The Heresy Of The "Lay State"

 

It never ceases to amaze me how Vatican II apologists, even ones who are intelligent and well-educated, have to struggle to make the "square peg" of Vatican II teaching fit into the "round hole" of what the Church has always taught. They don't (refuse to?) see the glaring contradiction and must write long screeds to try and make black mean white and vice-versa. One such article I came across recently had me shaking my head.

Dr. William Marshner wrote in defense of the Vatican II's Declaration on Religious Liberty, Dignitatis Humanae (DH). He is a "conservative" member of the sect who, in his own words, will try to show in a careful way that there is no doctrinal conflict between the immutable teaching of the 19th Century Popes and that of Vatican II. Then, secondly, I shall try to show that the doctrine of DH is a harmless addition, even a slight improvement, to the older teaching, since it disturbs no just power of a Catholic State to protect its citizens from the "corruption of morals and spread of the plague of indifferentism," which Gregory XVI and Pius IX feared would result from too much religious liberty.

Marshner asserts:

Let us begin by reviewing the most important of the alleged points of conflict.

In Mirari vos (August 13, 1832), Gregory XVI denounced as "delirium" the idea that liberty of conscience, especially liberty of worship, is the proper (or inalienable) right of every man, which should be proclaimed by law, and that citizens have such a right to the free dissemination of their ideas, however false, that they are to be restrained from doing so by no law, whether ecclesiastical or civil. In terms of the Second Vatican Council's basic holding, this denunciation merely excludes the following view:

Such freedom of action as an objectively false religion ought to have [however broad or narrow that may be; we shall come to that point in due time], it in fact does have by a natural right of conscience, whereby the person's freedom of religious speech and action transcends the scope of what positive law, civil or ecclesiastical, may rightly restrict.

Vatican II also excludes such a view. It does so in no less than three ways. First, the Council leaves untouched the restrictive powers of ecclesiastical authority (DH 14, with footnote 58 provided by the commentator, John Courtney Murray, S.J., in the Abbott edition); secondly, the Council recognizes the right of civil authority to restrict religious liberty according to the "just requirements of public order" (DH 2 and 4); lastly the Council refuses to grant any immunity to proselytizing activities of the "hard sell" variety (DH 4). It follows that the transcendentally grounded, unrestrictable religious liberty that was championed by revolutionary liberals and denounced as madness by Gregory XVI is not the same kind of liberty as that endorsed by Vatican, II. (See catholicculture.org/culture/library/view.cfm?id=8778; the whole article can be read there). 

On the contrary, I will set forth the Church's teaching on Church-State relations, expose the heretic who wrote nearly all of DH (Fr. John Courtney Murray) who wanted a non-confessional "lay state," and demonstrate that in no way can the teaching of DH be reconciled with all that was taught prior. 

The Teaching of the Church

The Church teaches that people are only free to choose that which is good and to believe what is objectively true. Many people, nevertheless, do make evil/wrong choices and embrace false religions. Society can never praise, encourage, or support such decisions. It can, however, tolerate these individual abuses of liberty in order to maintain temporal peace while encouraging the adherents of false religions to understand the errors of their ways and convert to the One True Church. 

The pronouncements of the popes are clear:

Pope Gregory XVI: "...We consider another abundant source of the evils with which the Church is afflicted at present: indifferentism. This perverse opinion is spread on all sides by the fraud of the wicked who claim that it is possible to obtain the eternal salvation of the soul by the profession of any kind of religion, as long as morality is maintained...This shameful font of indifferentism gives rise to that absurd and erroneous proposition which claims that liberty of conscience must be maintained for everyone. It spreads ruin in sacred and civil affairs, though some repeat over and over again with the greatest impudence that some advantage accrues to religion from it. "But the death of the soul is worse than freedom of error," as Augustine was wont to say. (See Mirari Vos, para. #13 & 14; Emphasis mine).

Pope Pius IX: CONDEMNED PROPOSITION # 15: Every man is free to embrace and profess that religion which, guided by the light of reason, he shall consider true (See The Syllabus of Errors).

CONDEMNED PROPOSITION #77: In the present day it is no longer expedient that the Catholic religion should be held as the only religion of the State, to the exclusion of all other forms of worship (Ibid).

CONDEMNED PROPOSITION #78: Hence it has been wisely decided by law, in some Catholic countries, that persons coming to reside therein shall enjoy the public exercise of their own peculiar worship (Ibid)

CONDEMNED PROPOSITION #79:  Moreover, it is false that the civil liberty of every form of worship, and the full power, given to all, of overtly and publicly manifesting any opinions whatsoever and thoughts, conduce more easily to corrupt the morals and minds of the people, and to propagate the pest of indifferentism (Ibid)

Pope Leo XIII: The authority of God is passed over in silence, just as if there were no God; or as if He cared nothing for human society; or as if men, whether in their individual capacity or bound together in social relations, owed nothing to God; or as if there could be a government of which the whole origin and power and authority did not reside in God Himself. Thus, as is evident, a State becomes nothing but a multitude which is its own master and ruler. And since the people is declared to contain within itself the spring-head of all rights and of all power, it follows that the State does not consider itself bound by any kind of duty toward God. Moreover, it believes that it is not obliged to make public profession of any religion; or to inquire which of the very many religions is the only one true; or to prefer one religion to all the rest; or to show to any form of religion special favor; but, on the contrary, is bound to grant equal rights to every creed, so that public order may not be disturbed by any particular form of religious belief. (See Immortale Dei, para. #25; Emphasis mine).

Pope St. Pius X: That the State must be separated from the Church is a thesis absolutely false, a most pernicious error. Based, as it is, on the principle that the State must not recognize any religious form of worship, it is in the first place guilty of a great injustice to God; for the Creator of man is also the Founder of human societies, and preserves their existence as He preserves our own. We owe Him, therefore, not only a private cult, but a public and social worship to honor Him. Besides, this thesis is an obvious negation of the supernatural order. It limits the action of the State to the pursuit of public prosperity during this life only, which is but the proximate object of political societies; and it occupies itself in no fashion (on the plea that this is foreign to it) with their ultimate object which is man's eternal happiness after this short life shall have run its course. But as the present order of things is temporary and subordinated to the conquest of man's supreme and absolute welfare, it follows that the civil power must not only place no obstacle in the way of this conquest, but must aid us in effecting it. (See Vehementer Nos, para. #3; Emphasis mine).

All of the above is well summarized by theologian Cahill: "The Church and State recognize each others prerogatives. The State while allowing freedom of conscience and thus tolerating such non-Catholic religions as may exist within its territory, itself publicly professes the Catholic Faith. It recognizes also the higher importance of the Church's functions and engages to fulfill its own part in the union [between itself and the Church] according to Christian principles...This system existed over all Europe before the 16th century. It is...the system which exists at present in Italy, Spain...Belgium, Poland, as well as the Argentine Republic, Bolivia, Costa Rica, Paraguay, Peru, Ecuador, and practically in Columbia. [Union of Church and State is] the system most in accord with Divine Law; and the nearer the actual arrangements approach it the better for the spiritual interests of the people and for their peace and well-being even in temporal matters." (See The Framework of a Christian State, [1932], pgs. 610-611; Emphasis mine). 

Thus:

1. There is but One True Church of Christ which is for the eternal salvation of humanity.

2. Every State should be a Catholic State because error has no rights. Only that which is true and good has a right to exist. Only within the Catholic Church can salvation be found, so the public good demands that only She be recognized and promoted.

3. No one should ever be forced to accept the True Faith. Christ wants us to come to Him freely.

4. In private, people may profess error, but not publicly. The State should profess the Catholic Faith, and only Her True worship of God (and Her moral teaching) should be permitted in public. To do otherwise is to put falsehood on par with the Truth and lead souls to Hell when people are exposed to false religions. Just as those who are highly contagious with a deadly disease are quarantined to protect the people from exposure, so too with false doctrine and morals, which can infect and destroy the soul which is infinitely more valuable than the body.

5. In countries where there is no Catholic majority, the members of the Church have a duty to try and convert as many to the Faith, so as to one day effectuate a Catholic State. 

Enter Fr. John Courtney Murray

Fr. John Courtney Murray was born in 1904 in New York City. He entered the Society of Jesus (Jesuits) in 1920, and was ordained to the priesthood in 1933. He earned a Doctorate in Sacred Theology at the Gregorian University in Rome in 1937. He returned to the United States where he taught theology, and in 1941, was named editor of the Jesuit journal Theological Studies. At first, Murray was orthodox, but he soon became a dedicated Modernist.

Eventually, Murray began to advocate religious freedom as defined and protected by the Masonic First Amendment of the United States Constitution, and he eventually argued that Catholic teaching on Church/State relations no longer served contemporary society. Murray began promoting his ideas in theological journals, where he met with heavy criticism from some bishops and many fellow theologians, most notably the eminent Monsignor Joseph Clifford Fenton, who was strongly anti-Modernist. Theologian Fenton was Professor of Dogmatic Theology at the Catholic University of America and was the editor of the influential American Ecclesiastical Review. Fenton attacked Murray's teachings as being irreconcilable with Church teaching (most notably Pope Leo XIII) on Church-State relations.

Murray taught that the West had developed the "fullness of truth" (sound familiar?) on "human dignity." This alleged "truth" demanded that people be given "moral control" over their own beliefs in religious liberty. In 1954, the Supreme Sacred Congregation of the Holy Office censured his teachings, demanding that he stop all writing and teaching on the topic of religious liberty. Even when censured, Murray continued to write privately on religious liberty and submitted his works to Rome, all of which were condemned.

In 1963, he was rehabilitated under Roncalli, and was brought to Vatican II as a peritus (theological expert) so that his condemned doctrines could be accepted. While at the Council, he became a friend of Archbishop Karol Wojtyla--the future "Pope" John Paul II. Murray drafted the heretical Vatican II document Dignitatis Humanae which officially adopted heretical religious liberty as the doctrine of the newly founded Vatican II sect. After the Council, he taught that Catholics who "arrived at new truths(!)" about God would have to do so in conversation "on a footing of equality" with non-Catholics and atheists. He suggested greater reforms, including a restructuring of the Church, to become "less authoritarian" and more "democratic." (See https://www.library.georgetown.edu/woodstock/Murray/bio).

It has been reported that during the 1960s, Murray would "drop acid" (i.e., take LSD):

Murray’s experimentation with LSD at the dawn of the ‘Woodstock decade’ was but one sign of contradiction to that legacy of militant separatism much more intimately linked to the sex abuse and cover-up disaster than the putative tainting of priestly vocations by free love and flower power (and I cannot overstate how this brief episode in Murray’s life pales before the grandeur and prescience of his writings on church-state relations). (See irishwaterfront.wordpress.com/2011/05/26/goodstock/).

Murray died of a heart attack in 1967, less than two years after Vatican II ended.

Cardinal Ottaviani and John Courtney Murray

Information has come out recently regarding the clash between the orthodox theologian and Pro-prefect of the Supreme Sacred Congregation of the Holy Office, Cardinal Alfredo Ottaviani, and the heterodox, censured theologian John Courtney Murray. 

Card. Ottaviani gave a speech at the Lateran University on March 2, 1953, in which he masterfully reiterated the teaching of the Church and denounced those like Murray, who sought to end Catholic countries. The ecclesiastical giant stated:

I have said, first of all, that the State has the duty of professing its religion socially. Men united socially are no less subject to God than when they are taken as individuals, and the civil society, no less than individual men, is in God’s debt, “under Whom, as Author, it is gathered together, by whose power it is preserved, by whose goodness it has received the great treasure of good things which it enjoys.”

Thus, as it is not licit for any individual to fail in his duty to God and to the religion by which God wills to be honored, in the same way, “states cannot, without serious moral offense (citra scelus) conduct themselves as if God were non-existent or cast off the care of religion as something foreign to themselves or of little moment.”

Pius XII reinforces this teaching condemning “the error contained in conceptions such as do not hesitate to absolve civil authority from all dependence upon the Supreme Being, the First Cause, and the Absolute Master both of men and of society, and from every bond of transcendent law which proceeds from God as from its primary Source, and that concede to civil authority an unlimited power of action, a power left to the ever changing wave or whims or to the sole restraints of contingent historical exigencies and of relative interests.” (Emphasis in original). 

He discussed the perennial validity of the traditional principles regarding Church and State:

These principles are firm and immovable. They were valid in the times of Innocent III and Boniface VIII. They are valid in the days of Leo XIII and Pius XII, who has reaffirmed them in more than one of his documents. Thus, with strict firmness, he has also recalled rulers to their duties, by appealing to the warning of the Holy Ghost, a warning which knows no limits of time. Pius XII speaks thus in the encyclical Mystici Corporis:

We must plead with God to grant that the rulers of peoples may love wisdom, so that this severe judgment of the Holy Ghost may never all on them: “The Most High will examine your works and search out your thoughts; because, being ministers of his kingdom, you have not judged rightly nor kept the law of justice, nor walked according to the Will of God; horribly and speedily will he appear to you: for a most severe judgment shall be for them that bear rule. For to him that is little, mercy is granted: but the mighty shall be mightily tormented. For God will not exceed any man’s person, neither will he stand in awe of any man’s greatness: for he made the little and the great, and he that equally care of all.”

Nearing the end of his speech, he gave the following summation:

In conclusion, the synthesis of the doctrines of the Church on this subject have been expounded most clearly in our day in the letter of the Sacred Congregation of Seminaries and Universities sent to the Bishops of Brazil on March 7, 1950. This letter, which refers continually to the teachings of Pius XII, among other things warns against the errors of a renascent Catholic liberalism, which “admits and encourages the separation of the two powers. It denies to the Church any sort of direct power over mixed affairs. It affirms that the State must show itself indifferent on the subject of religion…and recognize the same freedom for truth and for error. To the Church belong no privileges, favors, and rights superior to those recognized as belonging to other religious confessions in Catholic countries,” etc.

(For full text of Card. Ottaviani's speech, See American Ecclesiastical Review, May 1953, pages 321-334). 

What transpired next is most interesting:

On December 6, 1953, Pius XII delivered a speech in which he stated that the question of religious freedom and tolerance now had to be placed in the context of an emergent international community and that there it was of his exclusive and final authority. Murray and his friends and advisers took these remarks to be a tactful repudiation of Ottaviani's intransigent position.

On March 25, 1954, thinking Pope Pius XII was on his side, Murray gave a speech at the Catholic University of America. He informed his audience that the cardinal's speech had evoked diplomatic protests and that he had himself been assured by a close papal adviser that it represented the merely private views of Ottaviani. The pope reacted diplomatically, of course, to preserve the cardinal's buonafigura...Two conclusions followed, Murray argued: "(1) appeal to Ottavani henceforth [must be] cautious and discriminating; (2) anyone whose theory is that of [Ottaviani] is under obligation of revising his views." The remainder of Murray's speech was a detailed exposition of the papal address, stressing the doctrinal advance it represented beyond the classic theory of tolerance. 

Cardinal Ottaviani wasted no time leaping into action having learned of Murray's speech. He went to the Holy Father with four propositions to be condemned as voted upon by the Holy Office. Pope Pius XII signed them and they were sent to Murray. On October 28, 1954, these four propositions were solemnly condemned:

a) The Catholic confessional State, professing itself as such, is not an ideal to which organized political society is universally obliged.

b) Full religious liberty can be considered as a valid political ideal in a truly democratic State.

c) The State organized on a genuinely democratic basis must be considered to have done its duty when it has guaranteed the freedom of the Church by a general guarantee of liberty of religion.

d) It is true that Leo XIII has said: ii....civitates...debent eum in colendo numine morem usurpare modumque quo coli se Deus ipse demonstravit velle" (Enc. Immortale Dei). 

Words such as these can be understood as referring to the State considered as organized

on a basis other than that of the perfectly democratic State but to this latter strictly speaking are not applicable. [ i.e., the teaching of Pope Leo XIII on the obligations of States to God is not applicable to the democratic state---Introibo]

(See jstor.org/stable/25154656?origin=JSTOR-pdf; by V2 sect priest Fr. Joseph Komonchack [ordained in 1963]). 

Komonchak's article ends with this stunning admission:

Just ten years after Murray was silenced, the Second Vatican Council was to vindicate the views for which he was censured. The Council's Decree on Religious Freedom (Dignitatis Humanae) effected the adaptation of Catholic teaching on Church and State and religious freedom for which Murray had called in his 1950 memorandum and made it clear that American Catholics could be faithful at once to Catholic principle and to the American political experiment. (Emphasis mine). 

The idea of a change of doctrine by Pope Pius XII was totally false, and traditional teaching was upheld until Roncalli and Vatican II.

Is The Teaching of DH in Continuity with Prior Teachings?

It should be clear enough that the answer is "No." However,  Marshner asserts it is, and even constitutes a "slight improvement"(!) on traditional teaching. Marshner cites to DH para. #14, that allegedly leaves untouched the restrictive powers of ecclesiastical authority.

DH #14:

In order to be faithful to the divine command, "teach all nations" (Matt. 28:19-20), the Catholic Church must work with all urgency and concern "that the word of God be spread abroad and glorified" (2 Thess. 3:1). Hence the Church earnestly begs of its children that, "first of all, supplications, prayers, petitions, acts of thanksgiving be made for all men.... For this is good and agreeable in the sight of God our Savior, who wills that all men be saved and come to the knowledge of the truth" (1 Tim. 2:1-4). In the formation of their consciences, the Christian faithful ought carefully to attend to the sacred and certain doctrine of the Church. For the Church is, by the will of Christ, the teacher of the truth. It is her duty to give utterance to, and authoritatively to teach, that truth which is Christ Himself, and also to declare and confirm by her authority those principles of the moral order which have their origins in human nature itself. Furthermore, let Christians walk in wisdom in the face of those outside, "in the Holy Spirit, in unaffected love, in the word of truth" (2 Cor. 6:6-7), and let them be about their task of spreading the light of life with all confidence and apostolic courage, even to the shedding of their blood.

The disciple is bound by a grave obligation toward Christ, his Master, ever more fully to understand the truth received from Him, faithfully to proclaim it, and vigorously to defend it, never-be it understood-having recourse to means that are incompatible with the spirit of the Gospel. At the same time, the charity of Christ urges him to love and have prudence and patience in his dealings with those who are in error or in ignorance with regard to the faith. All is to be taken into account-the Christian duty to Christ, the life-giving word which must be proclaimed, the rights of the human person, and the measure of grace granted by God through Christ to men who are invited freely to accept and profess the faith.

What, exactly, is the Church still restricting? This is, at best, a sappy, watered down version of the Great Commission where the rights of the human person is mixed in. At the heart of the problem lies a dangerous, false, and heretical notion of "human dignity" from which these fabricated "rights" (religious liberty) allegedly spring forth. Murray and his fellow Modernists believe "truths" can be discovered "more fully." This implies that if religious toleration was evil or not sufficient because of "human dignity," it was always wrong and could not "become wrong." People have not "developed more human dignity." Human beings were, from the very beginning, made in the image and likeness of God. It doesn't become "more true" or "less true" with the passage of time. It is an implicit denial of the Indefectibility of the Church; the Church was somehow "deficient" in not teaching the "full truth" or gave something evil. However, this is impossible. 

Next, Marshner contends the Council recognizes the right of civil authority to restrict religious liberty according to the "just requirements of public order" and cites (DH 2 and 4). 

DH states in paragraph #2: 

This Vatican Council declares 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.

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 and thus it is to become a civil right. (Emphasis mine). 

This plainly flies in the face of all that was taught prior to the Council, and only one devoid of reason could say otherwise. DH teaches that the right to religious liberty, founded on the "dignity of the human person," persists even if the person misuses his right to religious liberty and denies the One True Church. Human dignity replaces God as the measure of what is good. Humans become "god." There are no "due limits" on public false worship. It should be banned altogether.

Finally, Marshner declares lastly the Council refuses to grant any immunity to proselytizing activities of the "hard sell" variety (DH 4).

DH #4 states that:

Provided the just demands of public order are observed, religious communities rightfully claim freedom in order that they may govern themselves according to their own norms, honor the Supreme Being in public worship, assist their members in the practice of the religious life, strengthen them by instruction, and promote institutions in which they may join together for the purpose of ordering their own lives in accordance with their religious principles...

Religious communities also have the right not to be hindered in their public teaching and witness to their faith, whether by the spoken or by the written word. However, in spreading religious faith and in introducing religious practices everyone ought at all times to refrain from any manner of action which might seem to carry a hint of coercion or of a kind of persuasion that would be dishonorable or unworthy, especially when dealing with poor or uneducated people. Such a manner of action would have to be considered an abuse of one's right and a violation of the right of others.

Therefore, Mormons can practice polytheism publicly and proselytize as long as they don't put a gun to someone's head to convert because it's "a violation of the rights of others." Error has no rights and what of the rights of God to have only His truth propagated? 

Here's some more of DH:

DH para. #6: The protection and promotion of the inviolable rights of man ranks among the essential duties of government. Therefore government is to assume the safeguard of the religious freedom of all its citizens, in an effective manner, by just laws and by other appropriate means.

Vatican II teaches here that all religions must enjoy the right to religious liberty. Implicitly, the prime value to be defended in human society is no longer the Truth, but liberty.

DH para. #7: ...that is, the freedom of man is to be respected as far as possible and is not to be curtailed except when and insofar as necessary.

This is an implicit denial of Original Sin. Give people religious liberty, and their minds and morals will be corrupted, as Pope Pius IX taught. Vatican II assumes the opposite--all will be well with religious liberty. The propagation of error is no longer considered a sin against the common good. This is the subversion of the common good and the subversion of true morality.

DH para. #11: God has regard for the dignity of the human person whom He Himself created and man is to be guided by his own judgment and he is to enjoy freedom.

Really? Immorality and heresy are to be "enjoyed" as "freedom"? When people are damned as a result of the misuse of freedom, enjoyment will be gone forever in Hell.

Marshner's case collapses. However, let's look at what the original schema, prepared by orthodox approved theologians had to say on Church and State.

The Original Draft Reflects the Traditional Teaching of the Church

This schema (draft) below, called the Dogmatic Constitution on the Church, was the product of the very best and most Anti-Modernist approved theologians under Pope Pius XII. It was never voted upon as the Modernists, led by "good Pope John," had all the original and orthodox schemata prepared for the Council scrapped, including this one. In it was the teaching on Church-State relations.

From the schema on the Dogmatic Constitution on the Church (CC)

Para. #42: The good of the State itself requires that the civil power not consider itself indifferent towards religion. It was established by God to help men acquire a truly human perfection; it must, therefore, not only provide its members the opportunity to procure temporal goods, both material and cultural, but must also assist them so that the spiritual goods for leading a religious life can more easily abound. Among those goods none is to be more highly regarded than to know and acknowledge God and to fulfil the duties owed to God, for these are the foundations of all private virtue, and indeed of all public virtue as well.

These duties toward God are not to be fulfilled only by individual citizens, but also by the civil power, which in its public acts represents the civil society. For God is the author of civil society and the source of all the goods which through it flow down to every member. Although, in the order willed by Christ, liturgical worship belongs only to God's Church, still the civil society must also worship God in some social way.

In the light of its nature, it will especially do this if by procuring the common good it faithfully observes the laws of God established by the divine Majesty for this economy of salvation. This demands above all that full freedom be granted to the Church and that whatever the Church judges to hinder the attainment of the eternal goal is excluded from legislation, governing, and public activity. The goal indeed should be to make it easier to live a life on Christian principles, one conducive to eternal life.  

The teachings of heretic Murray and other censured theologians were clearly condemned. Unfortunately, false pope Roncalli had it scrapped and had Murray draft DH.

Finally, how do the Conciliar "popes" understand religious liberty? 

Vatican II Sect "Popes" and Religious Liberty

Roncalli (John XXIII):

Also among man's rights is that of being able to worship God in accordance with the right dictates of his own conscience, and to profess his religion both in private and in public.

(See Pacem in Terris, para. #14; Emphasis mine).

Bergoglio (Francis):

 The state must be lay. Confessional states end badly. That goes against history.

(See interview with La Croix magazine; referenced here tif.ssrc.org/2022/01/28/j-c-murray-the-vatican-and-the-lay-state-challenge)

Francis and Sheik Ahmad el-Tayeb, Grand Imam of al-Azhar, a leading authority for many Sunni Muslims, signed a document on "human fraternity," and improving Christian-Moslem relations. (See https://www.ncronline.org/news/theology/does-god-want-religious-diversity-abu-dhabi-text-raises-questions). "The pluralism and the diversity of religions, color, sex, race and language are willed by God in his wisdom, through which he created human beings," the document said. Some have tried to defend this, including the Modernist Vatican, by claiming God wills false religions permissively (like other evils) and not positively. 

Don't be fooled. Read the context. Diversity of religion is listed with color, sex, language, and race. God positively wills male and female, as well as different colors, races, and languages. Yet we are to believe that religion was meant to be understood differently than the others in the same sentence? That God would positively will false sects with their false morals is the logical conclusion of religious liberty. The Vatican II sect has given power to the false sects of the world, especially Islam. 

Conclusion

The end of each Vatican II document ends thus:

"Each and every matter declared in this Dogmatic Constitution the Fathers of this Sacred Council have approved. And We by the Apostolic Authority handed down to Us from Christ, together with all the Venerable Fathers, in the Holy Ghost approve, decree and establish these things; and all things thus synodally established, We order to be promulgated unto the glory of God...I, Paul, Bishop of the Catholic Church. There follow the signatures of the rest of the Fathers." (AAS 57 [1965], 71).

For members of the Vatican II sect, the Council is part of the Universal and Ordinary Magisterium, to which all Catholics must submit. However, Dr. Marshner thinks there is "wiggle room" that the past teachings can be reconciled with Vatican II.  Yet, clearly that has been shown to be false. 

Therefore, which Magisterium will he obey? On religious liberty will he obey the teaching of Pope Gregory XVI in Mirari Vos of August 15, 1832 (para. #14):

"This shameful font of indifferentism gives rise to that absurd and erroneous proposition which claims that liberty of conscience must be maintained for everyone. It spreads ruin in sacred and civil affairs, though some repeat over and over again with the greatest impudence that some advantage accrues to religion from it. "But the death of the soul is worse than freedom of error," as Augustine was wont to say. When all restraints are removed by which men are kept on the narrow path of truth, their nature, which is already inclined to evil, propels them to ruin."

Or will he obey Vatican II, Dignitatis Humanae of December 7, 1965:

"This Vatican Council declares 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. 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 and thus it is to become a civil right."

All of us face the same choice between two opposing teachings. Both cannot be true. Nevertheless, Vatican II sect apologists  want to "prove" that blatant contradictions are actually harmonious. No wonder Pope Gregory XVI called religious liberty "insanity."