I recently became aware of a situation in the Church’s past where a Pope used a type of coercion to make sure a young child would be raised Catholic. The circumstances ultimately led to the dissolution of the Papal States. The whole scenario is bizarre. A maid working for a Jewish family supposedly secretly had the child baptized because he was ill and close to death. When the child recovered, the maid reported the baptism. There was a law in effect that a Catholic child could not be raised by non-Catholics. The Pope was so concerned for the child’s eternal soul that he chose to do a deplorable temporal act, what others believed to be a criminal act (what I would consider to be criminal), because the Pope believed that the young child’s soul would be in danger if after having been baptized he wasn’t raised to be a Catholic Christian. Let’s just say I was totally shocked when I read about this event and to find out it was true was scandalous and even more appalling to me.
It is because of this type of coercive behavior that I believe that the installation of Dignitatis Humanae during Vatican II was not only a good thing but a necessity for the Catholic Church.
Here is the first paragraph of Dignitatis Humanae:
1. A sense of the dignity of the human person has been impressing itself more and more deeply on the consciousness of contemporary man,(1) and the demand is increasingly made that men should act on their own judgment, enjoying and making use of a responsible freedom, not driven by coercion but motivated by a sense of duty. The demand is likewise made that constitutional limits should be set to the powers of government, in order that there may be no encroachment on the rightful freedom of the person and of associations. This demand for freedom in human society chiefly regards the quest for the values proper to the human spirit. It regards, in the first place, the free exercise of religion in society. This Vatican Council takes careful note of these desires in the minds of men. It proposes to declare them to be greatly in accord with truth and justice. To this end, it searches into the sacred tradition and doctrine of the Church-the treasury out of which the Church continually brings forth new things that are in harmony with the things that are old.
This text emphasizes freedom, a responsible freedom that the human spirit must choose without coercion.
Filed under: Catholic Church, encyclical, faith, Popes, Religion, Vatican II Tagged: Catholic Church, coercion, Dignitatis Humanae, Freedom, history, human spirit, Pope, religious freedom, Vatican II
