People have a right to change their views, and express them
It doesn’t really help to keep reiterating that language about a “right.” Clearly, neither St. Thomas nor I, nor by your accusation (though not, possibly, by their own declaration) others on this thread, agree that any such “right” necessarily exists. More specifically, I think we could reasonably deny the existence of any right to commit mortal sin, and do so on soundly traditional and thoroughly rational grounds.
You seem to have the notion that a “right” inheres in a person, the way a habit or an idea might. But a “right” is intrinsically social, a claim that cannot justly be denied; and that “right” exists within a certain juridical frame, some way of resolving questions of justice. So a “civil right” is one that exists within the context of a given civil society, and is enforced by government. A “human right” exists within the context of humanity beyond any given civil society (though we hope many human rights also become civil rights), and is enforced by … what? Christendom says, “God.” In fact, the development of the concept of “human rights” that we now appeal to when civil society behaves unjustly is concurrent with, and dependent upon, the development of a consensus in which one could appeal beyond “Nature” to “Nature’s God,” a consensus so important that even in the disintegration of Christian orthodoxy, Deists and Liberals and Romantics and Straussians have continued to maintain the necessity of some sort of ontotheology (leading to the existentialist critique of same). [similarly, from Socrates to Confucius, you will find that civic religion is the guarantor of civil rights]
Now, if you live in the United States or most Western nations, as well as most nations in what we might loosely term the “global West” (such as Japan), you do indeed enjoy religious liberty–you have a “civil right” to change beliefs and affiliations. But bear in mind that a “civil right” may reflect the priorities of a given society (for example, in the US you have a “civil right” against ethnic discrimination in renting housing, but no “civil right” to specify what sorts of people you would prefer to rent to) or the practicalities of a given system of justice (for example, in the US you have a “civil right” to trial by jury, but no “civil right” to a jury familiar with the facts of the case). In other words, it is possible that you have a “civil right” which is actually a wrong against another, or that the regime of “civil rights” afforded you is injurious or unjust toward you or toward others.
Of course, it is possible–we hope it is so!–that the development of the Western consensus on “human rights” from Christian thought has left us with a state of civil society in which the “civil rights” we enjoy reflect our “human rights” to a very great extent. In such a context, it may be possible that (for example) the work of the Church through education and persuasion proceeds much farther, and with fewer violent obstacles, than it would in regimes less transformed by Christian teaching.
But that does not change the underlying logic. A “human right” is a claim against another which cannot be denied justly, where “justice” is defined and enforced by God Himself. Ultimately, any “civil right” is transitory unless it actually states and protects a “human right” (and no “civil right” can
ultimately obtain against a “human right”–I can’t
ultimately have a “civil right” to brutally enslave my neighbor, though a government is capable of defining and enforcing such an arrangement). So where God has revealed what is just to us, we cannot possibly claim any “right” to the contrary. There is no justice above God’s justice; ultimately, there is no justice
except God’s justice.
God
has created us metaphysically free to make choices; we believe He has done so because our free assent is necessary to the charity which He wishes to prevail among us and with Him. Therefore, we do
not believe we may–it’s a matter of command, not just concession, that we may
not–attempt to force anyone to come to Christian faith. Baptism must necessarily be freely consented to (though it is rightly the family’s decision that its children be baptized).
But the baptized are
not just any humans. They are, in the Church, party to rights and obligations directly revealed as
His justice, which is necessarily superior to its partial reflection in the justice of civil societies. Thus, though the Church recognizes the principle of “subsidiarity” and avoids treating the present age of the world as though it were the Kingdom to come, and even as the Church that recognizes human life as sacred, it holds the eternity of each human life of more importance than its present condition or duration.
Based on the above, then, I reiterate: there can be no right to commit mortal sin (and therefore no just claim against God or His Church, whatever the case may be with regard to civil authorities, to be free to commit mortal sin); YET the Church is wise to pursue her pastoral duties by education and persuasion in preference to coercion (and therefore wise to encourage and defend the “civil right” of religious liberty, which makes it possible for such education and persuasion to flourish).
This teaching of St. Thomas, by the way, is also why it makes perfect sense for the Church to
both defend religious liberty from secularist incursions,
and to encourage the passage of legislation which engages the state in the support of good moral outcomes.
