Dignitatis Humanae and the Catholic Human Rights Revolution
Kenneth Grasso, Robert Hunt Thursday, 1 December 2005
In his "Message to Rulers" at the conclusion of the Second Vatican Council in December, 1965, Pope Paul VI numbered Dignitatis Humanae among the Council's major texts. In the ensuing forty years, history has borne out this estimate of its importance. To appreciate why, it is essential first to give the document itself a close reading, to understand it in its own terms. It is also necessary to see it against the backdrop of pre-conciliar teachings of the Roman Catholic Church on the nature and scope of religious liberty and the right ordering of political life. Finally, the ongoing salience of Dignitatis Humanae is evident in today's debates over the very nature of religious liberty. By providing a sound philosophical, anthropological, and theological foundation for genuine religious liberty, Dignitatis Humanae stands as a needed bulwark against any counterfeit "religious freedom" that offers only relativism and the radical privatization of faith.
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