"Religious liberty" according to Catholic philosophy and authorities
The Catholic Position: Religious Liberty is a Condemned Error
The [pre-modernist] Catholic position is that "justice and reason forbid the state to be godless, or to adopt a practical godlessness, namely, to treat various religions alike and afford them equal privileges". The "profession of one religion is necessary in the state, and that religion must be professed which [reason itself] can externally recognize as true without difficulty"[i].
The action of the state is NOT "limited to the pursuit of public prosperity in this life"; the ultimate object of civil society is man's eternal happiness[ii]. Since, says Thomas, “the beatitude of heaven is the end of that virtuous life which we live at present, it pertains to the king’s office to promote the good life of the multitude in such a way as to make it suitable for the attainment of heavenly happiness, that is to say, he should command those things which lead to the happiness of Heaven and, as far as possible, forbid the contrary"[iii]. Since “the present order of things is temporary and subordinated to the conquest of man's supreme and absolute welfare, it follows that the civil power must not only place no obstacle in the way of this conquest, but must aid us in effecting it”[iv].
Hence civil society has an "indirect care" or authority over religion. This consists in its necessary subordination to the Church; it must, as per Bellarmine, be “servant to the spiritual authority and protect and defend it from its enemies”[v]. In the concrete, it is "bound to acknowledge and worship God", to rid its territories of atheism, and protect the Church by the “benevolence and authority of its laws”[vi]. It must frame these laws “according to right reason and revelation as interpreted by the Church"[vii]. It “enjoys freedom and independence of action in everything formally related to the pursuit of its own end, provided it always respects the subordination of its own end to the end of the superior society”[viii]. It resultantly possesses a right to suppress false religions and cannot per se tolerate false ones (that is, without extrinsic justification)[ix]: it is “obliged to prohibit and suppress, as far as possible, whatever is opposed to natural law [and revelation]”[x]. It may forgo such suppression, and tolerate false doctrines per accidens, in the intertest of a higher good, or when circumstances are such that suppression would cause worse evils, like civil unrest[xi]. In the concrete, the jurist must pose a "question of fact” and weigh the "dangerous consequences" of tolerating false doctrines against the circumstantial harms suppression might pose in any given case[xii].
Note the radical distinction between these propositions:
That which does not correspond to truth or to the norm of morality objectively has no right to exist, to be spread or to be activated. It CAN, for circumstantial reasons, be tolerated: “as the least objectionable condition possible under the circumstances”, but never afforded “abstract rights”[xiii]. [toleration per accidens]
vs
The individual in error (no matter the sect he is a member of[xiv]) has a right to freedom from coercion by any human authority[xv]; his “dignity” is a permanent good in light of which we tolerate his error. Indeed, his error is even regarded as “rationally defensible and morally inoffensive” (more below). [toleration per se]
Objection 1: the state has no authority to coerce in matters of religion
“In matters of religion”, says Pink, “the Church is the only authority with the right to coerce”[xvi]. Since the state “lacks [in itself] authority for religious coercion”[xvii], “people have a right not to have their religious practice coerced by the state”[xviii].
This is the Pink thesis[1].
Anticipating Pink's misapprehension of his sources, Lagrange says: “if temporal goods were not essentially subordinated to the spiritual good, I would concede… Otherwise I deny”. Civil authority and the very end of the activity of society itself are subordinated to the spiritual life. We “cannot concretely and efficaciously intend the ultimate natural end in abstraction from the supernatural end, for man is bound by natural law to obey God when he commands. Therefore, one cannot turn away from the ultimate supernatural end without simultaneously turning away from the ultimate natural end”[xix]. The right of the state to coerce in matters of religion arises from her subordination to, not authority over, the end of religion.
Note the disparity. To Pink, “insofar as temporal power acts as an instrument of the Church, it is not acting on its own native authority”[xx]. To Lagrange and the Catholics, contrarily, temporal power is an instrument of the Church precisely insofar as it adequately pursues its own ultimate end. It cannot fail to be an instrument of the Church “without simultaneously turning away” from its own good.
Detailed response:
a) Most obviously, as essentially subordinated to religion, temporal is distinct from spiritual authority. It lacks charge over the same object, is “wholly subject" to spiritual power, and can be judged (and even deposed[xxi]) by the same; all men are subject to the pope as to Jesus Christ. Leo XIII affirms no more or less. Bellarmine likewise denies civil magistrates the authority to judge religious matters or preside over councils[xxii]. But Leo mutually affirms that justice and reason forbid the state to be Godless, or to treat various religions alike; Bellarmine that “princes are obliged NOT to grant their subjects freedom of belief, and to see that the faith of the Church is solely preserved”[xxiii]. In an opposite manner, from the distinction of these authorities, Pink concludes to their separability: that temporal authority is not, essentially, and by natural law, subordinated to religion. Thus, he opines, the Church’s sanction is necessary for the state to coerce in matters of religion, and the Church can withdraw this sanction.
This is false, since the right to coerce arises from the natural and necessary subordination of civil to religious authority and ends. This subordination is not due to the positive command of the Church, it is obliged by the natural law, from which, as Pius XII observes, “not even the Church has the power to dispense”[xxiv].
b) Coercion entails the direct religious authority of the state if an agent can only act for an end it has authority over.
But multiple parties can relate to the same end in different ways. Legislation, which is “a rule and measure of acts, whereby man is induced to act or is restrained from acting”, is in the ruler essentially, as in he who “rules and measures”, and in the ruled by participation, as in he who is “measured and ruled”. The state’s exercise of coercion is not the action of “one that rules” in matters of religion, but rather, of one “that is ruled” [xxv].
To illustrate, note that the Church is an authority over the natural law, which governs procreation and the raising of children. Indeed, “all actions of a Christian man, so far as they are morally either good or bad - that is, so far as they agree with or are contrary to the natural and divine law - fall under the judgment and jurisdiction of the Church”[xxvi]. The Church is the authority over “the whole of moral truth, omnem veritatem, in which all individual moral truths are included, as well those which man may learn by the help of reason, as those which form part of revelation or which may be deduced from it”[xxvii].
Yet, according to this natural law, even the Church’s interpretation of the same, “the education of children belongs properly and directly to parents”[xxviii], who must raise their children according to faith and morals as dictated by the Church[xxix]. The Church’s authority does not imply her sole rights to action, it implies other agents must act in service of Her ends. The existence of superior authority, the Church, does not preclude subordinated authority, the family; it defines its “inviolable rights” and governs its operations[xxx]. This subordinated authority “has its own proper end” on account of which it is bound to the superior authority[xxxi].
Thus, the man who educates his child does not appropriate the Church’s authority over the natural law. He tends to the proper end of his own family, while comporting with the superior authority of the Church – which has judged that domestic society was “instituted directly by God for its peculiar purpose, the generation and formation of offspring”[xxxii].
Likewise, the Church has declared that “every attempt of either husband or wife in the performance of the conjugal act or in the development of its natural consequences which aims at depriving it of its inherent force and hinders the procreation of new life is immoral”[xxxiii]. The couple engaged in the conjugal act in line with this dictate does not appropriate the Church’s authority, they act in accordance with it… nor do they require the Church’s permission for the conjugal act itself!
Likewise, the state which coerces in matters of religion is not appropriating the Church’s sole authority over religion. It is not exercising judgement in religious matters. It is, firstly, defending religion in line with its natural obligation to the higher end overseen by this authority; its own proper end is temporal prosperity as ordered to the ultimate good of human nature. It is, secondly, submitting to the judgements of the religious authority. The Church has used Her religious authority to multiply legislate that reason and nature compel the state to profess the true faith, and “so far as possible forbid the contrary”. She has judged that “justice and reason” forbid the state to be godless and treat various religions alike”; [judged] that the state is essentially subordinated to Her authority.
Thus, Bellarmine mutually stresses that “it does not pertain to the magistrate to judge in matters of religion”[xxxiv] AND that “the defense of religion pertains to the magistrate”[xxxv]. The subordinated party is essentially instrumental to the higher end it serves. Thus, says Augustine, “the king serves God differently as a king and a man: as a man, he serves Him by living in faith, as a king, by ordering just laws, prohibiting the opposite, [as when] King Josias destroyed groves and temples of the idols, or Nebuchadnezzar did by a terrible law forbidding everyone who dwelled in his kingdom to blaspheme against God”[xxxvi]. The state must be religion’s servant, defend it from enemies, and ensure the earthly attends to the heavenly kingdom[xxxvii].
c) The Pinkian is committed to the view that authorization of the Church is required for adhesion to her judgements.
d) He is further committed to a denial of subsidiary if the first causality and rulership excludes subordinated participants, such that direct and subordinated authority cannot naturally exist re the same object. So much for “as God is in the universe, the king in his kingdom"! God's proper authority over the universe apparently excludes subordinated authorities participating in the governance of the same. It is unsurprising a man with a career premised on Hobbes believes this.
e) The Pinkian has also appropriated religious authority to himself, purporting a notion of morality and natural law at odds with magisterial judgement: the state, apparently, lacks the capacity to do precisely what the popes say “reason and justice demand” of it!
f) Further, if the Pink thesis is true, then “Justice and reason” do NOT forbid the state to be godless and to bestow upon erroneous systems “promiscuously equal rights and privileges”[xxxviii]. The “ultimate object” of state action is NOT “man’s eternal happiness”. Instead, the state is “limited to the pursuit of public prosperity during this life”[xxxix]. As per the modernist council, civil authority “would clearly transgress the limits set to its power, were it to presume to command or inhibit acts that are religious”[xl]. It has no “indirect spiritual authority”. It must act with the authority of the Church to coerce in matters of religion.
This indifferentism and naturalism was condemned in Quanta Cura, Libertas, Vehementer Nos, etc.
Objection 2: religious error is not contrary to reason or public morality
Religious error exists which is “rationally defensible, morally inoffensive and without injurious natural consequences”[xli]
a) Religious error is rationally defensible only if the Catholic religion CANNOT be easily recognized as true by the “marks of truth engraved upon it”[xlii], and that “arguments of credibility”[xliii] are inadequate. This modernist epistemology was condemned in Pascendi.
b) Further, freedom of belief has “dangerous consequences” and is “destructive even for the temporal good of kingdoms and for public peace”, since it constitutes a dereliction of the ultimate duty of civil society, and creates “dissension of spirits and wills”[xliv]. Bearers of false ideas “are more harmful to their neighbors than any pirate or theif, since they destroy the souls and ineed foundations of everything that is good, and fill the commonwealth with riots, which necessarily follow differences in religion”[xlv].
Objection 3: religious liberty is tolerance of error for the greater good of human dignity or freedom
“Tolerance is justified in the interest of a superior good. But the idea of the Council is that the dignity of every human person and social peace are always goods which require that the State not repress religious error when this is not oppose to good social order”[xlvi]
a) Religious error is always opposed to good social order, since civil is subordinated to supernatural society, and one cannot turn away from the ultimate supernatural end without simultaneously turning away from the ultimate natural end.
b) Further, dignity is [right to[xlvii]] honor or respect warranted by virtue or circumstance[xlviii]; but a man in sin has no dignity and is worse than a beast[xlix].
i. The dignity of no creature is infinite or inalienable; “God alone is of infinite dignity”[l]. No composite [human] being exhibits [except in a potential sense shared with all material beings] even relative infinity, since the form of the composite being is “in no way infinite”[li].
ii. Dignity is an accident of a substance, not a characterization of the nature which remains amidst sin. Thus, observes Thomas, the sinner retains his nature and is essentially distinct from a beast[lii], but loses the dignity of his manhood[liii].
c) Further, coercion away from error serves, and does not offend, human dignity. Freedom of belief, says Bellarmine, “is destructive for those to whom it is allowed, for it is nothing but the freedom to err, and to err in matters where error is most dangerous. If true faith is only one, the freedom to move away from that one faith is the freedom to rush into an abyss of errors. Just as it is not beneficial for sheep to wander the mountains or a ship to be free from its oar and carried by the wind, so also it is not beneficial [in the interest of human dignity or freedom] to allow the peoples freedom of belief”[liv]. Indeed, in the same manner execution “is often a benefit for the people themselves to be executed, when it is clear that [the criminal] is becoming worse”[lv]. The good and dignity of the rational being are bolstered when this being is prevented from befouling its nature with the depravity of evil.
Explanations from Lagrange’s De Revelatione (translated by Minerd)
“Positively and directly—the state must foster revealed religion not only by showing favor to the preaching and propagation of the true faith, the building of churches, and by acknowledging clerical immunity from secular services (e.g., military service), but also by publicly professing the true faith (e.g., through participation in true worship, through public veneration of the holy name of God and of Jesus Christ). Nay, the state can even compel citizens to perform certain religious acts, especially in circumstances wherein such omissions would represent a form of contempt for religion in some way (e.g., the denial of oaths before a tribunal)[lvi]…
I concede that the state cannot command anything contrary to true and certain conscience. However, I deny that this is so for erroneous and hardened conscience. For there are those who hold that it is permissible that one perform the gravest of crimes. Hence, just as men who do not admit property rights can be compelled to act as though they acknowledge those rights, so too the state can and must prohibit that which is contrary to the natural law and unjust to God and, indeed, compel citizens to perform certain acts of religion, the omission of which would involve contempt of religion (e.g., the taking of oaths before a tribunal)[lvii]…
The state must not per se tolerate (that is, without any just cause) that which in itself is evil and unjust to God. However, the worship offered by nonbelievers and heretics must per accidens be tolerated (that is, in order to avoid a greater evil). For to tolerate is not to prohibit an evil, though an evil per se must be prohibited. Hence, although the civil authority can sometimes tolerate freedom of worship, nonetheless, it cannot in any way [positively] sanction this through its laws, for to sanction freedom of worship is to sanction impiety, since false forms of worship are superstition and impiety.[lviii]”
[1] Pink pretends to derive this thesis from the Leo XIII. “It is the Church, and not the State”, said Leo, “that is to be man’s guide to heaven: and it is to the same Church that God has assigned the charge of seeing to, and legislating for, what concerns religion”. Whatever “is in any way of a sacred character, whatever belongs either of its own nature or by reason of the end to which it is referred, to the salvation of souls or to the worship of God, is wholly subject to the power and judgment of the Church”.
[i] Libertas 21
[ii] Vehementer Nos 3, De Regno 16. 114-115, GV3 44, 352-355
[iii] De Regno 16.115
[iv] Vehementer Nos 3
[v] On Temporal and Spiritual authority 85
[vi] Grenier v3 357
[vii] Barry 304
[viii] GV3 472
[ix] De Revelatione V2 597
[x] Barry Church of Christ 304-305
[xi] Barry 307, 309; De Revelatione v2 597,
[xii] Ci Riesce V
[xiii] Barry 309
[xiv] DH 6
[xv] DH 2
[xvi] Pink 3
[xvii] Pink, Conscience and Coercion 6
[xviii] Pink 5
[xix] De Revelatione V2 596-597
[xx] https://thejosias.com/2015/01/01/vatican-ii-and-religious-liberty-ii/
[xxi] Unam sanctam
[xxii] OTSA 79
[xxiii] OTSA 82
[xxiv] Address to Midwives on the Nature of Their Profession, ‘Sterilization’ section
[xxv] Ii-I.90.3.a
[xxvi] Ad Apostolorum 34
[xxvii] Divini Illius 20
[xxviii] GV3 332
[xxix] GV3 336
[xxx] GV3 330
[xxxi] GV3 334
[xxxii] Divini Illius 12
[xxxiii] Address to Midwives, ‘the conjugal act’
[xxxiv] OTSA 79
[xxxv] OTSA 81
[xxxvi] OTSA 83
[xxxvii] OTSA 85
[xxxviii] Libertas 21
[xxxix] Vehementer Nos 3
[xl] DH 6
[xli] https://www.catholicculture.org/commentary/doctrinal-development-on-religious-liberty/
[xlii] Libertas 21
[xliii] Pascendi 7
[xliv] OTSA 86
[xlv] OTSA 109
[xlvi] https://stomachosus-thomistarum.blogspot.com/2015/02/cdf-and-lefebrve-pars-ii-religious.html?m=1
[xlvii] Ii-ii.63.1.r1
[xlviii] Ii-ii.63.3.a
[xlix] Ii-ii.64.2.r3
[l] Compendium of Theology 226
[li] i.7.2.a
[lii] Ii-ii.64.3.r2
[liii] Ii-ii.64.2.r3
[liv] OTSA 86
[lv] OTSA 109
[lvi] DR v2 689
[lvii] DR v2 694
[lviii] DR v2 695