Constantability of Catholic Church Teaching Religious Freedom

Chrześcijaństwo Świat Polityka ◽

10.21697/csp.2020.24.1.25 ◽

2020 ◽

pp. 157-179

Author(s):

Michał Kmieć

Keyword(s):

Twentieth Century ◽

Catholic Church ◽

Religious Freedom ◽

The State ◽

The Right ◽

The Relationship ◽

The Church ◽

Church Teaching

The purpose of the article is to embed the twentieth-century teaching of the Church's Magisterium on the right to religious freedom in the Church's Tradition, showing clear evidence for the continuity of this teaching. Religious freedom is not a law that existed in the teaching of the Church fifty years ago, but one of its traditional elements, which may not have been strongly realized for centuries. It is, however, one of the elements of science about the relationship between the Church and the state that does not contradict any other elements.

Download Full-text

The Eschatology of the Eos-Circle

Church History ◽

10.2307/3163386 ◽

1970 ◽

Vol 39 (2) ◽

pp. 187-197

Author(s):

Paul Gottfried

Keyword(s):

Nineteenth Century ◽

Catholic Church ◽

The State ◽

German Culture ◽

French Empire ◽

Madame De Stael ◽

Monastic Communities ◽

The Right ◽

The Universe ◽

The Church

Madame de Staël, in her monumental study of German culture, L'Allemagne, wrote of the Catholic church at the dawn of the nineteenth century: “Today, standing disarmed, it has the majesty of an aged lion which formerly made the universe tremble.”1 The French empire, continuing the policy of the revolution, confiscated ecclesiastical property wherever it expanded. By 1804 Napoleon distributed the church's land in Germany—which had been the most extensive in her possession of any country in Christendom—among his client rulers on the right bank of the Rhine.2 All over Europe princes were dissolving monastic communities in order to make their revenues available to the state. Perhaps the church suffered her crowning indignity in 1809, when Napoleon responded to a dispute with the pope by making him his prisoner.

Download Full-text

Liberal Democracy and the Right to Religious Freedom

The Review of Politics ◽

10.1017/s0034670509990714 ◽

2009 ◽

Vol 71 (4) ◽

pp. 621-635

Author(s):

Michael J. Perry

Keyword(s):

Human Dignity ◽

Catholic Church ◽

Liberal Democracy ◽

Religious Freedom ◽

Prima Facie ◽

Roman Catholic Church ◽

Liberal Democratic ◽

Dignitatis Humanae ◽

The Right ◽

The Church

AbstractThe Roman Catholic Church was famously late to embrace the right to religious freedom. Some have plausibly maintained that when, in 1965, the cardinals and bishops at the Second Vatican Council overwhelmingly adopted the Declaration on Religious Freedom—known by the first two words of its official Latin version: Dignitatis Humanae—the church betrayed one of its most traditional and established theological teachings. The right to religious freedom, according to international law, rests in part on respect for human dignity. Thus there is a prima facie link between the liberal democratic justification and the church's 1965 justification. But, as I will argue, the appeal to human dignity is not a preserve of modern liberal democracy. Indeed, we can imagine a government that limits religious freedom because it wishes to save souls, and this precisely out of a respect for human dignity. A similar view was held by the pre-Vatican II church. Thus the appeal to human dignity is not evidence of a fundamental shift by the church. What then does account for the church's undeniable change of direction? Human dignity by itself cannot provide the fundamental justification for the right to religious freedom. Another ingredient is needed: distrust, born of long historical experience, of government authority to adjudicate questions of religious truth. The church in Dignitatis Humanae accepted this lesson of history, a lesson available to believers of a variety of stripes as well as nonbelievers.

Download Full-text

Stanislav Orikhovsky's Views on Church-State Relations

Ukrainian Religious Studies ◽

10.32420/2006.38.1729 ◽

2006 ◽

pp. 116-128

Author(s):

R. Mnozhynska

Keyword(s):

Catholic Church ◽

The State ◽

Church State Relations ◽

State Relations ◽

The Relationship ◽

The Church ◽

The Catholic Church

Before talking about the vision of Orikhov's essence of the relationship between the church and the state, one must first determine what the church is about - Catholic or Orthodox. After all, the thinker lived in Poland when there were still strong, even parity positions of both denominations. He himself was brought up in a family where his father was Catholic and his mother was Orthodox. This was reflected in his mentality: he repeatedly publicly stated the benefits of certain tenets of the Orthodox faith. But most of all he settled on the problem of relations between the Catholic Church and the state.

Download Full-text

On the Authority of Papal Encyclicals

Religion, Law, and Democracy ◽

10.1093/oso/9780198818632.003.0016 ◽

2020 ◽

pp. 288-306

Author(s):

Ernst-Wolfgang Böckenförde ◽

Mirjam Künkler ◽

Tine Stein

Keyword(s):

Catholic Church ◽

Vatican Ii ◽

Canon Law ◽

Religious Freedom ◽

Human Person ◽

Law Reform ◽

The Political ◽

Teaching Staff ◽

The Right ◽

The Church

In this article Böckenförde connects two of the most important concerns throughout his life: the freedom of man and the constitution of the Catholic Church. Böckenförde shows that papal encyclicals are inherently fallible, demonstrated historically for example with reference to magisterial statements on religious freedom, which as late as the nineteenth century condemned religious freedom as leading to the dissolution of the divinely given order of truth. Böckenförde shows that this position is based on a perceived unity of morality and juridical law, which fails to distinguish their respective functions. Böckenförde then discusses the ‘Declaration on Religious Freedom’ by Vatican II as an epochal shift from the right of truth to the right of the person, endorsed with a theological legitimation, namely the dignity of the human person arising from the likeness of God. Böckenförde also proposes that the authority of encyclicals is dependent on the question of how far encyclicals are open to internal criticism, which does not signal a lack of faith, but rather an important corrective that needs to be taken into account by the magisterium based on the concept of sensus fidelium. Without such engagement, the connection between the authority of the teaching staff, which traditionally provides meaningful orientation, and the faithful’s willingness to follow, is in danger of dissolution. As Böckenförde elucidates with reference to the Codex Iuris Canonici of 1983, the political practice inside the Church is far from permitting such engagement. Böckenförde’s concluding remarks are dedicated to the need for canon law reform.

Download Full-text

THE CATHOLIC CHURCH TESTED FOR CONFESSIONALISM: THE VATICAN II DOCTRINAL PRINCIPLES

Journal of Law and Religion ◽

10.1017/jlr.2018.31 ◽

2018 ◽

Vol 33 (2) ◽

pp. 155-171

Author(s):

Matteo Visioli

Keyword(s):

Catholic Church ◽

Vatican Ii ◽

Church And State ◽

The State ◽

Religious Liberty ◽

Vatican Council ◽

Concept Of Truth ◽

The Right ◽

The Church ◽

The Catholic Church

AbstractIn Catholic doctrine, church and state are two different and autonomous institutional subjects, but they are mutually linked. Therefore, a believer, as a citizen, is a subject simultaneously of two legal systems; the state is bound to recognize the confessional dimension of its own members, and the church is called to realize its proper ends within a precise political-social context. The Second Vatican Council (1962–1965) constitutes for the Catholic Church a point of change and renewal. It did not limit itself to affirming the coexistence of the two systems in their independence, but it declared the necessity of a mutual alliance for the good of citizens and believers.Therefore, the church offers its own contribution to the state, favoring in this way the right to religious liberty; and the state allows the church to establish itself and carry out its proper mission in an institutional form, guaranteeing the protection of the rights of citizens as believers for the free expression of their faith, whether in a private dimension or in an organized form. Vatican II abandons, therefore, the concept of “state religion” in the classic sense of the term, and thus the privilege reserved to one among numerous religious expressions, and opens an authentic collaboration between parties as a prerequisite for the good not only for individual believers and religious organizations, but also for society itself. In particular, religious liberty finds its foundation no longer in the concept of truth (that legitimized the exclusion of other confessions in that they were “not true”), but in the concept of the dignity of the person, which must be protected as such.

Download Full-text

COMMENTARY ON THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN SCIENCE AND FAITH IN CHURCH TEACHING

The Bulletin of NLU Law Academy named Yaroslav the Wise The series of Philosophy Political Science and Sociology ◽

10.21564/2663-5704.50.235929 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 3 (50) ◽

Author(s):

Reyber Parra Contreras

Keyword(s):

Catholic Church ◽

Faith And Reason ◽

Benedict Xvi ◽

Vatican Council ◽

Academy Of Sciences ◽

The Relationship ◽

Fides Et Ratio ◽

Science And Faith ◽

The Church ◽

Church Teaching

The text analyzes the relationship between Science and Faith in the Magisterium of the Catholic Church. The analysis is based on the position of the Vatican Councils I and II about the importance of Faith and Reason for man, in his search for truth; simultaneously, the orientations of popes Leo XIII and John Paul II were taken into account, in their Encyclicals Aeterni Patris and Fides et Ratio, respectively; some speeches by Popes Paul VI, Benedict XVI and Francis before the Pontifical Academy of Sciences were also analyzed. The Church has sought from the First Vatican Council to the present to bring, harmonize and complement the relationship between Faith and Reason; its interest is not limited to promoting scientific research; it also aspires that knowledge be ordered to the welfare of the human being, and the horizon of faith is recognized in the search for truth.

Download Full-text

Notas acerca de la formación histórica de la Ciencia del Derecho Eclesiástico

Revista Española de Filosofía Medieval ◽

10.21071/refime.v10i.9282 ◽

2003 ◽

Vol 10 ◽

pp. 403

Author(s):

Lourdes RUANO ESPINA

Keyword(s):

Human Rights ◽

Religious Freedom ◽

The State ◽

Training Process ◽

Legal Science ◽

The Law ◽

The Right ◽

The Church

If the historical training process of the Ecclesiastic Law was begun when the State was considered legitimated to legislate in ecclesiastic matters, defending its own front sovereignty against the monopoly of the domain of the Law of the Church, at present, its consolidation as autonomous legal Science has been possible thanks to the recognition, tutela and promotion of the human rights and, in particular, of the right to religious freedom.

Download Full-text

RELIGIOUS FREEDOM WITHOUT EQUALITY? RELIGIOUS MINORITIES AND THE ESTABLISHMENT OF RELIGION IN ARGENTINA

Journal of Law and Religion ◽

10.1017/jlr.2018.32 ◽

2018 ◽

Vol 33 (2) ◽

pp. 172-191 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Juan Martin Vives

Keyword(s):

Catholic Church ◽

Religious Freedom ◽

The State ◽

Faith Communities ◽

Religious Minorities ◽

Unequal Treatment ◽

Catholic Faith ◽

The Right ◽

Religious Establishment ◽

State Relations

AbstractThe Argentine Constitution contains two provisions regarding church-state relations. The first one recognizes the right of all people to the free exercise of religion. The second one provides that the state must financially support the Catholic Church. Based on this latter clause, over the years a complex regulatory scheme has been developed that differentiates that church from all the other churches and religions. Those differences are addressed in this article. The author argues that the religious establishment does not depend only on how the state defines itself (e.g., through a declaration in the constitution), but also on the way in which it treats people based on their religion. If that treatment is unequal—for example, when there are legal privileges only to a single church—then there is a kind of establishment of religion. It has been claimed that the religious establishment is not itself incompatible with religious freedom. In arguing that religious minorities can hold a different opinion, the author offers a brief account of the problems faced by non-Catholic faith communities in Argentina because of the state's unequal treatment. Finally, the author analyzes whether the reasons given to justify the legal differences between religions are acceptable. Otherwise, it could be said that there is discrimination—at least, in a broad sense—against religious minorities. While this article focuses on the Argentine case, the issues addressed are relevant to any country dealing with the unequal treatment of people based on their religion.

Download Full-text

The discursive production of public inquiries: The case of Australia’s Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse

Crime Media Culture An International Journal ◽

10.1177/1741659020953451 ◽

2020 ◽

pp. 174165902095345

Author(s):

Matthew Mitchell

Keyword(s):

Sexual Abuse ◽

Child Sexual Abuse ◽

News Media ◽

Catholic Church ◽

The State ◽

Royal Commission ◽

Institutional Responses ◽

The Right ◽

Media Discourses ◽

The Church

Since the turn of the century, public inquiries into the perpetration and concealment of child sexual abuse within religious institutions have proliferated throughout Europe, North America and Australasia. This article examines the role that news media discourses might play in supporting this trend. Taking Australia’s Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse as a case study, I compare how news media constructed its precipitating issue of child sexual abuse in the Catholic Church at two different points in time: the period surrounding the announcement of the Royal Commission and a period 10 years earlier when calls were made for a Royal Commission that were not actualised. I find that in the decade before the Royal Commission’s establishment news media deemed the Church capable of and responsible for delivering justice, and as such licensed it to respond to allegations of abuse internally. In the period surrounding the Royal Commission’s establishment, however, the Church was rendered complicit and had lost its authority to manage the issue internally, while the State had become marked as responsible for recourse instead. This suggests that the emergence of the Royal Commission was imbricated in broader discursive shifts regarding which institution was attributed the right and responsibility to respond. These findings both indicate that news media discourses may play a role in facilitating or inhibiting the emergence of public inquiries and also raise critical questions about the consequences of a discursive shift that centres the State as responsible for and capable of delivering justice in the aftermath of institutional child sexual abuse.

Download Full-text