Error Has No Rights - repudiated?

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Anesti33

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Wikipedia contends that “Error Has No Rights” was a doctrine of the Catholic Church, and furthermore asserts that this doctrine was repudiated by the Second Vatican Council.


This is amazing to me, as we know that infallible or defined doctrines cannot be repudiated. So what is “Error Has No Rights”? Is it a theological opinion? A pious belief? How do we reconcile the traditional belief with the teachings of the Second Vatican Council?
 
If I remember correctly, Vatican II reaffirmed that errors have no rights, but clarified that errors are attached to persons, and persons do have rights.
 
Dan_Defender said:
If I remember correctly, Vatican II reaffirmed that errors have no rights, but clarified that errors are attached to persons, and persons do have rights.
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So in what sense does error still have no rights? What is the traditional understanding and why, for 1950 years, did we not think that errors were attached to persons?
 
Anesti33 said:
So in what sense does error still have no rights? What is the traditional understanding and why, for 1950 years, did we not think that errors were attached to persons?
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This topic is too big for me to answer but I do want to point out that something as fundamental as the Trinity wasn’t dogmatic until the 4th century and the idea of various rights would take many more centuries to be hashed out throughout the Medieval Ages and later (in fact, they are still in the process of being hashed out and understood in the present) so it’s not as simple as you’re describing.
 
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This may be that wrro has no moral right but does have a civil right.
 
Anesti33 said:
What is the traditional understanding and why, for 1950 years, did we not think that errors were attached to persons?
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The traditional understanding was that people who hold erroneous beliefs will spread those beliefs, and according to the Church the state has a right to stop that. The Church doesn’t teach that anymore.

It now teaches that a Catholic can hold dissenting views, but they cannot go on about it in public trying to persuade other people. But there is even wiggle room on that one. So much so, that there is practically very little enforcement of it.

The Vll teachings on religious liberty and conscience have replaced the teachings that would be considered to have made up the adage “error has no rights”.
 
Did the Church teach this infallibly? Through the Ordinary Magisterium?
 
I don’t think anything can be taught infallibly strictly through the ordinary magisterium. Anyway, each teaching that made up the “error has no rights” thing would need to be looked at separately to evaluate any claim of infallibility.

At any rate, the teaching on religious liberty in DH would have some weight behind it being a Vll document. In addition to DH, I believe one could find references to religious liberty and primacy of a well formed conscience in the Constitutions of VII, Lumen Gentium or Guadium et specs.
 
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Before V2, the Church did not talk a lot about rights but about duties and obligations. Rights were secondary and stemmed from duties and obligations.

V2 was the undertaking of recasting Church teachings into the recent modes of thinking. This is why it is considered a pastoral council rather than a teaching council and why we are to interpret V2 documents in light of Tradition.
 
My understanding has always been that error has no rights, but people do, in fact, they have not only rights but obligations, and one of those obligations is to seek the truth, an obligation that exists even if they end up falling into error, thinking it is truth.
 
The article from Wikipedia is based on hardly anything, inferences and interpretation of interpretation.
 
The Catholic Church has from the beginning supported the Natural Law, which based individuals’ rights not on Church or State, but from God. The Church supported the Declaration of Independence and Bill of Rights, which were drawn up by non Catholics but compatible with Catholicism.

Today, Secular Humanism is the biggest threat to free speech. Campuses establish “free speech zones” which mean they can and do restrict free speech on 99 percent of the Campus.

I find Wikipedia helpful if I am watching an old movie and want to know more, or wonder about some non controversial facts. But as far as politics and religion, there’s a heavy bias, usually to Left.
 
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Not repudiated at all. The Catholic idea of religious liberty is different from the liberal one. Ours is based on the necessity of the free act of faith. But there is no right to err, and man’s freedom from external coercion is limited by the needs of the common good, understood to include the objective truth and man’s supernatural good. The Wikipedia article is apparently based on ignorance. The Catechism of today cites to texts that say the same thing as what they claim has been superseded or repudiated.

From the Catechism:
2108 The right to religious liberty is neither a moral license to adhere to error, nor a supposed right to error,37 but rather a natural right of the human person to civil liberty, i.e., immunity, within just limits, from external constraint in religious matters by political authorities. This natural right ought to be acknowledged in the juridical order of society in such a way that it constitutes a civil right.38

2109 The right to religious liberty can of itself be neither unlimited nor limited only by a “public order” conceived in a positivist or naturalist manner.39 The “due limits” which are inherent in it must be determined for each social situation by political prudence, according to the requirements of the common good, and ratified by the civil authority in accordance with "legal principles which are in conformity with the objective moral order."40

37 Cf. Leo XIII, Libertas praestantissimum 18; Pius XII AAS 1953,799.
38 Cf. DH 2.
39 Cf. Pius VI, Quod aliquantum (1791) 10; Pius IX, Quanta cura 3.
40 DH 7 § 3.
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Annie said:
Before V2, the Church did not talk a lot about rights but about duties and obligations. Rights were secondary and stemmed from duties and obligations.

V2 was the undertaking of recasting Church teachings into the recent modes of thinking. This is why it is considered a pastoral council rather than a teaching council and why we are to interpret V2 documents in light of Tradition.
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This is a pretty good point. In the Catechism par 2108, the Church defines religious liberty as a “right” to “immunity, within just limits, from external constraint in religious matters by political authorities.”

The same thing was described in a different way before Vatican II. For example, in the address Ci Riesce, Pope Pius XII said that in certain circumstances God does “not even communicate the right to impede or to repress what is erroneous and false” and that the duty to repress religious error is not “an ultimate norm of action,” but rather “is subordinate to higher and more general norms.”

In the above quotes, Vatican II looks at it from the perspective of the individual, while Pius XII looks at it from the perspective of public authority.

The person’s right to freedom described by Vatican II and the Catechism falls within those circumstances where public authority has neither right nor duty of repression, as Pius XII notes. Likewise, the circumstances where political authorities do indeed have the right and duty of constraint and repression are the “just limits” to the individual’s freedom the Catechism speaks of (and elaborates on in CCC 2109).
 
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1Lord1Faith said:
The Church doesn’t teach that anymore.
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Not so. First, the Church has never taught that the state always has the right or duty to forcibly repress error and it still teaches in can and should to serve the common good. Civil authority is “established for the common good of all” (Leo XIII, Immortale Dei 5). In fact, “The attainment of the common good is the sole reason for the existence of civil authorities.” (St. John XXIII Pacem in Terris 54). This mission to serve the common good defines the scope of the state’s authority–the “orbit” or “fixed limits within which it is contained” (Leo XIII, Immortale Dei 13)–it can only take action over human freedom to ensure that human activity serves, rather than harms, the common good.

With respect to religious activity, therefore, the state can only limit it when it would serve the common good–it does not have a right to do so otherwise (of course, the specific limits that are appropriate to serve the common good will vary according to the circumstances of particular places in particular times.)

That’s why, as I noted earlier, in the address Ci Riesce, Pius XII could answer affirmatively that in such circumstances God does “not even communicate the right to impede or to repress what is erroneous and false” and that the duty to repress religious error is not “an ultimate norm of action,” but rather “is subordinate to higher and more general norms.”

On the other hand, the state can place limits on freedom to spread religious error when necessary to advance or defend the common good. The Catechism is very clear on this point:
2109 The right to religious liberty can of itself be neither unlimited nor limited only by a “public order” conceived in a positivist or naturalist manner.39 The “due limits” which are inherent in it must be determined for each social situation by political prudence, according to the requirements of the common good, and ratified by the civil authority in accordance with "legal principles which are in conformity with the objective moral order."40
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In other words, the common good must also take into account revealed truth and man’s supernatural end (naturalism denies this) and must be based on objective truth, not just accomplished facts (positivism denies this). The harm of religious error must be considered. “Thus, the measures that are taken to implement the common good must not jeopardize his eternal salvation; indeed, they must even help him to obtain it.” (St. John XXIII, Pacem in Terris 59).

As the future St. John Paul II, Cardinal Wojtyla, summed it up at Vatican II:
No human being or human power has the right to use coercion on a person who has come to an erroneous conclusion, if this conclusion is not itself opposed either to the common good, or to another’s good, or to the good of the person in error. If it is, in fact, opposed to one or more of these, then certainly legitimate superiors, such as parents or those responsible for the common good, can exercise a kind of coercion on the one in error, lest by following his error he cause proportionately grave evil either to others or to himself (AS III/3, 768).
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Annie said:
V2 was the undertaking of recasting Church teachings into the recent modes of thinking. This is why it is considered a pastoral council rather than a teaching council and why we are to interpret V2 documents in light of Tradition.
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There was a little doctrinal development at V2. There was a fair amount of pastoral instruction at Trent. Some people try to exaggerate the difference between the two, as if Trent was a Council, compared with V2, which was a council. The documents of all councils are interpreted in the light of Tradition. The documents of V2, and others, help shed light on that Tradition.

I suppose Vatican 2, like Trent, tried to take into account recent developments. That means Trent, like V2, did try to speak to the people of its era. That is not taking on contemporary mixed of thinking, but awareness of it.

Trent was considered authoritative right away. There’s a trend in some circles to imply that we must assess V2 for 100 years to decide what’s appropriate in light of Tradition (justifying skepticism in the meantime).
 
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