the Church’s constant teaching is the
Kingship of Christ, a teaching which was magisterially set forth by Pope Pius
XI and to which Pope Saint John Paul IT returns in his first Encyclical Letter
Redemptor Hominis. The action of the Church in the civil order is an expression
of the kingly mission of Christ and of the members of His Mystical Body, the
Church.
In this regard, 1 recall the remark of a religious brother who was the
libratian of the theological seminary at which T completed my studies before
presenting myself for ordination to the priesthood. Reflecting upon the state
of society in relationship to our Catholic faith in those years, the early 1970%s,
he remarked: “Raymond, the barbarians are no longer at the city gates, they
are sitting with you at the dinner table.” The timeliness of the present
colloquium, on the correct understanding of the Church’s teaching on
religious freedom, escapes none of us, 1 am certain. The correct
understanding of religious freedom has everything to do with a new
evangelization and, therefore, with the transformation of society, in accord
with the mind and heart of Christ the King. In a particular way, I think of the
alarming diminution of the notion of the Catholic statesman. It pleased me,
some months ago, to meet with a young Catholic member of the House of
Representatives in the United States of America, representing a district of my
home state of Wisconsin, who described for me the effort of certain faithful
Catholic politicians to meet for the purpose of understanding more deeply
what the Catholic faith demands of them, in order that they serve the
common good, and for the purpose of encouraging and assisting one another
to be truly Catholic politicians.
In the present time, 1 cannot fail to mention a que: ion which is
connected with another declaration of the Second Vatican Council, the
Declaration Nostra Aetate, “On the Relation of the Church to Non-Christian
Religions,” also promulgated 50 years ago, on October 28%, 1965. T refer in
particular to Islam, which has rightly been described as a nomocracy.
Professor Umar F. Abd-Allah describes Islam as “nomocratic,” that is, “ruled
by law,” and points out that “many questions — today including issues such

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HE Raymond, Cardinal Burke

as abortion, environmental protection and interfaith relations — which

Christians regard as theological, are, for Muslims, not matters of theology but
fundamental questions of religious law.”!
Islam is its law: the Shari’a. For Islam, therefore, the distinction between
Church and state does not exist. Commenting on the relationship of Islam to
Christianity, and noting significant differences between the two religions,
Professor Emeritus Bernard Lewis of Princeton University finds the greatest
difference “in the attitudes of these two religions, and of their authorized
exponents, to the relations between government, religion and society.”?
Regarding the great difference in the just-mentioned attitudes, he writes:

The Founder of Christianity bade his followers “render

unto Caesar the things which are Caesar’s; and unto God
the things which are God’s” (Matt. XXII:21) — and for
centuries Christianity grew and developed as a religion of
the downtrodden, until with the conversion to Christianity
of the emperor Constantine, Caesar himself became a
Christian and inaugurated a series of changes by which the
new faith captured the Roman Empire and transformed its
civilization. The Founder of Islam was his own Constantine,
and founded his own state and empire. He did not therefore
create — or need to create — a church. The dichotomy of
regmum and sacerdotinm, so crucial in the history of Western
Christendom, had no equivalent in Tslam. During
Muhammad’s lifetime, the Muslims became at once a
political and religious community, with the Prophet as head
of state. As such, he governed a place and a people,
dispensed justice, collected taxes, commanded armies,
waged war and made peace. For the formative first
generation of Muslims, whose adventures are the sacred
history of Islam, there was no protracted testing by
persecution, no tradition of resistance to a hostile state
power. On the contrary, the state that ruled them was that
of Tslam, and God’s approval of their cause was made clear
to them in the form of victory and empire in this world.

! Umar E Abd-Allah, “Theological dimensions of Tslamic law;® Classical Islamic

Theology, ed. Tim Winter, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008, p. 237.
> Bernard Lewis, The Crisis of Islam: Haly War and Unbly Terror, New York: The
Modern Library, 2003, pp. 5-6.
5 Ibid., p. 6.

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For Muslims, religious law is, in reality, the only true law. While they may
have to live, for a time, in a situation in which the sovereignty of Islamic law
is not recognized, it is clear that they await the time when it will be sovereign
in their particular situation, as in every place. One notes here that, while
Christians await the transformation of the world at Christ’s Second Coming,
even as they work to prepare themselves and the world for the
transformation to be worked by Christ at Iis coming in glory, Muslims await
the sovereignty of their rule and its law to be accomplished in the here and
now of the world in which we live. Fidelity to the Apostolic Tradition
regarding the proper relation between spiritual and temporal authority will
become ever more critical in responding rightly to an ever-growing Islamic
presence in what has been a Christian society.
Finally, a proper understanding of the Church’s Tradition regarding
religious liberty is indispensable to a new evangelization of the Church
Herself, in what pertains to her identity, and of society in general.
Fundamental to understanding the radical secularization of our culture is to
understand also how much this secularization has entered into the life of the
Church Herself. Pope Saint John Paul 1T declared:

But for this [the mending of the Christian fabric of society]

to come about what is needed is to first remake the Christian
Jabric of the ecclesial community itself present in these countries
and nations.*

A new evangelization demands that the lay faithful fulfil their particular
responsibility, that is, “to testify how the Christian faith constitutes the only
fully valid response — consciously perceived and stated by all in varying
degrees — to the problems and hopes that life poses to every person and
society.” This requires that they “know how to overcome in themselves the
separation of the Gospel from life, to take up again in their daily activities in
family, work and society, an integrated approach to life that is fully brought

#“1d [consortium humanum spiitu christiano imbuendum] tamen possible crit,

christianus communitatum ipsaram - ecclesialinm contextus, quae his in regionibus et
nationibus degunt, renversr” Pope Saint John Paul 11, Apostolic Exhortation
Christfdeles laici, 30 December, 1988, 0. 34, Ada Apostalicae Sedis, vol. 81 (1989), p.
455,
5 “..testari quomodo christiana fides responsum constituat unice plene validum, ab
omnibus plus minusve conscie agnitum et invocatum, ad quaestiones et
exspectationes, quas vita ipsa homin et societatibus imponit singulis”, ibid.

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HE Raymond, Cardinal Burke 5

about by the inspiration and strength of the Gospel.Ӣ Clearly, the right
understanding of religious freedom, which pertains to the remaking of the
fabric of the ecclesial community, is at the heart of the remaking of the fabric
of Christian society in general.
I close these introductory remarks by expressing my heartfelt wish and
prayer that the Dignitatis Humanae Colloquium will serve faithfully what the
Church has always taught about the relationship between the Church and
civil authority. In a particular way, I wish and pray that it will contribute to
the right interpretation of the teaching of the Second Vatican Council, in
fidelity to the Tradition. May God bless these important days of conversation
in pursuit of the truth about religious freedom.

6 “_hiatum inter Evangelium et vitam in scipsis superare valeant, in quotidianis

familiae navitatibus, in labore et in socictate unitatem vitae componentes, quac in
Evangelio lucem et vim pro sua plena invenit adimpletione”, ibid.

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6 Dignitatis Humanac Colloquium

He Who Loses the Past, Loses the Present: Putting
Dignitatis Humanae in its Full Historical Context

Dr John Rao
Being neither a theologian nor a logician, my task here today is not that
of entering directly into a discussion of whether the Declaration on Religious
Liberty of the Second Vatican Council is or is not in contradiction to previous
Church teaching on this topic of immense spiritual, political, and social
significance. My role is mercly that of laying out the historical background in
which that Declaration came to life.
Nevertheless, 1 do think that a broad consideration of the modern
revolutionary context in which the current discussion of the question of
religious liberty emerged offers an absolutely essential preparation for the
more substantive dialogue to come. On the one hand, such a study
demythologizes the claim by the most vocal proponents of the Declaration
that their position called attention to a fresh development of Catholic
doctrinal insight dealing with a political situation very different from that
faced by believers even in the recent past. It does so by making it clear that
the battle leading up to Diguitatis humanae at Second Vatican Council was
actually nothing other than the second part of a contemporary drama whose
nearly identical first act began a century and a half earlier——although it ended
on a quite different note. On the other hand, contemplation of this broad
historical picture demonstrates that the proponents of the 1965 teaching
reflected what was, at best, an appalling ignorance or naiveté regarding the
political and intellectual conditions under which the Catholic Church was
operating in the period after the Second World War, and, at worst, an active
participation in the work of rendering the cause of Christ sociologically and
even spiritually meaningless.
Moreover, at least as far as T am concerned, a knowledge of both the
long-term as well as the more immediate historical setting of the Declaration
on Religious Liberty leads to two further conclusions: first of all, that an
orthodox interpretation of the final text stood no chance of obtaining any
serious practical hearing whatsoever; and, secondly, that the task of the
believing Catholic lies not so much in glossing this document to death as in
uncovering the horrific obstacles that the Zeifgeist dominating our lives in
2015---as in 1965 and the nineteenth century beforehand-—places in the path
of learning and acting in accord with Faith and Reason on any substantive
issue of political and moral importance.

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 Copyritted Materia
December 2015 marked the 50th anniversary of the most
controversial document of the Second Vatican Council,
the 'Declaration on Religious Freedom!, Dignitatis
Humanae. Ever since its promulgation, it has been the
subject of prolonged and often impassioned debate. What
precisely does it teach? What is its authority? How can it
be reconciled with the Churchs teaching about the
kingship of Christ and the duties of Catholic statesmen?
Scholars from all over the world met in Norcia in October
2015, in the presence of Cardinal Raymond Burke, to
discuss these vital questions.

Under the patronage of St. Gregory the Great, the

Dialogos Institute exists for the promotion and defence of
scholasticism within the living context of the liturgical
heritage of Rome and Byzantium. The Dialogos Institute
is a Romano-Byzantine thuslo;,m] institute in Norcia, Ttaly
devoted to the study of the patristic heritage in the spirit
of Latin and Byzantine Thomism. Returning to the
sources of the faith through the Socratic method of
disputation, the members of the Dialogos Institute seek to
contribute to the renewal of Catholic Theology and
Philosophy and an authentically Christian social order
through fidelity to the united witness of the holy Fathers.
The Institute pursues these aims through conferences,
publications and programmes of study illustrating the
unity of the Church's traditions eastern and western,
patristic and scholastic, clerical and lay

ISEN 9781533187345

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