Abstract
The 50th anniversary of Vatican II continues to generate a rich harvest of books and articles reflecting on the documents, principal characters and events surrounding that transforming event. The volume under review is a rich resource for those interested in the history, content and implications of the Declaration on Religious Freedom. It contains a new translation of the Declaration and makes available, for the first time in English, the five schemas of the document that were presented to the Council Bishops. The authors provides two significant essays that draw heavily on these schemas which were the subject of intense scrutiny, during the process of argument and counter argument, prior to the final acceptance of the document.
David Schindler’s lengthy essay (over 120 pages of text), titled An Interpretation of Dignitatis Humanae, is a detailed and scholarly close reading of the earlier drafts and the final document. His thesis is that the full significance of the theological foundations of the document is not fully appreciated in most of the commentaries today. In particular he is keen to point out that there were two theological shifts that laid the foundation for the final document. The first was the shift from the language of the rights of truth, evident in the thesis-hypothesis approach advocated by Cardinal Ottaviani and others, to the rights of the person approach. This shift enabled the Declaration to locate the foundations of the right to religious freedom in the very dignity of the human person. This shift is well appreciated and acknowledged both in the Declaration itself and in the subsequent theological reflection. There was also a second shift, called the ‘ontological approach,’ first articulated during the discussions on drafts three and four, linking religious freedom to the obligation on all persons to seek religious and moral truth. The author argues strongly that this second conceptual shift ‘has been largely underestimated in most post-conciliar discussions’ (p. 40) despite the fact that it is clearly reflected in the final text of the Declaration. To advance his thesis Schindler analyses in great detail the contributions and reflections of John Courtney Murray, Karol Wojtyla and others on the foundations of the right to religious freedom. In this he draws upon the distinction between ‘freedom of indifference’ and ‘freedom of excellence’ highlighted in the writing of Servais Pinckaers. He also identifies the changes in the various drafts and the origin of some of those changes in the different theological models employed by European and American Bishops, and their periti, at the time of the Council. The ‘juridical view’ promoted by John Courtney Murray is subject to a rigorous analysis and critique. The understanding of the Declaration, and its implications for our understanding of, amongst other things, the limits of human freedom, in the teachings of John Paul II and Benedict XVI is also creatively pursued. The purpose of this scholarly essay is to demonstrate that in order to appreciate fully the coherence of the doctrine of religious freedom we need to understand the Council’s intention to defend the intrinsic unity of freedom and truth.
The task of Schindler is helped and advanced by the second essay in the volume, written by his co-editor Nicholas J. Healy. In his chapter, Healy outlines the significant events and contributors who help shape the scope and content of the final document. Between November 1963 and December 1965 five distinct drafts of a text on religious freedom were presented to the Council fathers. Two public debates were held, during which some 120 Council fathers spoke. In addition over 600 hundred written interventions were submitted for consideration by the drafters of the document. The first two drafts were presented as part of the proposed document on ecumenism. The third, and all subsequent, drafts were presented as an independent schema on religious freedom. From the outset two distinct groups were involved in the writing of the document: the Secretariat for Promoting Christian Unity and the Theological Commission. The former group was led by Cardinal Augustin Bea, who was an energetic supporter of change in Church teaching with regard to religious freedom, while the latter was led by Cardinal Alfredo Ottaviani, who consistently argued that change was not possible because the tradition had publicly and unambiguously condemned the notion of religious freedom over many centuries. The tension between these two schools of theology persisted throughout the Council debates and ensured that the birth of the Declaration on Religious Freedom was both difficult and delayed.
The publication of the drafts and Healy’s text allows the reader to see the key changes and the key contributors in the evolution of the document. In this regard Healy, like Schindler, highlights the significance of the interventions of Bishops Karol Wojtyla and Alfred Ancel in the debates on the fourth text concerning the ontological foundation of religious freedom. Rather than locating the right to religious freedom in the dignity of the human person only, both contributors strongly argued that the right to religious freedom is rooted in the human obligation to search for, and to live according to, the truth. In this way freedom is linked to truth rather than seen as an end in itself. The publication, in the Appendix, of the written and oral interventions of the two Bishops is a testimony to their importance in the eyes of the authors.
This is a weighty and important contribution on a topic that is as relevant today as it was at the time of the Council.