On December 7, 1965, Pope Paul solemnly promulgated the Second Vatican Council’s Declaration on Religious Freedom, known by its Latin incipit (opening words) as Dignitatis Humanae. The Council thereby turbocharged the Catholic Church’s transformation into the world’s premier institutional defender of basic human rights—which the late Sir Michael Howard, Regius Professor of Modern History at Oxford, once told me was one of the two great revolutions of the twentieth century, the other being the Bolshevik theft of the Russian people’s revolution in 1917.
And so we have another irony in history’s fire. For it was the Catholic Human Rights Revolution that played a pivotal role in putting paid to Lenin’s Bolshevik Revolution and the monster state it created, the Soviet Union.
How, you ask?
Think of the linkages this way:
No Vatican II, no universalization of global Catholic leadership.
No universalization of global Catholic leadership, no Pope John Paul II.
No Pope John Paul II, no broad-based, religiously sustained revolution of conscience, of the sort that transformed public life in east central Europe from 1979 to 1989.
No revolution of conscience, no nonviolent auto-liberation of the “captive nations” of central and eastern Europe in 1989-1991.
No auto-liberation of the vassal states of the Warsaw Pact and the pseudo “republics” of the USSR, no collapse of the Soviet Union in August 1991.
And the linchpin in that chain of causality was Dignitatis Humanae.
Why? Because absent the Council’s solemn affirmation of religious freedom as a fundamental human right—a truth grounded in the dignity of the person that can be known by both revelation and reason—the Church would have been unable to plausibly defend the rights of religious people (and indeed all people of conscience) against the atheistic hegemon of European communism.
Nor would a Church clinging to the remnants of ecclesiastical establishment have been able to credibly assert that state power is inherently limited and has no legitimate role in “those voluntary and free acts by which a man directs himself to God … [acts that] cannot be commanded or forbidden by any human authority” (as the declaration put it).
In short, Dignitatis Humanae not only defended a basic right of persons to be free from coercion in that sanctuary of conscience where God may be sought and found. Dignitatis Humanae was also the theological analogue to a precision-guided hypersonic missile, aimed directly at a central claim of the communist project: that there was no sanctuary of personal identity and integrity into which the party-state could not assert itself.
Little wonder, then, that Yuri Andropov, the highly intelligent and thoroughly wicked chairman of the KGB, the USSR’s secret intelligence service, saw the 1978 election of John Paul II—a promoter of Dignitatis Humanae at Vatican II and an ardent defender of religious freedom as archbishop of Kraków — as a mortal threat to the Soviet Union itself, not just to the Soviet position in Poland.
Contrary to ill-informed opinion in 1965 and today, Dignitatis Humanae was not the opening wedge to religious indifferentism. In fact, its key paragraph, having defined the right of religious freedom as grounded in the nature and dignity of the person, immediately linked that right to a duty:
It is in accordance with their dignity that all men, because they are persons, that is, beings endowed with reason and free will and therefore bearing personal responsibility, are both impelled by their nature and bound by a moral obligation to seek the truth, especially religious truth. They are also bound to adhere to the truth once they come to know it and direct their whole lives in accordance with the demands of truth. But men cannot satisfy this obligation in a way that is in keeping with their own nature unless they enjoy both psychological freedom and immunity from external coercion. (DH 2)
The Declaration on Religious Freedom was not a surrender to secular liberalism; it was not a concession to modern skepticism about the human ability to know anything with certainty; and it was not an ecclesiastical white flag waved before Enlightenment political theory. It was a classic case of the development of doctrine—in this instance, the recovery and application to contemporary circumstances of two biblically rooted truths.
The first of those truths is that God wishes to be adored by people who are free, as manifest in Israel’s experience of the Exodus. The second is that there are things of God’s that are not Caesar’s, as the Lord taught in Matthew 22:21.
The Catholic Church was being true to her divinely ordered self in Dignitatis Humanae. That fidelity would have impressive—one might even say, providential—consequences in history.
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If only the modern, post V2 Church read, defined and appreciated the original intent now as it did then.
Yes, and?
BERNARD LEWIS (d. 2018), prominent Western scholar of Islam, noted that Muslims give much credit to themselves to bringing down the Soviet Union, due to the draining economic and other costs of the Russian-Afghan war of 1980-1989…a perspective which he found partly “plausible.”
Heading further into the 21st CENTURY, and the principles of human dignity, a coherence of faith and reason, and of religious and personal human freedom to seek and live in the truth…how does this work with 1.8 billion “followers of Islam,” a 7th-century natural religion which eclipses the eternal LOGOS with the “uncreated” and dictated Qur’an (from outside of history), replaces faith/reason coherence with the principle of “abrogation,” and personal freedom with determinism—and denies both the deep mystery of original sin and Redemption. Instead of Japan’s warrior code of Bushido, equipped with Western-style aircraft carriers aimed at Pearl Harbor, we have Arabian Jihad equipped with larger aircraft aimed at the Twin Towers. History rhymes.
HOW does the post-Christian West, or possibly the perennial and apostolic Church, reason with those who do not reason? And who, instead, submerge articulate “dialogue” into an inevitable convergence of cultures? Islam: an alternative culture which is also an alternative universe…
So, YES to Dignitatis Humanae and its role in framing the transcendent (!) dignity of the human person and changing Western history. This reader simply wishes that the AHA MOMENT of one reflective Muslim could have been published prior to 1965…then to be included (inclusivity!) as, say, a footnote in Dignitatis Humanae:
“It all comes down to knowing whether one should hold strictly to the fundamental[ist] religious values which were those of Abraham and Moses, on pain of falling into blasphemy—as the Muslims believe [a natural ‘belief’]; or whether God has called men to approach him more closely, revealing to them little by little their fundamental condition as sinful men, and the forgiveness that transforms them and prepares them for the beatific vision—as Christian dogma [supernatural ‘faith’] teaches.” (al Akkad in 1956, as cited by Jean Guitton, a lay observer of the Council, “The Great Heresies and Church Councils,” 1965).
“The Declaration on Religious Freedom was not a surrender to secular liberalism; it was not a concession to modern skepticism about the human ability to know anything with certainty; and it was not an ecclesiastical white flag waved before Enlightenment political theory.” On the contrary, it was ALL of those things, as the past half century has born out plainly. But hey, George, the blessings of Pachamama be upon you anyway…
What utter tosh, the testament of little intelligence. Mr. Weigel has forgotten far more than you will ever know.
Anon: You believe it is a lacking in intelligence to note inappropriate secular utopianism in DH, similar to sentiments expressed in GS?
Perhaps you can explain this “tosh” from the opening sentence of DH:
A sense of the dignity of the human person has been impressing itself more and more deeply on the consciousness of contemporary man,(1) and the demand is increasingly made that men should act on their own judgment…
What utter nonsense. Composed less than 20 years after WWII and in a world already involved in an explosive abortion culture, a decade before Roe, we have the suggestion that humanity inevitably learns its lessons from its past episodes of organized sin.
Among that which we are called by God to witness it the permanent imperfectability of the human condition. Weigel is capable of better than perpetual pollyanaism.
It is plain simplemindedness to accuse Weigel of “perpetual pollyannism”. Rather, it is a calumny to associate him with “pachamama”.
If you seriously do not think that human dignity was a pressing issue after WWII…please.
The OP said nothing about GS and I am not obligated to address it.
Mr. Weigel has forgotten far more than you will ever know.
Did Weigel forget to apologize for his public defense of Marcel Maciel and defense of the Iraq War that resulted in the decimation of the Iraqi Christianity?
What nonsense. Address Weigel’s arguments before calumniating him.
Weigel’s Cold War triumphalist hand waving is of course by now his brand. But reading it this morning I found it unusually disconcerting. Europe (including Weigel’s shining city on a hill Poland) are more secular now than in the 80s and 90s. Can we ascribe that to Dignitatis Humanae (DH) too? Polish religiosity was more pronounced under communism than it is now. Can Weigel address this? Did DH turn the Church into what Pope Francis called a giant NGO concerned with defending unprecedented levels of immigration into what was once Christendom?
What about the biblical truths contained in the Old Testament warning against synchronism with pagans? If even the great Solomon was condemned for turning “his heart after other gods” of his wives by permitting pagan worship in his kingdom or consider the Israelites who revolted in Maccabees when a statue of Zeus was put in the temple, what should we then make of JPII permitting a buddha statue at Assisi, kissing the Quran and the practically hundreds of other interreligious gestures he and other modern Popes gave? Can conservatives acknowledge that these give the appearance of indifferentism?
You have your own brand of handwaving, which is primarily ignoring everything “conservatives” have ever said about the things you cite.
No Anon, my assessments come from actually having read quite of a bit of Weigel and being spoon fed JPII’s teachings. I lived and saw what the average parish life was like under JPII and it was a bleak waste land. People are inclined to fault Pope Francis for the state of Church, but the reality is that even under Francis it was easier to obtain things like a TLM or more conservative Novus Ordo. Under JPII it was always the WYD type folk masses. Don’t forget the burgeoning abuse crisis that Weigel SHAMEFULLY absolves JPII of . Five years of Benedict XVI did more for the Church than 25 years of JPII.
Nice Response Mortain, this idolization of JPII by right-modernists like Weigel is sickening.
“Modernist” as applied to Weigel by his inferiors is a puerile whine by the ignorant and the envious.
Go jump in a lake. I know Weigel better than you, and have had the great pleasure of his correspondence. Stop your silly, childish calumnies.
Anon
Its truly despicable to deny that Weigel defended Marcel Maciel (until it was no longer possible to do so). God does not like men who prey on the innocent and those who fail to stop it have done so much to harm the image of the Church. Maybe you could ask Weigel the next time you correspond why it took JPII dying before Marcel was finally disciplined.
Well stated Mortain.
Oh what a tangled web heretics weave!
“It is not possible to have Sacramental Communion without Ecclesiastical Communion.”
I suppose it would be accurate to state that “ Humanae , in changing history”, illuminated the heresy of Arius, and thus Arianism, reintroduced at The Council, as evidence by the fact that The Council also “ teaches that Muslims worship/adore the same God as Catholics. This teaching is contained in Lumen Gentium 16C and Nostra Aetate 3”, invalidating the validity of Vatican II, which those heretics who put forth this heresy did under the guise that “Vatican II changed no Dogma of The Deposit Of Faith, while simultaneously doing away with The Charitable Anathema, in order to make it appear as if one need not Abide In The Word Of Perfect Divine Eternal Love Incarnate, Our Savior, Jesus The Christ, in order to remain in Communion with Christ And His One, Holy, Catholic, And Apostolic Church, ipso facto making it appear as if The Deposit of Faith is merely a subjective opinion of a subjective truth that need not be believed with Divine and Catholic Faith, when worshiping The One True God, The Blessed Trinity.
It Has Always Been About The Marriage In Heaven and On Earth.
For “The Holy Spirit was not promised to the successors of Peter that by His revelation they might make known new doctrine, but that by His assistance they might inviolably keep and faithfully expound the Revelation, the Deposit of Faith, delivered through the Apostles. ”
“Hail The Cross, Our Only Hope.”
“Blessed are they who are Called to The Marriage Supper Of The Lamb?”
“For where your Treasure is, there will your Heart be also.”
No doubt, those documents that contradict “Dignitatis Humanae and its role in framing the transcendent dignity of the human person “, and those persons who authored them, are responsible for the creation of a counterfeit magisterium that serves as a subjective opinion that denies the Objective Truth Of The Deposit Of Faith that Christ Has Entrusted to His One, Holy, Catholic, And Apostolic Church, In The Unity Of The Holy Ghost, for The Salvation of Souls, and this counterfeit magisterium, due to the failure of The True Magisterium, to use The Charitable Anathema which exists for The Salvation of Souls, to this day, is attempting to subsist within The One Body Of Christ, while serving in contradiction to The Deposit of Faith. Pray that those whose competence it is, will anathema the counterfeit magisterium, in Charity for Christ, His One, Holy, Catholic, And Apostolic Church, all who will come to believe, and the multitude of prodigal sons and daughters, who, hopefully, will soon return to The One Body of Christ, Existing “Through Him, With Him, And In Him, Oh God, Almighty Father, In The Unity Of The Holy Ghost”, Amen.
A typically ignorant “trad” comment (not to be confused with genuine traditionalists, neglectful of the fact that on the subject of “the one God” NA was citing Pope St. Gregory VII
“We believe in and confess one God, admittedly, in a different way, and daily praise and venerate him, the creator of the world and ruler of this world.” Citing
In essence, Catholics who worship The One True God, do not worship, the same God, in essence, that other religions do, because Catholics worship and believe The One True God to Be, in essence , The Ordered Communion Of Perfect Divine Eternal Love, The Most Holy And Undivided Blessed Trinity, Father, Son, And Holy Ghost.
“22You adore that which you know not: we adore that which we know; for salvation is of the Jews. 23But the hour cometh, and now is, when the true adorers shall adore the Father in spirit and in truth. For the Father also seeketh such to adore him. 24God is a spirit; and they that adore him, must adore him in spirit and in truth. 25The woman saith to him: I know that the Messias cometh (who is called Christ); therefore, when he is come, he will tell us all things. 26Jesus saith to her: I am he, who am speaking with thee.” -John 4
Those who Abide In His Word and believe in Jesus The Christ “can know with certainty” they are worshipping , in essence, The One True God and are not being led astray. Our knowledge of God is fulfilled in Christ, In The Unity Of The Holy Ghost.
“Hail The Cross; Our Only Hope.”
Thank you Mr. Weigel, for another faithful, intelligent and serene article. I have always read that Dignitatis Humanae was developed precisely in response to the communist regime in Eastern Europe, and was championed by Cardinal Karol Wojtyla, who knew the situation well, had lived through it, and was considered by some in the communist regime to be one of the greatest philosophical threats to Marxism, as indeed turned out to be the case. Thank you also for defending, with reasonableness and charity, an ecumenical council, as St. Athanasius did with Nicaea, against the virulent attacks of many opponents.