The Fathers of the Second Vatican Council declared that “the human person has a right to religious freedom. This freedom means that all men are to be immune from coercion on the part of individuals or of social groups and of any human power, in such wise that no one is to be forced to act in a manner contrary to his own beliefs, whether privately or publicly, whether alone or in association with others, within due limits.”  (Dignitatis humanae 2)

Nevertheless, the council’s declaration on religious liberty did not spell out the answers to several questions, at least not with sufficient clarity. As a result, it has generated continuous debate. One difficulty consists in explaining how it stands in continuity with earlier papal teachings. Another consists in defining the due limits to religious liberty.

In this interview, Michael Dunnigan discusses the declaration and some of the best literature on it.

Michael Dunnigan is an attorney practicing in two distinct legal systems, the Anglo-American system of common law and the Catholic Church’s legal system known as canon law. He is associate professor of Canon Law at Saint Meinrad Seminary in St. Meinrad, IN.  He holds a law degree from Georgetown, a doctorate in canon law from the Pontifical University of the Holy Cross, and a master’s degree in theology from St. Mary’s University (San Antonio).  He has delivered speeches and written articles on a variety of subjects, including individual rights, the sexual abuse crisis in the Church, parish closings, art and architecture, the Church’s Latin liturgical heritage, Catholic associations, and comparative law. He is the author of Religious Liberty and the Hermeneutic of Continuity: Conservation and Development of Doctrine at Vatican II (Emmaus, 2023).

1. Mirari vos, Quanta Cura (print edition), Immortale Dei, Libertas (print edition)
   by Gregory XVI, Pius IX, Leo XIII
2. Religious Liberty and Contraception
   by Fr. Brian Harrison
3. We Hold These Truths and More: Further Catholic Reflections on the American Proposition : The Thought of Fr. John Courtney Murray, S.J. and Its Relevance Today
   by Donald J. D’Elia and Stephen M. Krason
4. Freedom, Truth, and Human Dignity: The Second Vatican Council's Declaration on Religious Freedom
   by David L. Schindler and Nicholas J. Healy Jr.
   ...and for readers of French...
5. La liberté religieuse et la tradition catholique. Un cas de développement doctrinal homogène dans le magistère authentique (6 vols.)
   by Fr. Basile Valuet
6. Gregoire XVI, Pie IX et Vatican II. Études sur la Liberté Religieuse dans la Doctrine Catholique
   by Bernard Lucien
7. La liberté religieuse : Déclaration Dignitatis humanae personae
   edited by Jérôme Hamer OP and Yves Congar OP
   ...and for readers of Italian...
8. La fatica della libertà: l'elaborazione della Dichiarazione Dignitatis humanae sulla libertà religiosa del Vaticano II
   by Silvia Scatena

What is the central teaching of Dignitatis humanae?
The central teaching is that every person has a natural right to religious liberty, with religious liberty understood as an immunity in making religious decisions. It is the right to be protected from being forced to embrace a religion or to complete a religious act against one’s will. It is also the right for a person's outward religious actions not to curtailed or prevented, within limits. They can be curtailed or even prevented if they are harmful objectively to the public order. So, it is a natural right, but one that has limits. This makes it very different from the conceptions of rights that come out of the Enlightenment.

Dignitatis humanae has generated much discussion among people of good faith. This could be because the document is too vague and the issue is too mired in contingencies when it comes to concrete cases. It could also be because many misread it through a secularist lens. In your view, why has the declaration generated so much discussion and interpretative headaches?
That is a very important question. The last of the alternatives that you give is definitely in play: reading Dignitatis humanae through a secularist lens.

Russell Hittinger, a leading scholar of Dignitatis humanae, has written that we need modesty in respecting the silences of the document. One of the problems, especially in the United States, is that many conflate Dignitatis humanae with the thought of John Courtney Murray. Murray was an important scholar who made many positive contributions to the document. He also had some problematic ideas. Some of his thought made its way into the document. However, he lost battles on some important issues—especially the relationship between the Church and secular governments—but he refought them afterwards.

Is the language of Dignitatis humanae too vague? That is a good question, but a difficult one to answer. The document accomplishes something difficult. It holds on to previous teaching, avoids making a judgment about previous arrangements between the Church and civil governments, yet recognizes this right.

Some misunderstand the right recognised in Dignitatis humanae to be a right to embrace any religion whatsoever. It teaches rather that we have an immunity to make religious decisions. We might reject the truth we know or that which we do not know. However, the declaration teaches that, even if there is a problem with my decision, you cannot force me to make the right decision. You cannot even prevent me from acting on my wrong decision unless I violate somebody else's rights, the rights of the Church or other religious bodies' rights, or create some moral problem.

I am sympathetic to complaints that the document is vague. However, it is attempting to accomplish something difficult and, despite all the attention it has received, it is not that well understood. There might be complaints about the language, but it might have been difficult to improve on it.

"Whenever we think of rights in the West, we are referring to our rights to claim something. The Church's approach is very different. For the Church, rights are always tied to duties."

As you mentioned, on the popular level, many people misunderstand that when the Church talks about rights, it normally derives rights from duties. First, there is the duty to adhere to the truth about our ultimate end and order our lives accordingly. From that duty, comes the right to be free from interference that would impede one's freedom of inquiry in seeking the truth.
Yes, and this goes to your other point: the difficulty of reading the declaration through a secularist lens. Whenever we think of rights in the West, we are referring to our rights to claim something. The Church's approach is very different. For the Church, rights are always tied to duties. Every right has a corresponding duty or several.

The right to religious liberty that the council talks about is a right within civil society. However, it is at the service of our objective duty to seek God and, when we find him, to embrace him. This right in civil society is at the service of a moral duty. Though the council is not addressing the moral realm in the first instance—the subtitle of Dignitatis humanae specifies that it deals with a right in civil society—the human person has this right on account of the duty to seek the truth and God. The human person is a religious being by nature. The human person is a seeker of truth, and he is social and religious by nature.

Currently, what are the main schools of interpretation of Dignitatis humanae?
Probably, the largest divide is between those who believe that it can be reconciled with the previous tradition and those who believe that it cannot.

In the second camp, there is an interesting split.

Traditionalist Catholics, such as those of the Society of St. Pius X, use this as a criticism and argue that we need to return to the teaching of the nineteenth-century popes.

Then, there are progressive moral theologians. They applaud what they take to be a departure from tradition. Fr Charles Curran was a leader in this area. He argued that at Vatican II the Church changed its teaching on religious liberty and so could also change her teaching on contraception, in-vitro fertilization, and other matters.

Among those who believe that it is possible to reconcile Dignitatis humanae with the preceding tradition, are Dom Basile Valuet OSB, Fr. Brian Harrison, Russell Hittinger, and Barrett Turner.

The School of Bologna, with its interpretation of how Vatican II stands to the preceding tradition, might figure among those who postulate that there was a rupture. Thomas Pink, whose view differs from the authors you mentioned, argues that it is compatible. There is a wider plurality of positions.
Absolutely. The Bologna School’s position is close to Murray's. It is not happy with the final product. It claims that the “real document” consists of the novel parts whereas the late changes made at the behest of the Paul VI detracted from “the real spirit of the council.”

I disagree with that view. Harrison, Valuet, and Hittinger are correct to consider these late changes crucial. The bottom line is that the council adopted them.

There was a real hopefulness that Thomas Pink had found a way of reconciling the document with tradition that would be acceptable to the traditionalist faithful. I admire his attempt to do so but I do not believe that he has succeeded. He interprets Dignitatis Humanae as a change in ecclesiastical policy or law rather than in doctrine. There is some truth to that. There is a certain change in policy. However, Dignitatis humanae states right at the beginning that it is doctrinal in character. It aims “to develop the teaching of recent popes on the inviolable rights of the human person.” It is a pronouncement on natural law and the constitutional order of society. It could focus on law or policy to address the current order of society. However, by dealing with the inviolable rights of the human person, it is clearly articulating a teaching, not just a policy.

In his defence, Thomas Pink might say that he is not disputing its doctrine. He would understand the framework of that doctrine somewhat differently. He would say that the document supposes that the state should be the instrument or secular arm of the Church. However, as those conditions no longer hold, the state no longer has any power to enforce religious matters.
Absolutely. At first, this is what appeared promising in Pink's scholarship. This is where he resembles Murray, who also reads the document as being essentially about the state. However, this reading is too attenuated from the text of the declaration. The document makes it clear that it is not talking about state power alone, but a right against other people, social groups, and “every human power.” This is a weakness in both Murray's and Pink's commentary.

Murray's favourite idea is that the foundation of the right is the incompetence of the state. We have a right to religious liberty because religion is an area in which the state is unqualified to act.

Murray is really talking about political philosophy rather than theology.

However, there are many problems with reading the document as if it were only talking about the state. ISIS violates religious liberty but is not a state actor. The same is true of individuals who engage in unworthy, dishonest, or abusive proselytism. If one reads the document as being about the state, then it does not reach these other attacks on religious liberty by non-state actors.

You have already mentioned Murray. Who were the main other main protagonists in the drafting of Dignitatis humanae?
Three people were indispensable. Without them, we would not have Dignitatis humanae.

One is Murray. Though I am critical of Murray, he deserves the gratitude of those who believe that Dignitas humanae is a positive development within the Church's life. He was one of its catalysts and had been thinking about the issue before most others.

Another is the official relator of the document, the Bishop of Bruges, Émile de Smedt. He made several important speeches at the council, many of them on religious liberty. He produced the official statements (relationes) on each draft of Dignitatis humanae. It had an unusually high number of drafts. De Smedt was key in ensuring that it both recognized the right but also that this important innovation was put forward in a way that did not contradict the Church’s previous teaching

Paul VI was also very important, especially towards the final stages. This document was important to him. He delivered several speeches about it after the council. Both he and his successors have made Digniatis humanae the cornerstone of their diplomatic policy.

These three have pride of place. However, several other were also important.

One was an important collaborator and ally of Murray's: Mons. Pietro Pavan, an Italian priest who later became a cardinal.  Murray's position is sometimes called the American position. It should really be called the American-Italian position on account of Pavan, who does not get as much attention as he should. He shared most of Murray's opinions but in some ways put religious liberty on a sounder basis. He acknowledged that it was a natural right and not just a development of political philosophy.

Also important is the only person who was involved in every stage of the drafting process: Jérôme Hamer OP. After the council he wrote some very important articles on the decree.

The prominent Dominican theologian, Yves Congar was also involved in some phases. In his diaries he describes the later stages of the genesis of the document.

What prompted your own study on Dignitatis humanae?
I used to work as a civil lawyer but switched gears and took a position with an apostolate that worked in canon law. In connection with that work, I went back to school and earned a master's degree in theology. For a class on ecclesiology, I wrote a long paper on whether Dignitas humanae can be reconciled with earlier Church teaching. Then, I wrote a master's thesis on the same subject. Later, when I studied canon law, I wrote my licentiate thesis and eventually my doctoral dissertation on it. My book Religious Liberty and the Hermeneutic of Continuity is an expanded version of my dissertation. The question intrigued me from the outset and has never ceased to do so.

What does your study add to the existing literature and debate on the interpretation of Dignitatis humanae?
One thing, which I consider to be the key question, is  the foundation of the right to religious liberty.

Religious liberty has been recognized in some way or another at least as early as the late sixteenth century in Poland and the mid-seventeenth century in the U.S. State of Maryland. Erasmus talks about similar ideas. Ideas like those of Erasmus (and, to some extent, James Madison) end up with religious liberty, but they were often based on scepticism, rationalism, or simply a desire to be free from the religious strife.

There is an assertion of religious liberty in the Enlightenment. In some regards, this is an advance. However, it is based on scepticism. The Church could not accept bases like scepticism or rationalism for religious liberty. They are not Christian bases but virtually anti-Christian ones.

It is clear from Dignitatis humanae that Vatican II based the right on the dignity of the human person. After the council, however, Murray, who was very influential, relitigated this, and claimed that the incompetence of the state is an even better basis. There has never been a want of people who agree with Murray on this and who claim either that this is what the document is about—Thomas Pink is an example—or that, even if this is not what the council taught, it is a better foundation for the right.

One of the things I set out to examine was whether state incompetence could have been the basis. I concluded that it could not. It cannot ground a natural right. Its basis is in political philosophy, not human rights. Sometimes Murray talks about the human person but the argument on which he bet everything was the incompetence of the state. That is a shame because some of the other arguments are present in his writings. However, they are not the ones he championed.

There is another contribution that I hope to have made: to show not only that there is no contradiction, but rather a real positive continuity and harmonization between the teaching of nineteenth-century popes and that of Vatican II.

Vatican II’s teaching is primarily on the human person rather than the state.

The nineteenth-century popes talk constantly about how harmful Enlightenment ideas are to both the individual and society. Their concern for the integrity of the person is evident and Leo XIII makes it explicit. Even repressive regimes often permit the practice of one’s religion, but only provided that it is in private, not public. Leo points out that the promotion of unlimited or absolute liberties often leads to the fragmentation of the unity and integrity of the person. This is quite a subtle idea. It is found in Pius VI, Gregory XVI, and Pius IX, but is stated explicitly by Leo XIII.

The same idea is very important for Vatican II in general but especially in Dignitatis humanae. The council teaches that, by nature, we express our religion in a social context. Hence, curtailing one’s religious practice and its every social manifestation is an unnatural violation. The council thereby expands upon the teaching of the nineteenth-century popes on the integrity of the human person.

Now, those popes were mainly concerned with the Catholic faithful. Vatican II extends this teaching and talks expressly about the human person.

Third, I argue that a speech which Paul VI gave at the end of the council has been misinterpreted. The misunderstanding of this speech leads to incorrect conclusions about the relationship between the Church and the temporal authority. I attempt to provide a new and more accurate reading of this speech.

These are the three things I hope to have contributed to the discussion.

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