Religious Liberty, Religious Tolerance, and Vatican II

Mr. Peter Gaffney has seen fit not to continue our dialogue after I posed some direct questions to him (see post of 6/14/10). Moreover he has purged his blog "Aretheos" of my comments and any ability to make further comments! Such is the typical Vatican II sect member. Unable to refute or answer our arguments, they retreat to a place where they don't have to face the ugly reality of a false pope and counterfeit church. For them ignorance is bliss (except on Judgement Day when it will be asked why they did not perform due diligence into this matter). Pray for Mr. Gaffney and his coreligionists that they may seek the Truth wherever it may lead.

One point on his blog I never touched upon was his endorsement of so-called "religious liberty." He says "error has no rights. People do." Well, people don't have the right to be wrong and lead others into error. Might as well say, "Murder has no rights, but murderers do." Yes, but it doesn't mean they have the right to murder and disrupt the public order! If, as Mr. Gaffney contends, people can not be made to act against their religious consciences, what about Satanists who wish to sacrifice their babies to the devil? People whose religions compel them to make abortion legal? All persons are free to profess their mistaken beliefs in private and not proselytize. This is religious tolerance, the teaching of the Church before Vatican II.

Here is what Vatican II says about religious "liberty":

"The Declaration of this Vatican Council (Dignitatis Humanae)on the right of man to religious freedom has its foundation in the dignity of the person, whose exigencies have come to be more fully known to human reason through centuries of experience... Revelation does not indeed affirm in so many words the right of man to immunity from external coercion in matters religious. It does, however, disclose the dignity of the human person in its full dimensions.”

The Vatican II decree demands that states concede false religions the right to exist:

(P.2) “This Vatican Council declares that the human person has a right to religious freedom... The Council further declares that the right to religious freedom has its foundation in the very dignity of the human person, as this dignity is known through the revealed Word of God and by reason itself. This right of the human person to religious freedom is to be recognized in the constitutional law whereby society is governed; thus it is to become a civil right.”

(P.2) “Therefore, the right to religious freedom has its foundation, not in the subjective disposition of the person, but in his very nature. In consequence, the right to this immunity continues to exist even in those who do not live up to their obligation of seeking the truth... and the exercise of this right is not be be impeded?”

Now for the True Traditional Teaching--please compare--on religious TOLERANCE:

“Liberty is a power perfecting man, and hence should have truth and goodness for its object. But the character of goodness and truth cannot be changed at option. Those remain ever one and the same and are no less changeable than nature itself. If the mind assents to false opinions, and the will chooses and follows after what is wrong, neither can attain its native fullness, but both must fall from their native dignity to an abyss of corruption. Whatever, therefore, is opposed to virtue and truth, may not rightly be brought temptingly before the eye of man, much less sanctioned by the favor and protection of the law” (Pope Leo XIII, Immortale Dei).

As His Holiness, Pope Leo XIII said, “It is contrary to reason that error and truth should have equal rights.” The Popes, the true Vicars of Christ on earth, have had the perennial duty to root up and destroy heresy while planting and nourishing what is true. Divine Justice and the integrity of the true religion demand that error be condemned and that the forces of evil be thwarted. Evil and error can be, at most, tolerated in this vale of tears. Never can it be said to have the right to exist.

Pope Pius IX, in the Syllabus of Errors, condemned the proposition “that it is left to the freedom of each individual to embrace and profess that religion which by the guidance of the light of reason he deems to be the true one.”

Both Pope Leo XIII, above, and Pope Pius IX, below, condemn the notion that states should sanction false religions:

“They do not hesitate to put forward the view which is not only opposed to the Catholic Church, but very pernicious for the salvation of souls — an opinion which Gregory XVI, Our Predecessor, called absurd. This is the view that liberty of conscience and worship is the strict right of every man, a right which should be proclaimed and affirmed by law in every properly constituted state... When they rashly make these statements, they do not realize or recall to mind that they are advocating what St. Augustine calls a liberty of perdition” (Pope Pius IX, Quanta Cura).