Back to the Basics of Religious Liberty

This year, the Murphy Institute's Hot Topic: Cool Talk is joining the bandwagon in focusing on religious liberty.  Speakers at our first two programs this year shared what I thought was a very telling message -- getting "back to the basics" of the religious traditions they represented.

Just last week, Rob Vischer from UST Law and Abdulwahid Qalinle, an adjunct law professor at the University of Minnesota Law School and director of its Islamic Law and Human Rights Program, engaged the topic:  The Dangers of Anti-Sharia Laws: Muslim and Catholic Perspectives.  (We co-sponsored this with UST's Muslim-Christian Dialogue Center.)  As you can see from the video of the event here, one of the points made a number of times by Professor Qalinle (most directly in response to an audience question about Pakistan's blasphemy laws) was that the Koran says: "do not insult the religous beliefs of others", and allows people to disbelieve the Koran itself, if they are not convinced of its truth.

In September we opened the program with a dialogue on "Vatican II on Religious Freedom: European and American Perspectives", featuring UST Law's Reggie Whitt and the Most Reverend Charles Morerod, OP, of the diocese of Fribourg, Lausanne, and Geneva, Switzerland.  Bishop Morerod is the former rector of the Angelicum in Rome,the former Secretary General of the International Theological Commission and Consultor for the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, and currently a member of the Congregation for Catholic Education. One of Bishop Morerod's basic points in describing the evolution of Church thought that led to the promulgation of Dignitas Humanae was the Church asking itself (if I may paraphrase, since Bishop Morerod used much sophisticated and elegant language, as you can see by watching this video of the event) "What Would (did) Jesus Do?"  As Bishop Morerod put it, Jesus never forced any of his disciples to follow him, and, indeed, most of the people he encountered did not choose to follow him.

When I get lost in the thickets of some of the more sophisticated religious libery debates, I sometimes find it helpful to be reminded of the basics.