Dignitatis Humanae question

[a83192]

According to Dignitatis Humanis everyone has a fundamental right to freedom of religion. Does this mean that governments have to give up a preferential treatment to the Catholic Faith? If a country wanted to make Catholicism the State Religion would DH forbid that state from doing that? The Catholic Church is still the One True Church of Christ so governments should objectively be Catholic States, right?

 

[YoungTradCath]

According to Dignitatis Humanis everyone has a fundamental right to freedom of religion. Does this mean that governments have to give up a preferential treatment to the Catholic Faith? If a country wanted to make Catholicism the State Religion would DH forbid that state from doing that? The Catholic Church is still the One True Church of Christ so governments should objectively be Catholic States, right?

q1. no, no, and no (times 1000000000)
q2. yes, if that means forcing people to convert to Catholicism. But I see no reason a government wouldn’t be able to say, “This is a Catholic country,” or whatever, and have public prayers by priests in governmental contexts, and prevent non-Catholic official prayers in the same settings, etc. But if some Baptists want to go pray together at a Congressional meeting or something then the government would not be morally permitted to prevent them. Also, a government may certainly (and should) favor Catholicism and prevent non-Catholics (and Catholics for that matter…) from publicly protesting Catholicism, spreading literature/media against Catholic teaching, etc. This means that, while Episcopalians must be allowed to teach their faith in their churches, they have no right to go passing pamphlets around on main street saying contraception is ok, etc. Just for example.
q3. yes, in a manner of speaking. What exactly this looks like will obviously vary, but in general governments are bound to respect, protect and favor Catholicism (without preventing free exercise of non-Catholic religions/non-Catholic Christian faiths). So while a government may give money to a Catholic organization and favor it, the government may not go raze the local mosque.

Remember: Vatican II leaves the traditional teaching, which means “all that stuff we didn’t talk about because it’s already established” (my words), untouched.

 

[sw85]

Even more specifically, DH says it leaves untouched the “traditional Catholic doctrine on the moral duty of men and societies toward the true religion and toward the one Church of Christ.” So it is not merely that individual people are still obligated to seek the truth, and that this will lead them to the Church, but that societies have a duty to order themselves to God through it, as well.

 

[PaulfromIowa]

According to Dignitatis Humanis everyone has a fundamental right to freedom of religion. Does this mean that governments have to give up a preferential treatment to the Catholic Faith?

No.

If a country wanted to make Catholicism the State Religion would DH forbid that state from doing that?

No, but the state must allow freedom to other religions.

The Catholic Church is still the One True Church of Christ so governments should objectively be Catholic States, right?

No. Church and government have very different aims and purposes. Objectively, all persons should be in communion with Christ’s Church. That does not mean that the government must be theocratic.

 

[sw85]

No. Church and government have very different aims and purposes. Objectively, all persons should be in communion with Christ’s Church. That does not mean that the government must be theocratic.

I think he’s asking about establishment, not theocracy. Pre-Revolution France, for instance, was an explicitly Catholic state governed by a secular monarch.

 

[Genesis315]

According to Dignitatis Humanis everyone has a fundamental right to freedom of religion. Does this mean that governments have to give up a preferential treatment to the Catholic Faith? If a country wanted to make Catholicism the State Religion would DH forbid that state from doing that?

No, provided they respect the rights of non-Catholics as well (note, the right to religious freedom is not unlimited, and its limits vary according to the needs of the common good. cf. CCC 2109)

a83192:

The Catholic Church is still the One True Church of Christ so governments should objectively be Catholic States, right?

It doesn’t need to be juridically so, but the ideal is that all people are Catholic–and good ones at that–and therefore their society would organically be governed according to principles inspired by the faith. Since we are in a fallen world with a mix of Catholics and non-Catholics, sometimes other juridical approaches work better for a particular society than having one established Church. These other approaches can be acceptable and good in their own right given the circumstances. However, we should always be working to evangelize the people of our societies and to work toward having our societies’ laws and structures be inspired by and consonant with the true religion (cf. CCC 2105 and CCC 2244).

 

[YoungTradCath]

A country may be extremely Catholic in a very official and obviously governmentally-endorsed way without being a theocracy and without violating true religious freedoms.

I see no reason why governments dripping with Catholicism cannot or will not one day exist again. In fact I think that would be nothing if not an unfettered good towards which we should work. Yes, it is true that governments and the Church have different purposes, but governments have no legitimate authority or scope of power that contradicts Church teaching and governments exist to promote the common good, which is ordered to the true faith.

Banners on light posts on Main Street with pictures of the Pope? Stones with the Beatitudes carved into them present in courts? Official opening prayers at governmental functions by priests? Statues of saints at the library? Crucifixes hung up in DMVs? Great day!

 

[Genesis315]

Governments have to govern according to some principles or another–why not those of the true religion? In fact, the Catechism section I cited above explains what happens when this is rejected:

CCC:

2244 Every institution is inspired, at least implicitly, by a vision of man and his destiny, from which it derives the point of reference for its judgment, its hierarchy of values, its line of conduct. Most societies have formed their institutions in the recognition of a certain preeminence of man over things. Only the divinely revealed religion has clearly recognized man’s origin and destiny in God, the Creator and Redeemer. The Church invites political authorities to measure their judgments and decisions against this inspired truth about God and man:

Societies not recognizing this vision or rejecting it in the name of their independence from God are brought to seek their criteria and goal in themselves or to borrow them from some ideology. Since they do not admit that one can defend an objective criterion of good and evil, they arrogate to themselves an explicit or implicit totalitarian power over man and his destiny, as history shows.51

Here’s a prophetic passage from Pope Bl. Pius IX’s encyclical Quanta Cura describing the same thing the CCC does above–is not this exactly what has happened where religion has been removed from civil society?
Bl. Pius IX:

1. And, since where religion has been removed from civil society, and the doctrine and authority of divine revelation repudiated, the genuine notion itself of justice and human right is darkened and lost, and the place of true justice and legitimate right is supplied by material force, thence it appears why it is that some, utterly neglecting and disregarding the surest principles of sound reason, dare to proclaim that “the people’s will, manifested by what is called public opinion or in some other way, constitutes a supreme law, free from all divine and human control; and that in the political order accomplished facts, from the very circumstance that they are accomplished, have the force of right.” But who, does not see and clearly perceive that human society, when set loose from the bonds of religion and true justice, can have, in truth, no other end than the purpose of obtaining and amassing wealth, and that (society under such circumstances) follows no other law in its actions, except the unchastened desire of ministering to its own pleasure and interests?

papalencyclicals.net/Pius09/p9quanta.htm