The Challenges to Religious Freedom

 

This morning, Pope Benedict met a group of U.S. bishops on their ad limina visit with the Holy Father, and he delivered to them an important address dealing with religious freedom in the United States. [HERE] His remarks echo the sentiments of Paul VI who, at the conclusion of the Second Vatican Council, stated to the temporal authorities of the world that the one thing that the Church asked of them was the freedom to exist in order that she may advance her mission without impediment. Implicit in this request of Paul VI was the necessity to promote in public forums the Church’s teachings that are critical to the development and preservation of the moral and virtuous life and the promotion of the common good.

Today, Benedict XVI reemphasized this central objective. As he, Benedict, stated,

At the heart of every culture, whether perceived or not, is a consensus about the nature of reality and the moral good, and thus about the conditions for human flourishing. In America, that consensus, as enshrined in your nation’s founding documents, was grounded in a worldview shaped not only by faith but a commitment to certain ethical principles deriving from nature and nature’s God. Today that consensus has eroded significantly in the face of powerful new cultural currents which are not only directly opposed to core moral teachings of the Judeo-Christian tradition, but increasingly hostile to Christianity as such.

Like many others, the pope is aware of the recent erosions of authentic religious liberty around the world, including the great democracies. He stated that true religious freedom has been beneficial to the establishment and the progress of our nation that has promoted human flourishing and the advancement of the common good. Yet, the pope also noted that,

For her part, the Church in the United States is called, in season and out of season, to proclaim a Gospel which not only proposes unchanging moral truths but proposes them precisely as the key to human happiness and social prospering (cf. Gaudium et Spes, 10). To the extent that some current cultural trends contain elements that would curtail the proclamation of these truths, whether constricting it within the limits of a merely scientific rationality, or suppressing it in the name of political power or majority rule, they represent a threat not just to Christian faith, but also to humanity itself and to the deepest truth about our being and ultimate vocation, our relationship to God. When a culture attempts to suppress the dimension of ultimate mystery, and to close the doors to transcendent truth, it inevitably becomes impoverished and falls prey, as the late Pope John Paul II so clearly saw, to reductionist and totalitarian readings of the human person and the nature of society.

The pope continued his exhortation by emphasizing the crucial relationship between faith and reason that is essential not only for the Church but for all of civil society. This does not mean that the Christian perspective will always control the outcome of public discourse, but it does mean that this point of view must nevertheless always be a substantial and meaningful part of the discourse. As Benedict asserted,

The Church’s defense of a moral reasoning based on the natural law is grounded on her conviction that this law is not a threat to our freedom, but rather a “language” which enables us to understand ourselves and the truth of our being, and so to shape a more just and humane world. She thus proposes her moral teaching as a message not of constraint but of liberation, and as the basis for building a secure future.

The Holy Father further realized that there presently exist dangers to the Church’s ability, through all her members, to serve as an advocate and a public moral witness that is essential to the common good by providing a critical counterpoint to the “radical secularism” of the day that increases its influence on the political and cultural dimensions of civil society. In one particular context the pope identified the assaults against the right to enjoy the benefits and public exercise of the well-formed conscience, an issue frequently discussed here at the Mirror of Justice.

The pope continued by expressing that it is essential to the preservation of authentic religious freedom that “an engaged, articulate and well-formed Catholic laity” (and here, I suggest that this means any person who thinks with and not against the Church) provide this essential counterpoint in the debates surrounding the important issues of the day. The Holy Father also expressed his gratitude to those ecclesiastical officials who have maintained contacts with Catholics in public life who have or can have an impact on the outcome of the political, social, economic, and cultural debates that often determine what is constitutive of our democratic society.

I, for one, pray that all members of the Church around the world, but especially here in the United States, will take to heart the words of the Holy Father and the encouraging and challenging words he has offered.

 

RJA sj