No CrossRef data available.
Article contents
The Second Vatican Council and Religious Freedom
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 24 September 2024
Extract
Core share and HTML view are not available for this content. However, as you have access to this content, a full PDF is available via the ‘Save PDF’ action button.
One important issue that confronts the third Session of the Vatican Council is the question of religious freedom. With the recent publication of a number of the speeches made at the second Session we are able to follow something of the lines along which the discussion is likely to proceed, and to understand something of the issues at stake, issues of great significance to the ecumenical movement. The matter arises in fact from the Schema on ecumenism with which the Council was concerned at the end of the second Session. That Schema comprised five chapters—on the principles of Catholic ecumenism, on the practical applications of ecumenism, on the separated Christians, on the Jews, and on religious liberty. Bishop Schmedt of Bruges introducing the fifth chapter expressed his hope that ‘it will be possible to complete the discussion and the approbation of this very brief, but very important decree before the end of this second session’. ‘The whole world’ he said ‘is waiting for this decree. The voice of the Church on religious liberty is being waited for in universities, in national and international organisations, in Christian and non-Christian communities, in the newspapers and in public opinion— and it is being waited for with urgent expectation’. His hope was not in fact fulfilled, and though this was to many disappointing it is surely better that in so difficult and controverted a matter the final decisions should be seen to have emerged from slow and mature reflection rather than by what might have appeared a snap-decision reached under the pressure of a guillotine procedure.
The importance of the decree to the ecumenical movement was well put by Pete Le Guillou, O.P., in a conference given at Rome at the time of the discussions.
- Type
- Original Article
- Information
- Copyright
- Copyright © 1964 Provincial Council of the English Province of the Order of Preachers
References
1 Council Speeches of Vatican II, ed. by Y. Congar, o.P., Hans Küng, Daniel O’Hanlom, S.J. (Sheed and Ward). I shall refer to this as C.S.
2 C.S., p. 167.
3 ibid.
4 ‘LeMonde, 19 Nov. 1963.
5 e.g. Bishop Sergio Mendes Arcco, C.S., p. 119.
6 C.S.,p . 95.
7 C.S.p,. 146.
8 C.S., p . 147.
9 C.S., p. 1 28.
10 This passage from the Pope’s speech was cited by the Bishop of Arras (C.S., p. 131). In Council Speeches the text when it occurs in the Pope‘s address (C.S., p.97), is translated, ‘We look with reverence upon the true religious patrimony we share in common, which has been preserved and in part well developed among our separated brethren’. The translation given above appears in Council Speeches when it is quoted by the Bishop of Arras, and it seem more faithful to the Latin (A.A.S. 15 Nov.1963, LV, p. 854): ‘Deinde debita, quae par est, reverential religiosam haereditatem prosequimur antiquitus acceptam omnibusque communem, quam Fratres seiuncti servaaverunt et ex parte etiam bene excoluerunt’. Excoluerolunt’ if not quite as strong as ‘refined and improved’ would seem to be stronger than the rather neutral expression ‘well developed’.
11 Le Monde, 20 Nov. 1963.
12 C.S., p. 125.
13 C.S., p. 100.
14 C.S.,p.1 22-123.
15 C.S.p,. 124.
16 C.S.,p. 138.
17 C.S., p. 142.
18 C.s., p. 144.
19 C.S., p. 141-142.
20 C.S., p. 148.
21 Theological Investigations, vol. II, p. 175.
22 W . S . , p. 157.
23 Quoted by Bishop Schmedt, C.S., p. 163, from A.A.S. 3 (1867), p. 162.
24 Cardinal Arriba y Castro, according to Le Monde, 20 Nov. 1963.
25 R.A. Knox, The Belife of Catholics (1927), p. 241-242. This passage is quoted by Eric d‘Arcy in Conscience and its Right to Freedom (Sheed and Ward), p. 240. Fr d’Arcy writes that Knox ‘who was liable to consider that his lack of formal theological training counted against his own judgment’ was penuaded (wrong1y) that the view was an ‘official’ view...; but that subsquently he came to regret having submitted to ‘over-persuasion’ and that it was withdrawn in later editions. Fr d’Arcy’s book is a painstaking, if controvertible, enquiry into the whole question of the freedom of conscience.
26 c.s., p. 160.
27 C.S., p. 158.
28 C.S., p. 162.
You have
Access