In Part One of this essay on Dignitatis Humanae, I made the argument, following Tracey Rowland and Russel Hittinger, that DH should be read minimalistically as a simple affirmation that no person should be forcibly coerced in religious matters by the Church, or by the State acting as an agent of the Church.
In what follows, I wish to elaborate upon this point even further and to defend its cogency as the approach that best situates DH within the tradition.
The matter of scholarly interpretation
But allow me to begin with one of the sillier arguments against this position. Some will claim that the mere fact that one needs a scholarly interpretation of the text in order to make sense of it is a sure sign that the text itself is ambiguous at best. They point to the obvious fact that there are many other scholarly interpretations of the text that read it in a more maximal manner as evidence of the text’s ambiguity. Therefore, they claim, my reading of the text as minimalistic is just an idiosyncratic opinion of one school of thought among many others.
But this argument proves too much. Hundreds of scholarly books and articles have also been written about the Council of Nicaea, many of which differ from one another in significant hermeneutical details, without for all that implying that Nicaea must therefore be judged as inherently ambiguous. If one follows the logic of those who claim that the mere presence of post-conciliar theological debates is a sign of a flawed council, one would be forced to conclude that Nicaea must have been less than perspicacious as to its meaning concerning homoousios and the full divinity of Christ. This would be why, apparently, the Church needed the theological interpretation of Athanasius to rush to Nicaea’s defense. Furthermore, the Arian heresy continued with strength and numbers, especially amongst the Germanic tribes, for a few more centuries, adding more fuel to the “Nicaea was ambiguous” argument.
And then we had the Monophysite and Monothelite schisms after Ephesus and Chalcedon. There was also the stubborn persistence of a subordinationist Christology among theologians influenced by Middle Platonism. Not to mention various Trinitarian heresies that persist to this day.
But of course, those councils were in fact rather clear in their teachings, and the mere presence of dissent from (or confusion about) them is no indictment against their clarity. Human beings get confused, make mistakes, and engage in all manner of theological obfuscations owing to various ideological antecedents operative in their thought all the time. Church history is littered with examples of this.
And as I stated in my previous essay, you also cannot rule out deliberate manipulation of conciliar teachings for the sake of ulterior ecclesial and/or political motives. Humans are a complicated lot.
Continuity and corrections
All that said, am I claiming that Hittinger’s take on DH is the only possible approach that should be given credence? Not at all, just as there is not a single Christology that one can legitimately develop out of the doctrinal claims made by Nicaea through Chalcedon, with many variations on what it means to say that Christ is fully and really divine. So too here. There are mutually enriching approaches to DH, all of which place it in coherence with aspects of the tradition.
Therefore, there can be a variety of approaches. But the approach adopted by Hittinger seems the most cogent and coherent to me since, as every pope has said from 1965 forward, the only proper interpretation of the Council is one that places it squarely within a continuity with Catholic tradition. And Hittinger’s approach does that better than most other theories, if not all of them. Thomas Pink has also put forward an approach that does the same, but I prefer that of Hittinger since it requires fewer assumptions.
I hesitate to use the term “continuity” here because that word has been so abused through cliched overuse that it can obscure the issue at hand. But it is still the best term to use, provided one does not view it in an overly straight-jacketed manner as something closed to further nuance and development from within its own essential form. Whether some like it or not, doctrines do sometimes develop. And they do in ways, as I noted in Part One with regard to Pope Benedict, that sometimes require certain corrections of past teaching and/or praxis.
And note well, those “corrections” are not an attempt at novelty for the sake of accommodation to the culture in inappropriate ways, but rather the deepening of a doctrine by retrieving elements of the tradition itself that seem to demand the development in question. As Cardinal Newman noted, sometimes those developments of doctrine can at first glance appear to be something radically different than before and not in continuity with the faith. But, as he points out, an analogy can be seen for such development when one looks to a butterfly emerging from its cocoon and realizes that though very different looking from the caterpillar, it is in fact in an organic continuity with it.
In other words, looks can be deceiving, and what appears to the casual glance to be a radical change is, upon further inspection, an organic development most wondrous and beautiful. And it is precisely so because of its surprising epiphanic revelation of what was, in latent form, there all along and hiding in plain sight.
The pastoral nature of Vatican II
Therefore, when DH says that it leaves all previous Church teaching on church-state relations intact, and when it gives us no overarching political theory or even a preferred political philosophy drawn from the faith to ground its teaching on freedom, then it is clear that every effort is being made—as Paul VI at the time insisted and as the acts of the Council make crystal clear–to situate DH within the tradition and to limit its scope to the matter of coercion.
Thus, if Hittinger, Rowland, and I are guilty of anything, it is that we interpret the text as the magisterium says we should, as a limited development of doctrine in continuity with profound theological truths in the tradition concerning the nature of true faith as something that can only exist within an atmosphere of non-coerced freedom. You can call us all “Boomer hippies” and send us to bed without our supper, but I at least would go to my room in full peace knowing that all I have done is to defend the Church’s magisterial teaching against the fiddleback fussbudgets who seem to think that the magisterium went into a psychotic, dissociative state beginning in 1962 if not earlier.
But some critics are not satisfied and claim that there was no need for DH to say what it said because the Church was already embracing the notion of tolerance in religious matters, even in the pre-conciliar Church. It was indeed doing that! But this only goes to show that DH was not doing something utterly novel and that it was developing theological concepts that were already percolating in the Church, even amongst very traditional Catholics.
But why press it further beyond what the Church had already embraced? Here, we need to focus on the oft-mentioned “merely pastoral” nature of DH and what that means and what it entails. I will focus on both the doctrinal element that is embedded within this pastoral project, as well as the chief pastoral aims, as such. And by the way, all doctrines and dogmas are ultimately “pastoral” insofar as their primary goal is to aid our path to God by clarifying the intellect.
Some traditionalist Catholics—but by no means all—claim that DH does make a doctrinal claim that contradicts previous magisterial teachings. And that is the doctrine that the dignity of the human religious conscience grants to all persons a God-given right to immunity from coercion. But this is a development that is truly akin to that butterfly-from-the-caterpillar analogy. Because even if this “new” doctrine seems like a novelty, in fact, it is actually more of a much-needed reaffirmation of some essential truths from the tradition that had been crudded over with centuries of a deeply problematic ecclesial praxis.
Having it both ways?
Furthermore, such ecclesial praxis was problematic, as were some of the theological and doctrinal elements that justified it. The critics of DH love to point out its non-infallible status and therefore that we are free to reject it. But that argument cuts both ways because such criticisms only establish the fact that there are indeed a few non-infallible teachings of the Church that might embody distorted and/or exaggerated truths that have emerged as a result of cultural osmosis and stand in need of correction. Even the peripatetic Bishop Athanasius Schneider keeps saying that a future pope “must!” correct DH and other “ambiguities” (i.e., “errors”) in Vatican II.
But if DH stands in need of nuanced correction or even reversal, then so can previous non-infallible Church teachings that condoned torturing and executing obstinate public heretics, as well as encouraging the civil authorities to criminalize all other religions and to suppress their adherents by means even of deadly force if necessary. The slogan “error has no rights” became the mantra of many. But it ignores the rather important fact that persons who are in error do have rights.
The DH critics go on to point to the fact that this praxis and teaching of the Church regarding strong coercion was long-standing and consistently taught by the ordinary magisterium of the Church. Therefore, it is probably expressive of infallible teaching and has, at the very least, a stronger claim to an authoritative magisterial pedigree than does the teaching of DH.
But once again, this is a critique that proves too much. When confronted with the horrific praxis of the Church regarding the torture and execution of heretics, the DH critic usually goes into a bit of doctrinal shrinkage and rushes to point out that they are not talking about torture and execution but only about the goodness of having Catholic confessional states policing the religious precincts of the public square. But you cannot have it both ways, since part and parcel of the previous doctrinal justification for the suppression of religious freedom was the concomitant justification for imprisonment without trial or due process, as well as for torture, execution, and exile. Leo X made that quite clear in Exsurge Domine. And such teachings were also long-standing and consistent, and check just as many boxes for meeting the criteria put forward by the DH critics themselves for the alleged infallibility of such doctrines.
In point of fact, long-standing ecclesial praxis and a certain consistency of teaching over time are not the only criteria for determining the legitimacy of some doctrines. Ultimately, it is to be remembered that tradition is not an idol standing above the Church; rather, it exists to carry forward the truths of Revelation within the living stream of the Church. And yes, that process is guided by the Holy Spirit, but not all forms of praxis and teaching are therefore by definition infallible simply because they are Spirit-guided. If that were so, then every doctrine the Church ever taught would be infallible. And indeed, as traditionalists themselves affirm with regard to DH, the Church can teach some questionable things sometimes in her non-infallible teachings, even if they are in the highly authoritative texts of an ecumenical council.
The Spirit guides, but Church praxis can ignore such guidance, and Church doctrines can sometimes become distorted when they are created in order to justify flawed praxis. If this were not so, then why do the critics of DH insist we can dissent from it? The magisterium is a living magisterium capable of some self-corrections precisely in order to avoid these kinds of debates about who it is in the Church that possesses the “true and pure doctrine” of the Spirit.
Let’s cut to the chase. The Church that was instituted by the crucified and risen Christ loses its evangelical punch and loses all pastoral credibility and is in clear violation of its own deepest truths when it condones the torture and execution of heretics, and the strong-armed suppression of all non-Catholic religions. When one sees the spectacle of Pius IX condoning the kidnapping of a Jewish baby who was secretly baptized by a Catholic caregiver, and whose parents lived in the papal states and therefore under its laws, in order to properly raise the child as a Catholic, then it does not take a genius theological IQ to recognize that the Church had gone off the rails in her praxis and, therefore, stood in need of a corrective.
None of this even remotely implies that if the Church was capable of a distorted teaching with regard to religious freedom that maybe it is “wrong” on a bunch of other things as well. That conclusion does not necessarily follow and is utterly reductive and simplistic. It presumes that every non-infallible teaching of the Church is now up for grabs. Therefore, channeling my inner Dwight Schrute, I say: “False! Given the Spirit-guided nature of the magisterium, such needed corrections are minimal and relatively easy to recognize. The baseline for the tradition is stasis, not change, and any needed corrections will be infrequent and grounded in other elements of the tradition that are also part of the stasis over time.”
But this will also need further elaboration in a future essay.
Subhead
Finally, what then of the pastoral aims of DH? I think they are twofold and once again grounded in a minimalistic concern for the question of non-coercion of consciences without any elaborate political theoretical apparatus given.
First, in 1965, the sad fact of the terrible plight of Catholics in Soviet bloc countries was much on the minds of the Council Fathers, chief among them a certain young Polish bishop named Karol Wojtyla. For reasons of pastoral concern for those Catholics, the Council refrained from any explicit condemnation of communism, lest it make matters worse. And besides, everyone already knew that the Church stood against Communism.
But the one thing it could do was to make a robust call for civil authorities everywhere to respect the rights of religious conscience. But it could hardly do so credibly while still affirming its own right to suppress religious freedom in countries dominated by Catholics.
This was one of those pastoral considerations that we are now told by DH critics that we can reject since they are merely the silly remnants of a bygone boomer era of loosey-goosey religious relativism. But in so making this claim, the critics betray their own indifference to the plight of persecuted Catholics in our own time in countries like Nigeria and Sudan, among many other places. We are either in favor of religious freedom for all, or we will be accused of hypocrisy and ignored. Soviet communism is no longer a menace, so I guess we silly boomers just need to get over our time-bound antiquarian nostalgia for the Age of Aquarius and move on to affirm the need to reject religious freedom as a basic human right since the threat has apparently now passed.
The second pastoral concern need not detain us for long since I have already addressed it. To wit, the Church has been unfairly chastised by the secular forces of modernity for being the enemy of freedom. But the Council fathers understood that would be a hard perception to change absent a different pastoral direction. That is why we saw the Church after the Council pull back from several concordats it had with confessional Catholic States and embrace a more hands-off approach to its role in overt politics in favor of more cultural efforts. We can, of course, debate the wisdom of some, or many, of those decisions.
But none of those efforts were mandated by DH, even if there were those in the Church who were saying just that. Which is another reason why, even if such post-conciliar pastoral moves were wise, a more maximalist reading of DH should be avoided, since such a reading has been used in some questionable ways by both the progressives and the traditionalists.
I stated in part one that there would only be one more part to this essay. But there will now be a Part Three dealing with the concept of the social kingship of Christ, which is, in many ways, the most important issue of all.
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Looking forward to part three.
Not me. Reading the first two left me famished. For some reason, I’m craving pretzels. 🥨
It’s really very simple. You only have to isolate Vatican II from its religious and social context, ignore history, forget about Vatican I and the 200-year struggle against the res novae of socialism, modernism, and the New Age, and jettison any concept of the natural law discerned by reason illuminated by faith, and you can make any Church teaching mean anything you want.
A lot of words but still refuses to address where DH appears to contradict longstanding Catholic magisterium. If Paul VI wished DH to be interpreted in accordance with the teaching of all his predecessors, why did he lean on Spain and other Catholic countries to change their constitutions which had previously recognised Christ and his Church, without all the red herrings of torture etc this post drags up out of the old back of tricks of anti-Catholic propaganda?
Why the fear to address what the SSPX seeks clarification on? As long as Vatican II is not revisited, all the witch hunts and condemnations from Fernandez will do no good. It’s great that the SSPX has appealed the sanctions; Pope Leo will have to start dealing with Vatican II and its thorny relationship with Catholic magisterium, instead of cruising for the next decade with more of the same recipe for crisis.
My guy,
1) Considering the almost total collapse of the Church we have seen in formally, constitutionally defined Catholic countries like Franco’s Spain, Salazar’s Portugal, De Valera’s Ireland, Quebec, and what we’re seeing in Poland today, maybe Paul VI knew that this altar and throne mentality is not good for the Church in the long run.
2) If the SSPX wants clarification, we had a 35 year period from 1978 to 2013 where all JP2 and B16 did was clarify, explain and expand upon the teachings of Vatican 2 in light of the eternal teachings of the Church. Or heck, the whole life’s work of Aidan Nichols has been spent showing the coherence of Vat 2 teaching and it’s adherance to Tradition. There’s plenty for them and you to read and learn from, there are answers to SSPX concerns, they just don’t want to engage with them.
3) In another one of his essays, Dr. Chapp made the case that if Vat 2 appears to change or throw out previous teachings, we might do well to consider that what was being “thrown out” was in fact not a healty development like Cardinal Newman spoke of, but instead a cancerous growth that the Church had tolerated for far too long in service to her own libido dominandi (which none of us are free from). If the Church is changing old teachings in the service of being more Christocentric, that can only be to the good.
And She has the power to bind and loose and all that.
Are you suggesting that an “unhealthy development” had overshadowed the Church’s teaching on religious liberty … from more or less Constantine until the middle of the 20th century?
@Peter F That’s an overly simplistic view, with a ton of conflicting ways in which Catholic secular governments and the Church grappled what to do with other religions. I mean Constantine is hardly a good example of of intolerance of other religions. He didn’t even make Christianity the state religion rather just made it legal and personally promoted it. (Beyond already existing Roman intolerance of non-sanctioned religions)
Spain, Portugal, Italy, Ireland and Poland were doing well in their practice of the faith before Vat II. The post-war period saw a great revival. The falling off you speak of arrived with the loss of state confessionality and changes forced from outside, from outside Rome too – from those famous countries around the Rhine which didn’t have confessional states (Belgium had a slightly better constitutional arrangement, but made up for it by really getting into the spirit of Vat II: nine ordinations last year). Catholic belief and practice in this enlightened region addicted to non-confessionality is abysmally worse than in those naughty countries Paul VI told to stop professing Christ and his Church. When Rome shrugs off these northern fashions, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, Polish, Iberian American, African and Asian bishops will obey. As for northern Europe, there will be nothing but trouble. Why does the Pope continue to nominate bishops to northern European dioceses who will obviously oppose any red-blooded return to traditional belief and practice?
Various statements from post-Vatican II Popes appear to confirm the equivocal relation of some Conciliar texts with Church teaching. Fernandez says he’s happy to discuss with the SSPX one day, which texts need to be adhered to and which are liable to interpretation. But why isn’t this service done for the whole Church instead? The Church, not Aidan Nichols, needs to show chapter and verse how those “several points” of Vat II do not contradict past teaching, or where they do and why it’s OK. The Vatican has had sixty years to do it, and here we are acting at barristers, quoting authorities for this or against that. Time for Rome to tell us with authority what those points mean, comparing them chapter and verse with past teaching.
If past teaching was unhealthy, the Church needs to explain this. Another article by an expert won’t achieve this. To save time, they might just take up Father Pagliarani’s profession of Catholic faith and explain where it’s wrong. Would save an awful lot of time, but this would only please those troublesome bishops from around the Rhine.
Tradition concerning the nature of true faith [is] something that can only exist within an atmosphere of non-coerced freedom (Chapp).
Yes. And yes, there is a balance between ‘non-coerced freedom’ of conscience and will – and the obligatory nature of assent to revelation for our salvation.
A conquistador’s blade pointed at an Inca’s throat is quite compelling and quite wrong. Whereas a Franciscan living among the Incas gently proclaiming Christ’s revelation is morally compelling, respectful of the Inca’s conscience.
Yes. The attempt to impose the Gospel, rather than propose it— is a mistake.
“But this will also need further elaboration in a future essay.”
No, Larry, it actually doesn’t.
I don’t think Dr. Chapp’s claim that the magisterium endorsed torture holds up, at least if Exsurge Domine is the only citation. That document condemns the proposition that burning heretics is against the will of the Holy Spirit. But that is a statement about capital punishment for heresy, not about torture. Burning at the stake was a very painful form of capital punishment, certainly, but there is no support in Church teaching for the idea that punishments cannot be painful.
Granted, the Catechism (a summary rather than a source of teaching) says, “Torture which uses physical or moral violence to extract confessions, punish the guilty, frighten opponents, or satisfy hatred is contrary to respect for the person and for human dignity.” This is mostly a good definition – for instance, using pain to extract a confession or break someone’s mind is evil – but the inclusion of “punish the guilty” on the list introduces a flaw because if taken literally, it would mean that all corporal punishment for crime, like flogging and other practices explicitly commanded by God in Scripture, is condemned by the Church.
Common sense says that if capital punishment is ever justified (which the Church says it can be, while taking the position that this is not presently the case), the state cannot be obligated to render it completely painless.
Thus we can affirm the teaching of Exsurge Domine – which has never been overturned by the Magisterium – as a statement that we cannot hold that the capital punishment of heretics by burning is categorically evil (against the will of the Holy Spirit). In this as in all things we should conform our sensibilities to the teaching of the Church, rather than assuming that the Church must have been wrong then because our modern sensibilities revolt.
Surely theologians and apologists have better things to expand their energy on then trying to downplay the hierarchy’s tolerance of physically painful forms of execution?
One can 1) make allowances for the fact that life was harsher back then, 2) point out that modern historians have overplayed or outright lied about the “Black Legend”, 3) concede that the Church allowed her anxiety about political power to compromise Her ability to save souls and preach the Gospel, and 4) not hope for or relish the prospect that we might get to burn heretics in the future.
Just because it’s not a sin against the Holy Spirit doesn’t mean it’s a good idea, or even an action worthy of the Church.
Is this an example of the Church changing Her past teachings? Possibly. Does it invalidate Christ’s promise that the Gates of Hell would never prevail against St. Peter? Not only no, but heck no. If one’s faith is so weak that the condemnation of burning heretics breaks it, it is not DH or V2 that are the problem.
Apart from torture or capital punishment, Dignitatis Humanae does not seem to delegitimize the confessional state. Rather, it remains silent:
“If in view of peculiar circumstances obtaining among certain peoples, special legal recognition is given in the constitutional order of society to one religious body, it is at the same time imperative that the right of all citizens and religious bodies to religious freedom should be recognized and made effective in practice” (n. 6).
But what is the “constitutional order” as this worldview relates to subjects (not citizens) within the Islamic worldview? The Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini once was asked if he might consider a “constitution”… Said he, “we already have a constitution; it’s the Qur’an.”
We are not “magnifiecent humanity.” We are poor children of eve who await the resurrection of the body for those who give their fallen lives over to Christ.
“Magnificent Humanity”, is it?
At what point in time and at what place did this magnificent occur?
I’m a simple man, easily confused.
And he said: Let us make man to our image and likeness: and let him have dominion over the fishes of the sea, and the fowls of the air, and the beasts, and the whole earth, and every creeping creature that moveth upon the earth. And God created man to his own image: to the image of God he created him: male and female he created them.
The two are not necessarily in conflict with one another.
Larry: “But the approach adopted by Hittinger seems the most cogent and coherent to me since, as every pope has said from 1965 forward, the only proper interpretation of the Council is one that places it squarely within a continuity with Catholic tradition.”
Pope Francis: “Remember me?”
“…we interpret the text as the magisterium says we should.”
Is there anyone, let alone any amount of people who now demand the physical coercion of non-catholics? It’s also a gross fallacy to claim that defending prior teaching must mean defending any and all practices previously engaged in. Because a doctrine may result in certain practical things at any given time doesn’t necessarily mean they are inextricably linked, and that embracing one means embracing any possible variations of the other. Chapp almost seems to infer that doctrine was created to rationalize certain practices. It is also still quite arguable that at certain past points, some practices were warranted, just like the death penalty. In fact, in some cases we’re talking about capital punishment for heresy, which the civil authorities also considered a crime. (The death penalty is also a good comparison case- we’re now told it’s supposedly intrinsically evil and at least “inadmissible.” Was the Church wrong in it’s prior teaching? There would be an irreconcilable contradiction if the claim is intrinsic evil. Was it only wrong in practice though the doctrine behind it sound?) Does Chapp deem the public exercise of other religions being subject to limitation as coercion? The alternative is the american model, which Chapp also claims is not represented by the document, despite the claims of one of its main authors, J.C. Murray.
Prior to VII it was taught that at least the public religious exercise of non-Catholics could be limited, and the state refrain from giving positive approval or support for false religions. Now we are told there is a right not to be restrained from exercise of religion. Being forced to embrace religion is quite different from being retrained from its public exercise, and this does not necessitate physical coercion.
We also need further historical facts regarding the history of D. Humanae that are omitted in the usual narratives: objection to D. Humanae and the claim it contradicted prior teaching occurred from at least the second draft during the council itself, by a fair number of council fathers. The standard narrative is that objections were done outside of the council using the media or were later creations by “traditionalists.” Chapp repeats that here to say it is today’s “traditionalists” who have faulty interpretations. The historical facts dramatically change the perspective: that it was problematic/prone to certain interpretations from the start vs. the idea that a small number of supposed cranks have been reading something into it that was never thought to be there. The bishops who had issues at the council were the day’s conservatives, while proponents were the progressive crowd; today’s neo-cons now attack yesterday’s conservatives and take up the progressive position, and label yesterday’s positions as fringe “traditionalism.” Even now it is not only “traditionalists” that have issues with the document and articles have appeared in mainstream journals like the thomist and nova et vetera. Sometimes it may not be possible to interpret something in accord with Tradition, and the answer is not to try to fit the square peg into the round whole, which we have increasingly seen under Francis and Leo. In this case there is also no resolution offered by Church authority.
That some people still want to claim that the document is clear is stupefying. Comparing Nicea- a dogmatic & disciplinary council which issued a short creed and 20 brief canons- to VII, and its 20 page documents which often read like prose, is somewhat like that of apples to oranges. There’s also quite a difference between arguing over details, or needing some explanation of some terms or concepts, versus being unsure of the major conclusions after reading a text, and writing not just about a topic, but because one has to explain the basic meaning, without which people may misinterpret it. The very definition and fact of needing interpretation to understand something and have the “correct” analysis means it is not clear. There is some opposition in saying, “it’s clear; but wait, I will interpret it for you/tell you what it means, write articles or refer you to entire books to do so, lest you misinterpret it; although it’s supposedly already clear! And if it’s so clear, why the various, even opposing, interpretations by people across the spectrum over the basic conclusions of the text, not just fine points, after 65 years? And why hasn’t the Holy See just come out and told us the definitive meaning if it’s so clear?
As a final thought, one can look at the fruit of the document, along with nostrae aetate: anyone being honest should admit that it has some link to indifferentism, syncretism, a de-emphasis on Catholicism and embarrassment at a catholic “triumphalism,” an attitude of let’s agree to disagree and let’s just coexist, rather than seeking the conversion of people. The latter now includes popes and the Holy See, e.g., official organs of the holy see promoting the view that the distinction between true and false religion is a false dichotomy that must be abolished; a pope claiming that christians and muslims are in religious communion with one another, that not only muslims but even hindus worship the same god as christians, and mosques are sacred places wherein God dwells. There are regular instances of cardinals and bishops “praying” and “worshipping” with non-christian religions or protestants and taking their actions to actually hold spiritual efficacy. In just the past week or so, an archbishop in once muslim-conquered-spain and perhaps on its way to being so again, advocated with plans to build a large mosque and islamic cultural center, citing D. Humanae as his inspiration. In Italy a church held a funeral for a muslim man, who was not a catechumen either, but they claimed the man was a “christian sympathizer” to rationalize it. In the U.S., a parish hosted a buddhist group to mark the birthday celebration of the dalai llama, in which buddhist rituals were performed. But those are all taken out of context by “traditionalists” and isolated incidents, right, and with no link to VII?
Before I give my reply, I’ll first say these debates will become more productive if we don’t caricature the other side, which only leads to defensiveness and hardening of hearts. Traditionalists shouldn’t diminish all Vatican 2 defenders as delusional hippy boomers (especially faithful genuinely orthodox ones like Chapp). But likewise, it’s quite blind to suggest the DH critics are simplistically motivated by an active yearning for medieval burnings at the stake etc, or to suggest any rejection of DH’s novelties logically requires one to advocate for such things (this is quite an unserious leap. No traditionalist over 15 years old today, and for that matter no seminary rector in say, the year 1900, would advocate for such things. In fact they would rigorously explain why no medieval magisterial document actually does require such things while still rejecting the notion of religious liberty that came to be endorsed by DH. This is a tangent I won’t go down here and would point to Ottaviani’s manual Institutiones Iuris Publici Ecclesia as a good primer to understand it, but i mention it because it feels as though Chapp doesn’t quite know what his purported opponents are even advocating before he attacks them). Let’s all approach this with intellectual honesty and a spirit of charity for each other and for our forefathers, and actually try to understand opposing arguments before we mock their proponents
Now to my response.
1. Chapp seems to toe the line that while DH itself is problem-free, the hierarchy’s most common (maximalist) interpretations of it 60 years later are incorrect. Unlike the trads, he’s unconcerned with this confusing state of affairs, because he sees precedent of prior councils like Nicaea that also took time to properly digest. But what he misses is that this process of debate and clarification (which he correctly notes occurred after Nicaea) is PRECISELY what trads are asking for on DH. Yet the reality we all live in is that the hierarchy has had very little appetite for any discussions of the sort on DH
– The 1990s Catechism treats DH’s teaching as settled doctrine and moves on. It doesn’t do what the Roman Catechism did with Trent: work through the history of the questions, address the tensions, explain the trajectory. It’s presented essentially seamlessly, as if no reconciliation were needed.
– Benedict XVI to his credit touched this issue of continuity of DH very briefly / delicately in his 2005 Christmas address – which then sparked even more questions / confusions (for example see Pink vs Rhonheimmer debate) that have since gone unresolved
– The general paradigm since DH’s promulgation is to treat requests for clarification as themselves rejections of the magisterial authority of the council. To these prelates, to question DH’s mere clarity is to question its validity. As a result, the process of clarification necessary after any council has in practice been shut down before it’s been allowed to start. As a result we’ve made no progress in 60 years.
2. If Chapp accurately recognizes his minimalist interpretation of DH is just one among many, how could it possibly be “silly” to suggest this is evidence of DH’s ambiguity, when Rome’s own stance on its continuity with prior teaching has been ambiguous for 60 years? (Often pretending no questions even exist or need answering). If Chapp’s Nicaea analogy is what still comforts him after this long, surely he should not rebuke people for actually trying to spark a conversation on DH.
3. In the meantime we must ask if he also thinks it’s “silly” to point out that the plain language of Nicaea did not flatly contradict prior magisterium like DH does. Or if it’s “silly” to point out (as many do) the teleological and stylistic differences between Vatican 2 and Nicaea
– Teleological: Nicaea’s very ends were to issue binding doctrine and correct heresies. For that purpose, it demands the higher levels of assent without any qualifications. Vatican 2 had a different (pastoral) purpose, and whatever doctrine it might still contain does not
– Stylistic: Nicaea and most other councils actually defined things in precise terms. Vatican 2 intentionally did not. By its very nature it’s impossible to read the plain language and interpret it correctly, which you cannot say about Nicaea. On top of that, there’s historical evidence suggesting it was made deliberately ambiguous so that heterodox agendas could later exploit those ambiguities
4. Chapp admits early in his essay the pre-conciliar tradition had long already established “tolerance” of other religions, but somehow seems to forget this later in his essay when he discusses torture etc. As mentioned in my opening, there’s a genuine historical synthesis that was the common teaching on this prior to the council which Chapp seems to ignore when he equates rejection of DH’s novelties with advocacy for medieval style practices in present circumstances
5. The most surprising and extreme take Chapp advances in this article is he dismisses the idea that continuity of mere ordinary papal magisterium across time on a given subject indicates authority. I cannot agree with this at all. Continuity does not need to elevate a teaching to “infallible” universal ordinary magisterium in order for that continuity to demand serious assent when evaluating ordinary papal magisterium across time (especially when there are apparent contradictions like with DH). I honestly have to imagine Chapp hasn’t thought this one through, because if we follow his logic and dismiss this way of reading papal magisterium across time, there are all sorts of novelties that become possible which I’m certain Chapp would dislike
6. Continuity vs Recency. I suspect that Chapp, who apparently does not recognize continuity across time as a key consideration in interpreting ordinary papal magisterium across time, instead auto-defers to recency on this – treating the latest as the most binding. If he thinks Vatican 2 is somehow more authoritative than documents of the same level of non-infallible papal magisterium as Quanta Cura, we must ask why? Is it because it’s more recent? Or is it simply because he likes it better? We must ask if Chapp is consistent in his method. If he uses “recency over continuity” logic, would Chapp also insist that Amoris Latitiea should be given higher assent than Familiaris Consortio? If it’s actually just his mere preference to “pick” DH’s treatment of religious liberty as superior to Quanta Cura or Immortale Dei, why are others not free to do the opposite?
– Perhaps his answer will be that the current magisterium is the only interpreter of the prior magisterium, and the faithful have no independent ability to hold to prior magisterium directly. This line of thinking would have even more ridiculous implications, and is not really found anywhere in Catholic tradition, which actually tends to suggest the opposite (eg Pastor Aeturnus actually tends to treat tradition itself as a constraint on the current pontiff – you can see the point)
Lastly, I’m troubled by the cheap shots on Pius IX himself and on Exsurge Domine. Perhaps I’ll leave another comment addressing those. But readers here can easily learn for themselves that Chapp isn’t being fair to either here
Thank you, M. Knightm for the clear strikes, going to the heart of Chapp’s illogical matter.
What an excellent analysis.
“It doesn’t do what the Roman Catechism did with Trent: work through the history of the questions, address the tensions, explain the trajectory. It’s presented essentially seamlessly, as if no reconciliation were needed.”
Synodality = Syncretism.
In the early sections of this article, the author sheds light on the real, stated parameters of DH and diffuses some of the heat in the debate over that conciliar document. Unfortunately, in his “cut to the chase” paragraph, he shifts into emotional gear and parrots a caricature of the “baptized Jewish baby” conundrum that Pius IX dealt with diplomatically in his own Diocese of Rome. There was no kidnapping; such misleading language is incendiary. The Irish nursemaid baptized a dying Jewish child; canon law at the time, incidentally, forbade Catholics domestics to work for non-Christians, precisely to avoid such conflicts of conscience. But the sacrament was administered, and the Vatican negotiated with the family of the baptized boy, offering to raise him Catholic after a certain age in a boarding school in Rome, with family visitation privileges. The family agreed to the terms. They complained only after an unscrupulous journalist decided to turn the incident into a cause celebre. So, please, Mr. Chapp, do not insinuate that barbaric customs prevailed at the Vatican in the 19th century. And kindly tone down the rhetoric in Part 3.
I do not find DH troublesome read in contexts, for eg., DH 14, 15 with NA in LG. May I recommend this type of formula or insight key for deepening appreciation for VATICAN II.
A practical accommodation with one’s surroundings is eminently Catholic-evangelical and perpetuating its wholesomeness would be a mark of perfection. Reflected in the lives of the saints. Or again go back and look at Daniel and Esther.
As noted in DH the groundwork for that already is set in many nations’ legal frameworks and one only has to look at the efforts to preserve or advance religious liberty in the US to see how important it is felt to be especially and particularly among Catholics.
Really there is not substitute for friendship trusted relationships and so the work involved is not merely upholding the legal frameworks but forming out sound community. It doesn’t come through artifice or transient contact. You’ve got to look for the way, let God show it and keep it alive.
“Second, read Scripture with the Church.”
https://www.lifesitenews.com/episodes/bishop-stricklands-urgent-message-he-descended-into-our-weakness-and-hes-not-leaving/
Does refraining from condemning communism ever make matters easier for those living in totalitarian states? I doubt it. The Church should’ve spoken loud and clear about Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. Has the Church’s secret deal with the CCP made things better for Christians in China? The evidence provides a clear answer: No. Persecution is growing steadily.