Religious Freedom and Freedom of Conscience

IN EXPLORING THE ISSUE OF RELIGIOUS freedom, we may conveniently divide the issue into two. The first, the issue of religious freedom as a fundamental human right. The second, the relationship between that fundamental human freedom and the Catholic Church. In this blog posting we shall deal with the first issue. In the next blog posting, we shall deal with the second.

For the first matter, we must turn to human nature which, indeed, is the source and foundation of the natural moral law, and hence also the source of human right. Man has a natural inclination, an intellectual and felt need, to seek the truth and to worship God. He has this inclination to seek the truth and to worship God irrespective of, one might say "before" coming upon, God's own revelation of Himself as Truth, and God's revelation to man as to the means of worship.

In short, there is in man a religious impulse. As the Catechism of the Catholic Church puts it: "The desire for God is written in the human heart," and this desire is satisfied only with the God that reason only outlines in the most vague way. This religious impulse, of course, is what explains the world's religions, since these represent cultural expressions of man-seeking-God, of homo quaerens Deum. We find it so beautifully displayed--albeit with admixture of error--in, for example, the writings of Plato, in Cicero, and in some of the sacred and philosophical texts of Hinduism.* In dealing with the issue of religious freedom and freedom of conscience, we are not yet dealing the God of revelation, the Deus revelatus. We are not yet dealing with the Deus quaerens hominem, the God seeking man of the Old Testament, much less the Deus quaerens in homine hominem, as St. Augustine so beautifully put it in one of his sermons, the God seeking man in man of the New Testament. (375/C)

This religious impulse or natural inclination is of the natural law, and the natural law is therefore the source of those rights, specifically, the right to religious freedom. Man, alone and with others of his kind, must be free to exercise this religious impulse, to search for the truth and for God in freedom, to find that balm of Gilead for his restless heart. It is this natural inclination that is ordered to truth and to God that the Church seeks to protect when she proclaimed in the Declaration Dignitatis Humanae the right of the person and of communities to social and civil freedom in religious matters. As the Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church elaborates:

In order that this freedom, willed by God and inscribed in human nature, may be exercised, no obstacle should be placed in its way, since "the truth cannot be imposed except by virtue of its own truth." The dignity of the person and the very nature of the quest for God require that all men and women should be free from every constraint in the area of religion. Society and the State must not force a person to act against his conscience or prevent him from acting in conformity with it.

Freedom of conscience and religion 'concerns man both individually and socially." The right to religious freedom must be recognized in the judicial order and sanctioned as a civil right . . . . .

(Compendium, No. 421) (quoting DH, 1; citing DH, 2, 3; CCC 2106, 2108)

Inextricably intertwined with religious freedom is the freedom of conscience, since conscience, though not infallible, is nothing less than man's internal window to God, a "window through which one can see outward to that common truth which founds and sustains us all." It is the aperture of the soul wherein man finds an "openness to the ground of his being, the power of perception for what is highest and most essential." It is the soul's route by which "the way to the redemptive road to truth," into "a 'co-knowing' with the truth" that is God, is gained. This is the conscience which Cardinal Ratzinger once described as "an inner ontological tendency within man, who is created in the likeness of God, toward the divine."**

The right to religious freedom and freedom of conscience is therefore one ordered to truth and to God. It is for this reason, that the the Church distinguishes between "religious freedom" and "freedom of conscience," and what might be called "religious license" or moral libertinism. "Religious freedom is not a moral license to adhere to error," nor should it be viewed as "an implicit right to error." (Compendium, No. 421) (citing CCC 2108) It is ordered to the truth and to good, ultimately God who is the source of both truth and good.

Properly understood, therefore, freedom of conscience and of religion "is not of itself an unlimited right." (Compendium, No. 422)

What, then, are the just limits of this freedom?

The just limits of the exercise of religious freedom must be determined in each social situation with political prudence, according to the requirements of the common good, and ratified by the civil authority through legal norms consistent with the objective moral order.

(Compendium, No. 422)

The "objective moral order" is a reference to the natural law. Therefore, there is no religious freedom or freedom of conscience that would justify a right to breach the natural moral law. Consequently, the just limits of religious freedom or freedom of conscience may include prohibitions of practices against, or offensive to, the natural moral law. For example, it would not be a violation of religious freedom or freedom of conscience to prohibit polygamy or family intermarriage, human or animal sacrifice, or religions that practiced offensive sexual religious rituals or which advocated assassination, violence, or disobedience to positive laws that were in accord with natural law.

The reason behind imposing just limits on freedom of religion and of conscience relates to the public order and the common good:

Such norms are required by "the need for the effective safeguarding of the rights of all citizens and for the peaceful settlement of conflicts of rights, also by the need for an adequate care of genuine public peace, which comes about when men live together in good order and in true justice, and finally by the need for a proper guardianship of public morality."

(Compendium, No. 422) (quoting DH, 7).

Since the natural moral law binds all men regardless of confession, and since religious freedom and freedom of conscience find their source in the natural moral law itself, it is reasonable to impose upon all men limits based upon that natural moral law. In other words, religious freedom and freedom of conscience (which are founded on the natural moral law) do not provide freedom or license for beliefs or acts that are contrary to that very same natural moral law.

Finally, the Church recognizes the intrinsic historical and cultural ties that a religious tradition may have with a people, and recognizes that the common good might allow for "special recognition" of that reality. Thus, the Church might recognize that the natural moral law would not be violated if special recognition were given to Islam in Saudi Arabia, Hinduism in India, Catholicism in Malta, or a more vague Christianity in the United States. These would be justified because of those particular religions' ties to those countries. But even so, religious freedom and freedom of conscience survive such "special recognition."

Such norms are required by "the need for the effective safeguarding of the rights of all citizens and for the peaceful settlement of conflicts of rights, also by the need for an adequate care of genuine public peace, which comes about when men live together in good order and in true justice, and finally by the need for a proper guardianship of public morality."

(Compendium, No. 423) (quoting JPII, Message for the 1999 World Day of Peace, 5)

____________________________________________
*I have in mind in particular the Katha Upanishad VI.12:

Not by speech, not by mind,
Not by sight can He be apprehended.
How can He be comprehended
Otherwise than by one's saying "He is"? . . .

I also have in mind the Shvetashvatara Upanishad III.7, 9:

Higher than this is Brahman. The Supreme, the Great,
Hidden in all things, body by body,
The One embracer of the universe--
By knowing Him as Lord, men become immortal.
. . . .
Than whom there is naught else higher,
Than whom there is naught smaller, naught greater.

Quotes from Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan and Charles A. Moore, eds., A Sourcebook in Indian Philosophy (Princeton University Press, 1957). I find the former eerily similar to the revelation of God to Moses, and the latter reminiscent of St. Anselm's ontological proof of God. Hinduism is, of course, an eclectic hodgepodge of a religion, and includes sects within it which are crassly materialistic as well as some which reach very near the heights of monotheism, and all sorts in between.
**Joseph Ratzinger, On Conscience (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2007), passim. One cannot understand the Church's teaching on religious freedom without understanding what she means by "conscience." This is not a word by which one can excuse all manner of beliefs and activities, one's wishes, desires, tastes, or society's conventions. As the Puritan Thomas Brooks captured the concept it in his epistle "The Privy Key of Heaven": "Conscience is God's deputy, God's spy, God's notary, God's viceroy." Thomas Brooks, The Complete Words of Thomas Brooks, "The Privy Key of Heaven"(London: James Nisbet & Co., 1866), Vol. 2, p. 150.

It is also valuable to reflect on conscience along the lines of the Platonic anamnesis, which Ratzinger in his reflection does, or as a dim memory of Eden or an implanted proto-monotheism or urmonotheismus, as did the linguist, anthropologist, and ethnologist Fr. Wilhelm Schmidt, S.V.D.

In the words of Orestes Brownson:

The soul appears to every nice observer to retain traces of a lost grandeur, and to be filled with an undying regret for what once was, but is no longer, hers. She appears to be tortured by her reminiscences. Even before illumined by faith, she regards herself as expelled from her early home, as an exile from her native country, and a sojourn-er in a strange land. She bears with her the secret memory of a lost paradise, for which she sighs, and with her recollections of which, dim and fading though they be, she contrasts whatever she finds in the land of her exile. What is the poetry of all nations but the low wail or wild lament of the soul over her lost Eden, the music in which she expresses the wearisomeness of her banishment, and her longing to return and dwell again in the sweet bowers of her early youth, of her childhood's home?

Orestest Brownson, "Admonitions to Protestants No. 3," Brownson's Quarterly Review (July 1848). Pascal referred to this as the feeling of unsettledness, unhappiness even, coming from the fact that we have fallen from a better nature that was once us, we are, as it were, fallen royalty. This is the "greatness" and yet the "wretchedness" of man. But it is what spurs him on, his hound of heaven:

In order to make man happy, it must prove to him that there is a God; that we ought to love Him; that our true happiness is to be in Him, and our sole evil to be separated from Him; it must recognize that we are full of darkness which hinders us from knowing and loving Him; and that thus, as our duties compel us to love God, and our lusts turn us away from Him, we are full of unrighteousness. It must give us an explanation of our opposition to God and to our own good. It must teach us the remedies for these infirmities, and the means of obtaining these remedies. Let us therefore examine all the religions of the world, and see if there be any other than the Christian which is sufficient for this purpose.

Pensées, No. 430. To preserve and allow for this Pascalian search for happiness, which first leads to the God of the philosophers and then quickly progresses further to the God of Christianity, is the reason for freedom of religion and freedom of conscience. This uniquely human quest, this yearning for the Other, for the First Cause, for the One, the Good, the Beautiful, for the I am Who am, ultimately for the Triune God and communion with Him by Grace, is the most valuable human endeavor, greater far than any earthly good. It is therefore, the right of rights.

Libertas Christi Urget Nos

“FOR FREEDOM, CHRIST HAS SET US FREE," the Apostle Paul wrote to the Galatians (Gal. 5:1): qua libertate nos Christus liberavit. Freedom is a central value of the Church's social doctrine, along with truth, justice, and love. Libertas Christi urget nos. The freedom of Christ spurs us on.

Freedom, however, is one of those words that is so easily abused in the lips of the libertine, of the moral relativist who considers himself unbounded by objective truth and objective right. "O Liberté, que de crimes on commet en ton nom!" exclaimed Madam Roland as she bowed before the statute of liberty in the Place de la Révolution before the guillotine severed here head from her body. "O Liberty! What crimes are committed in thy name!"

Many kinds of slavery wear a false frock of freedom to cover their blemishes. But the freedom the Church has in mind is a responsible freedom, not an irresponsible freedom. As John Paul II defined it in his homily in Orioles Park at Camden Yards in October 1995, "freedom consists not in doing what we like, but in having the right to do what we ought."

It is not the freedom to do what we want, but the freedom to do what we ought that is the "highest sign in man of his being made in the divine image and, consequently, as a sign of the sublime dignity of every human person." (Compendium, No. 199) An irresponsible freedom detracts from the freedom of the sons of God and consequently stains--even eclipses--his dignity. "Every human person," states the Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church, "created in the image of God, has the natural right to be recognized as a free and responsible being." (Compendium, No. 199) It is important to note the conjunction: we have a natural right to be "free and responsible," not "free and irresponsible."

Freedom is not something we exercise only in regard to ourselves, solipsistically, egoistically. Such a restrictive notion of freedom is Hell. "Hell," T. S. Eliot had the loveless husband say to his unloving wife in his play "The Cocktail Party," "is oneself, Hell is alone, the other figures in it, merely projections. There is nothing to escape from and nothing to escape to. One is always alone." In such a place, there is no where to go, nothing to do. All is restraint. There is no choice. There is no freedom.



In his "Stanzas on Freedom," the American Romantic poet and abolitionist James Russell Lowell asked this question:

Is true Freedom but to break
Fetters for our own dear sake,
And, with leathern hearts, forget
That we owe mankind a debt?

Freedom is exercised not only for oneself, but with regard to others, that is to say, communally. Freedom is necessarily "exercised in relationships between human beings." For this reason, the "meaning of freedom must not be restricted, considering it from a purely individualistic perspective and reducing it to the arbitrary and uncontrolled exercise of one's own personal autonomy." (Compendium, No.199) Heaven is not alone. Heaven is communion, communion with God, and with his angels and saints. To invoke again James Russell Lowe, who answers the question he posed just earlier in the poem and quoted above:

No! true freedom is to share
All the chains our brothers wear,
And, with heart and hand, to be
Earnest to make others free!

The Compendium summarizes this quite nicely: "Far from being achieved in total self-sufficiency and the absence of relationships, freedom only truly exists where reciprocal bonds, governed by truth and justice, link people to one another."* (Compendium, No. 199).

While communal and not solipsistic, the cloth of freedom is not dyed one color and does not come in one size, like a Mao suit. Freedom allows for legitimate self-expression within certain moral constraints and constraints required by the requirements of civil society and life in common. Freedom's value allows for the "expression of the singularity of each human person" within the constraints of right and due order. (Compendium, No. 200)

This sort of freedom should be reflected in the civil liberties enjoyed and practiced by those in a well-ordered polity. In a well-ordered civil society, the following are the broad freedoms within which one can express his personal autonomy responsibly:

• the freedom to fulfill his personal vocation;
• the freedom to seek the truth and profess his religious, cultural, and political ideas;
• the freedom to express his opinions;
• the freedom to choose his state of life, and, as far as possible, his line of work;
• the freedom to pursue initiatives of an economic, social, or political nature.
  

Naturally, these freedoms are not exercised in vacuo, in a vacuum. They are exercised in communio, within a community. For this reason, they must be exercised within the matrix of a "'strong juridical framework,' within the limits imposed by the common good and public order, and, in every case, in a manner characterized by responsibility." (Compendium, No. 200)

There are some places where freedom cannot go, where it may not enter. For there are places where one goes from freedom to unfreedom, from true freedom to what are just elusive shades and shadows of freedom. Freedom will recognize those limits, and therefore it will "refuse what is morally negative, in whatever guise it may be presented." Freedom accordingly includes the "capacity to distance oneself effectively from everything that could hinder personal, family, or social growth." (Compendium, No. 200) This suggests that freedom is found only in virtue, and never in vice. "Only a virtuous people," wrote Benjamin Franklin unerringly, "are capable of freedom."

In short, as the Catechism of the Catholic Church defines it (§ 1731):

Freedom is the power, rooted in reason and will, to act or not to act, to do this or that, and so to perform deliberate actions on one's own responsibility. By free will one shapes one's own life. Human freedom is a force for growth and maturity in truth and goodness; it attains its perfection when directed toward God, our beatitude.

The Compendium summarizes its view of freedom in this manner: "The fullness of freedom consists in the capacity to be in possession of oneself in view of the genuine good," which, of course ultimately is God, "within the context of the universal common good." (Compendium, No. 200)
_______________________________________
*The Compendium quotes the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Instruction Libertas conscientia, 26.

Freedom and Law: Pope Leo XIII's Libertas praestantissimum, Part 8

FREEDOM OF CONSCIENCE is a precious freedom, one jealously guarded by the Church, but it also--alas--tends to be used as a last refuge of scoundrels, an excuse to sanctify nothing but sheer subjectivism. To some extent, freedom of conscience overlaps with the freedom of religion or worship which Pope Leo XIII addressed in an earlier part of his encyclical Libertas praestantissimum. But Leo XIII discusses the liberty of conscience more broadly, particularly with regard to its relationship to the State. For Leo XIII, liberty of conscience is a sacrosanct liberty, one enshrined by both natural and divine law, if that liberty is defined as the right of "every man in the State may follow the will of God and, from a consciousness of duty and free from every obstacle, obey His commands."

This, indeed, is true liberty, a liberty worthy of the sons of God, which nobly maintains the dignity of man and is stronger than all violence or wrong - a liberty which the Church has always desired and held most dear. This is the kind of liberty the Apostles claimed for themselves with intrepid constancy, which the apologists of Christianity confirmed by their writings, and which the martyrs in vast numbers consecrated by their blood. And deservedly so; for this Christian liberty bears witness to the absolute and most just dominion of God over man, and to the chief and supreme duty of man toward God.

Haec quidem vera, haec digna filiis Dei libertas, quae humanae dignitatem personae honestissime tuetur, est omni vi iniuriaque maior: eademque Ecclesiae semper optata ac praecipue cara. Huius generis libertatem sibi constanter vindicavere Apostoli, sanxere scriptis Apologetae, Martyres ingenti numero sanguine suo consecravere. Et merito quidem: propterea quod maximam iustissimamque Dei in homines potestatem, vicissimque hominum adversus Deum princeps maximumque officium, libertas haec Christiana testatur.

LP, 30.

This freedom of conscience is authentic, and it is world's apart from the freedom of conscience invoked by a "seditious and rebellious mind." Authentic freedom of conscience insists on obedience to human authority, but insists equivalently on the limits of that human authority, and the absolute preeminence of the law of God and divine authority, whose law and authority take precedence over any mere human authority, and in whose law is perfect freedom.

Pope Leo XIII also issues a warning against those liberals who would exclude God from reasons of State, and, in effect, make the State the Leviathan, the Mortal God of Hobbes, from whose absolute power there is no appeal:

By the patrons of liberalism, however, who make the State absolute and omnipotent, and proclaim that man should live altogether independently of God, the liberty of which We speak, which goes hand in hand with virtue and religion, is not admitted; and whatever is done for its preservation is accounted an injury and an offense against the State. Indeed, if what they say were really true, there would be no tyranny, no matter how monstrous, which we should not be bound to endure and submit to.

Contra Liberalismi fautores, qui herilem atque infinite potentem faciunt principatum, vitamque nullo ad Deum respectu degendam praedicant, hanc de qua loquimur coniunctam cum honestate religioneque libertatern minime agnoscunt: cuius
conservandae caussa si quid fiat, iniuria et contra rempublicam factum criminantur. Quod si vere dicerent, nullus esset tam immanis dominatus, cui subesse et quem ferre non oporteret

LP, 31.

The proper understanding of these liberties--of religion, of speech, of conscience--and the rejection of the false liberal interpretations of them is essential for the "cankered and bitter" fruit that liberalism's political acculturation has brought forth to become once again "sweet and wholesome." We suffer sociological plagues caused, in large part, by liberalism's errors: destroyed marriages and ruined families, collapse of any social mores, disregard for human life, the plague of abortion, the clamor for homosexual marriage, fraud in our basic financial and economic institutions, an inability to engage in any meaningful political discourse, increasing vulgarity, loss of reverence . . . . The de-Christianized West is not a model of virtue: it is a landscape of utter moral vapidness. "If, then, a remedy is desired," the Pope said, "let it be sought for in a restoration of sound doctrine, from which alone the preservation of order and, as a consequence, the defense of true liberty can be confidently expected." LP, 32.

(continued)