Ratzinger the Integralist
Making Sense of Dignitatis Humanae
Tis the season to contemplate the Nativity… and political theology, for the three kings rendered Christ the King public profession, adoration, material goods, and protection by avoiding Herod, who rendered Christ public insult, hatred, material evils, and persecution.
Some scholars have recently noticed a paradox within the thought of Ratzinger.1 While he bemoans some aspects of the relationship of the Church and State in Christendom, he still addresses modern States to fulfill their natural duties (including toward religion), such as his address to the British and German parliaments emphasizing the need to base human law upon the natural law. The contradiction is only apparent when his interpretation of Dignitatis Humanae becomes clear. This essay argues that Ratzinger's approach to Church-State relations, particularly his interpretation of Dignitatis Humanae, is consistent with prior Magisterium when viewed through the hermeneutic of continuity
Response to Lefebvre
His first interpretation arose from a dubia presented by Msgr. Lefebvre. Lefebvre presented a 120 page dubia to the Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith, headed by Cardinal Ratzinger, in October of 1985. An unsigned response resolved the issue of the dubia not as a “yes or no” answer but as an interpretation of Dignitatis Humanae through the hermeneutic of continuity. Although Lefebvre saw a contradiction and discontinuity within the Second Vatican Council’s social teaching, the CDF of Ratzinger saw not only continuity but also development of doctrine.
The response summarizes the dubia in the form of a question: “Are the general perspective and the particular affirmations of Dignitatis Humanae reconcilable with the anterior Magisterium?” The clear formulation of the question allows for a clear affirmation: yes, they are reconcilable. Still, behind this doubt lies the suspicion that Dignitatis Humanae affirms liberal values that prior Magisterium condemned.
The dubia presents three problems in particular that build upon each other:
If human dignity consists in nature alone, as the Council defends, then as a consequence, “a moral freedom for evil errors.”
If morality is relative, then so is the truth–which delegitimizes the Church from claiming that the Catholic religion is the only true one.
If the Catholic is not the only true religion, then the “State does not have to honor God through the cult of the true religion” by recognition, protection, and favor.
To resolve the first doubt, the response makes an act of chresis. Chresis is the use or application of a word or thing after purification for theological uses. It is a theological judgment to take a word or thing out of a historical context in which it had one unacceptable meaning, and to use the same word or thing in another historical context in which it may take on a new acceptable meaning. Thus, confusion may arise when a word or phrase is condemned as heresy at one time, then used against as doctrine at another time. Nevertheless, the conflict is only apparent.
For example, the response refers to Nicaea’s use of the once condemned homoousios: “One can find other cases of apparent contradictions between texts of the Magisterium. Perhaps the oldest example is that of the word consubstantial, rejected by the Council of Antioch in 264, in the modalist sense given to it by Paul of Samosate, who used it to deny the real distinction between the Persons of the Father and Son. It was then adopted by the Council of Nicaea in 325, in a different sense, the only correct one, defined by the Council itself.”
What Nicaea did with homoousios, the Second Vatican Council did with freedom of religion. The phrase “religious freedom” and similar expressions were condemned by the popes of the 19th and early 20th century. With the change of context from Christianity within a falling Christendom to a Christianity within a rising Secular Age, the Second Vatican Council decided to take up the phrase according to its contemporaneous meaning. The response clarifies that the Council “intends to express what she herself judges about this matter when ecclesiastical communions, governments, institutions, publicists and jurists of our time use this expression. If we address modern society, we must talk using its words.”
The response explains that freedom has three senses.
The first sense is a moral right, for it means “that every man is free to profess as he may choose any religion or none.” Freedom here refers to a freedom from the precept of the natural law to render worship to God according to the true religion. Therefore, religious freedom as moral license was condemned by proper Magisterium and it remains condemned by the Second Vatican Council. Nevertheless, as the context changed in the modern world, the concept of religious freedom also changed to include two other senses. Thus, the Council does not address this sense, assuming the prior teachings.
The second sense is a natural right “to search for and render worship to God.” In this sense, religious freedom takes on a positive form, that is, the permission to do something. This sense addresses every human being: because of their dignity, everyone has the right and duty to search for the true religion and to worship God accordingly. This natural liberty does not permit the moral license “to profess as he may choose any religion or none.” On the contrary, it obligates everyone to follow the moral injunction to search for and render worship to God. Vatican II affirms this universal right as religious freedom. When a State, such as a Catholic or totalitarian one, impedes this right, then there is an injustice. From this right, the Catholic may practice Catholicism, just as the non-Catholic may search for the true religion.
The third sense is the doctrinal novelty in Vatican II, which remains in continuity with prior doctrine. It is a civil right “which assures immunity from coercion.” In other words, the Church has removed the temporal sword that is wielded for the Church from the secular arm and sheathed it—therefore, the Church now requires the State to follow the precepts of the natural law—a bare minimum. In this sense, religious freedom takes on a negative form, that is, the prohibition to do something. This sense addresses the State: a State has no power to enforce or impede a voluntary act of faith or worship. In itself, it has no authority over religion, for it is not within its competence. The implications of this sense are developed in the resolution to the third doubt.
To resolve the second doubt, the response explicates the senses of “religion” in the phrase “religious freedom.” Religion has two senses in the document. Its first sense is religion as virtue and second sense is religion as an act of that virtue.
As a virtue, religion is the habit that perfects the honor we render to God. There is one virtuous habit or true religion, namely the Catholic religion; and there are many vicious habits, false religions, or non-Catholic religions. Dignitatis Humanae affirms, “We believe that this one true religion subsists in the Catholic and Apostolic Church.” Here Vatican II continues the enduring teaching of the Magisterium.
As an act of a habit, religion consists of three things: belief in a doctrine, practice of morals, and worship in a liturgy. These acts may more or less perfectly put one in relationship with God. While the worship of the Catholic Church is perfect, the response explains that “the Second Vatican Council discerns the presence of vestiges of the Church” in other non-catholic cult worship, such as the consolation offered to billions of people from certain forms of meditation. Religion as cult has no moral license—so one cannot claim an immoral action as a valid form of worship. However, non-catholic cult worship may or may not have the civil right depending on whether the regime is a province of Christendom or not. Nevertheless, that is not the concern of the council. In the modern context, Vatican II changes policy, asking the State to guard everyone’s civil right to worship as best as they see fit. Here Vatican II develops and renews doctrine.
To resolve the third doubt, the response explains how the “common regime of religious freedom” is compatible with a confessional state. The “regime of religious freedom”, which is the political structure that always affirms the natural and civil right to true religion and worship, does not deny the duties of the State toward the true religion, but it affirms the distinction between the proper competences of the Church and State. The response explains that Dignitatis Humanae “does not exclude that the Catholic Religion can and must be helped in such a special way by the state, depending on the circumstances.” If earlier social teaching shows the maximum duties of the State’s power to favor the Catholic Church, Dignitatis Humanae shows the minimum duties of the secular State’s duty toward religion. The response says that Dignitatis Humanae agrees with earlier social teaching regarding state confessionality, explaining how it “can be an effective reality, even when there is no formal declaration of confessionality” (“substantial confessionality”).
In the modern world, however, where secular and totalitarian states dominate, it is necessary to teach the State of its minimum duties toward the Church and all religions. Everyone carries the natural and civil right to religious freedom, whether their conscience is wrong or right. As the response explains, “This right is enjoyed by the man with a right conscience; it is however also enjoyed by the man with an erroneous conscience, as long as it is not proved that someone, in particular those in charge of public power, eventually has a right to prevent some public act of religion.” The Council does not concern what licit actions a Catholic State may take to prevent some public act of a false religion, for that question should be asked when Christendom exists. What it does recognize is the modern context, in which Christendom does not currently exist and, therefore, the Church takes away coercive power from all States and sheaths the temporal sword until a future opportune moment. For now, the Council teaches the State what are its natural duties.
Address to the Curia
As I already pointed out, the response is not signed, so we cannot affirm that Ratzinger wrote it. Nevertheless, he was head of the CDF at the time, and twenty years later he spoke along the same lines in his 2004 Christmas address to the Curia. There he described two hermeneutics:
On the one hand, there is an interpretation that I would call “a hermeneutic of discontinuity and rupture”; it has frequently availed itself of the sympathies of the mass media, and also one trend of modern theology. On the other, there is the “hermeneutic of reform”, of renewal in the continuity of the one subject-Church which the Lord has given to us. She is a subject which increases in time and develops, yet always remaining the same, the one subject of the journeying People of God.
Discontinuity or continuity. Rupture or Reform. (Reform does not exclude continuity just as continuity does not exclude reform. Both are necessary lenses to read the Council documents correctly.)
Ratzinger points out that, as a consequence of the hermeneutic of discontinuity, interpreters say that it is “necessary not to follow the texts of the Council but its spirit.” The spirit of Council means whatever the interpreter wants it to mean, anything but the literal meaning of the Council texts. Nevertheless, the texts arose from a deep reflection on the change of the times. The French and American Revolutions offered two models of modernity. The French model was radically anti-clerical, while the American model was at least open to dialogue with the Church.
“People came to realize that the American Revolution was offering a model of a modern State that differed from the theoretical model with radical tendencies that had emerged during the second phase of the French Revolution.”
Often contrasted with Ratzinger’s position, Leo XIII’s social doctrine actually shares a similar sentiment. The directions that Leo XIII gave to Catholics in France and America were very different. While he called French Catholics to rally politically in a united front to the Third French Republic and transform it from within in the 1892 Encyclical “Au Milieu des Sollicitudes”, he called American Catholics to give thanks for the growth of the Church in American — but that thanks should be offered not to mere legal religious permissions but “to the fecundity with which God has endowed His Church, in virtue of which unless men or circumstances interfere, she spontaneously expands and propagates herself; but she would bring forth more abundant fruits if, in addition to liberty, she enjoyed the favor of the laws and the patronage of the public authority.” In other words, it is in the interest of the Catholic Church that America become Catholic — but what that exactly means, we do not have room here to define.
Given the victory of the modern State over the Church, Ratzinger argues, “it was necessary to give a new definition to the relationship between the Church and the modern State that would make room impartially for citizens of various religions and ideologies, merely assuming responsibility for an orderly and tolerant coexistence among them and for the freedom to practise their own religion.” The Church nows asks secular modernity to follow the natural law, which it is already called to do. And she does not ask it to follow divine law yet, for it does not acknowledge it. Instead, she teaches the natural right and civil right of religious freedom — she has never taught a moral license.
Ratzinger goes on in his address to defend the natural right: “The Second Vatican Council, recognizing and making its own an essential principle of the modern State with the Decree on Religious Freedom, has recovered the deepest patrimony of the Church. By so doing she can be conscious of being in full harmony with the teaching of Jesus himself (cf. Mt 22: 21), as well as with the Church of the martyrs of all time. The ancient Church naturally prayed for the emperors and political leaders out of duty (cf. I Tm 2: 2); but while she prayed for the emperors, she refused to worship them and thereby clearly rejected the religion of the State.”
Then he defends the civil right: “The martyrs of the early Church died for their faith in that God who was revealed in Jesus Christ, and for this very reason they also died for freedom of conscience and the freedom to profess one’s own faith — a profession that no State can impose but which, instead, can only be claimed with God’s grace in freedom of conscience. A missionary Church known for proclaiming her message to all peoples must necessarily work for the freedom of the faith.”
Jesus of Nazareth
While some of Ratzinger’s later works seem at odds with his earlier response to Lefebvre and his Christmas address to the Curia, they are actually in congruence if one understands the earlier distinctions he has already made. For example, his 2007 Jesus of Nazareth touches upon the issue in detail. Ratzinger is more concerned about the State failing to respect the Church’s minimum right to religious freedom than its maximum obligations toward the Church. He fears the loss of the distinction between the temporal and spiritual powers.
Commenting upon the devil’s third temptation of offering Jesus worldly power, he writes: “The struggle for the freedom of the Church, the struggle to avoid identifying Jesus’ Kingdom with any political structure, is one that has to be fought century after century. For the fusion of faith and political power always comes at a price: faith becomes the servant of power and must bend to its criteria.” Of course, Christendom is not identical to the Catholic Church, though it is the political structure that acknowledged, protected, and favored the Catholic religion for over a 1000 years.
After the Vatican I, Leo found it necessary to condemn one extreme of the separation of Church and State; after Vatican II, Ratzinger found it necessary to critique the other extreme: the unity of Church and State. The distinction between Church and State remains taught and defended against two different enemies before and after Vatican II in corresponding ways. The contradiction with the early and later writings of Ratzinger are only apparent if one reads him through the hermeneutic of continuity.