Religious Liberty and the Hermeneutic of Continuity: Conservation and Development of Doctrine at Vatican II (Renewal Within Tradition)

by R. Michael Dunnigan

Publisher:

St. Paul Center for Biblical Theology

, 2023

Overview

The Second Vatican Council’s declaration Dignitatis Humanae marks a significant advance over prior magisterial teaching about the right to religious liberty, yet the nature of this advance has long been subject to controversy. Is it a true development, conserving and extending what came before? Or does it instead chart a new course entirely, rejecting and replacing the older teaching?

In Religious Liberty and the Hermeneutic of Continuity, R. Michael Dunnigan takes up these pressing questions and offers a careful examination of how the claims of Dignitatis Humanae relate to the magisterial precedents set by the papacy in the nineteenth century. With precision and nuance, Dunnigan analyzes the object, scope, and foundation of the right to religious liberty itself, and his analysis culminates in the proposal that the “right” endorsed by Vatican II is not identical with the “rights” condemned by previous popes.

Beyond establishing the claims of Dignitatis Humanae as a true development of prior teaching, Dunnigan shows that its contribution to the question of religious liberty has not yet received full appreciation. Indeed, Dunnigan demonstrates how the Vatican II declaration reaffirms, reinforces, and even revivifies prior magisterial teaching on religious liberty through its emphasis on human integrity, which emerges as a foundational but often overlooked principle of continuity.

Key Features

• Offers a careful examination of how the claims of Dignitatis Humanae relate to the magisterial precedents
• Analyzes the object, scope, and foundation of the right to religious liberty itself
• Demonstrates how the Vatican II declaration reaffirms, reinforces, and revivifies prior magisterial teaching

Contents

• Acknowledgements
• Notes and Abbreviations
• Part 1—Introduction to the Debate
• Chapter 1—An Impossible Reconciliation?
• Chapter 2—The Stakes of the Debate over Religious Liberty
• 2.1. Archbishop Lefebvre and the Declaration on Religious Liberty
• 2.2. Father Charles Curran and the Teaching of Moral Theology
• 2.3. Curran and Lefebvre
• 2.4. Religious Liberty and the Church’s Witness to Justice
• 2.5. The Church’s Diplomatic Activity and Her Relationship to Modernity
• Chapter 3—Development, Method, and the Issues
• 3.1. Development in Doctrine versus Corruption in Doctrine
• 3.2. The Method and the Issues
• Part 2—Church and State
• Chapter 4—The Proper Relationship between Church and State
• 4.1. Separation of Church and State
• 4.2. The Need for Humility in Interpreting Dignitatis Humanae
• 4.3. Gelasian Dualism
• 4.4. The Drafting of Dignitatis Humanae
• 4.5. Special Civil Recognition
• 4.6. The Last-Minute Change to Dignitatis Humanae
• 4.7. Does the Declaration Foreclose the Re-emergence of the Confessional State?
• 4.8. Murray’s Disappointment and Davies’s Acknowledgement
• 4.9. Murray, Paul VI, and the “Nothing but Freedom” Argument
• 4.10. Further Significance
• Chapter 5—The Appeal to “Changed Circumstances,” Part 1: The Near-Disappearance of the Catholic State
• 5.1. The Historical Inquiry
• 5.2. Limitations of the Historical Inquiry
• 5.3. Christopher Wolfe
• 5.4. A Word on the Islamic World
• Part 3A—Analysis of the Right to Religious Liberty: The Scope and Object of the Right
• Chapter 6—The Nineteenth-Century Magisterium
• 6.1. Gregory XVI, Mirari Vos (1832)
• 6.2. Bl. Pius IX, Quanta Cura (1864)
• 6.3. Bl. Pius IX, The Syllabus of Errors (1864)
• 6.4. Leo XIII, Immortale Dei (1885) and Libertas (1888)
• Chapter 7—The Scope of the Right to Religious Liberty
• 7.1. Some Preliminary Notes on Conscience
• 7.2. The Nineteenth-Century Union of the Moral and Juridical Realms
• 7.3. Consequences of the Blurring of the Moral and Juridical Realms
• 7.4. The Vatican II Distinction between the Moral and Juridical Realms
• 7.5. An Extension of the Nineteenth-Century Teaching
• 7.6. The Relevance of the Scope of the Right to the Larger Question
• Chapter 8—The Object of the Right to Religious Liberty
• 8.1. The Central Dispute
• 8.2. Positive Rights and Negative Rights
• 8.3. The Right as Ius Exigendi
• 8.4. The Davies Objection
• 8.5. Related Observations
• 8.6. Two Facets of Liberty
• Part 3B—Analysis of the Right to Religious Liberty: The Crucial Question of the Foundation of the Right
• Chapter 9—The Search for the Proper Foundation
• 9.1. Allusions to the Right to Religious Liberty
• 9.2. Early Attempts to Make Conscience the Foundation of the Right
• 9.3. The “Juridical” Argument for the Incompetence of the State
• 9.4. The Council’s Choice of Human Dignity as the Foundation
• 9.5. The Remarkable Resiliency of the Incompetence Argument
• 9.6. Murray’s “Sufficiency” Argument
• Chapter 10—The Dog That Didn’t Bark
• 10.1. Some Qualifications
• 10.2 A Note on the “Juridical Approach” and the “Incompetence Argument”
• 10.3. The Practical Problems with the “Incompetence Argument”
• 10.4. Doctrinal Difficulties
• 10.5. A Response to the Question: “Might It Have Been Otherwise?”
• Chapter 11—Starting with the Person, Not the State
• 11.1. The Ontological Argument
• 11.2. The Social Argument (Part 1)
• 11.3. The Social Argument (Part 2: An Excursus on Thomas Pink)
• 11.4. The Argument about “Avoiding the Political”
• 11.5. Human Integrity
• Part 4—Limitations on the Right to Religious Liberty
• Chapter 12—The Challenge of Quanta Cura
• 12.1. The Need for Limitations on Religious Practice
• 12.2. Quanta Cura (1864)
• 12.3. A Matter of Translation
• 12.4. A Limitless Freedom?
• 12.5. The Public Order and the Common Good
• 12.6. Contemporary Applications
• Chapter 13—Public Law and Policy
• 13.1. Teaching and Policy
• 13.2. The Vatican II Change in Policy or Public Law
• 13.3. Analysis of Harrison’s Public Law Argument
• 13.4. Papal Administrative Practice
• 13.5. Doctrine and Policy
• Chapter 14—The Burning of Heretics
• 14.1. Leo X’s Bull against Luther
• 14.2. The Drafting of Exsurge Domine
• Chapter 15—The Appeal to “Changed Circumstances,” Part 2: Social Harm, Both Real and Perceived
• 15.1. Noonan and O’Neil
• 15.2. St. Augustine
• 15.3. St. Thomas Aquinas
• 15.4. Coercion of the Baptized
• 15.5. Insights and Limitations of the O’Neil Approach
• Conclusion
• Chapter 16—The Appeal to “Changed Circumstances,” Part 3: The Delay in Recognizing the Right to Religious Liberty
• 16.1. Murray after the Council
• 16.2. An Assumption
• 16.3. Kasper’s Contribution
• 16.4. The Final Piece
• 16.5. Conclusion
• Bibliography
• Index

Praise for Religious Liberty and the Hermeneutic of Continuity

How did the human right to religious liberty become an essential piece of modern Catholic teaching? R. Michael Dunnigan’s contribution to the literature on Vatican II’s Dignitatis Humanae brings to bear his keen theological and legal acumen not only to defend its compatibility with prior periods of Catholic teaching, but also to show its positive contribution in promoting human integrity in the modern world. Dunnigan explains how Dignitatis Humanae develops Church teaching on human dignity and the roles of civil authority and of law in both fostering and limiting the exercise of religion, and he lends his voice to recent arguments that regard the law of nations and the condition of reciprocity as grounding a development in justice that requires religious liberty among and within societies. Dunnigan’s grasp of magisterial teaching, secular and ecclesiastical jurisprudence, and the post-conciliar literature is most impressive.

—Barrett Turner, Mount St. Mary’s University

This is an extraordinarily competent and lucid investigation of the right to religious liberty promulgated by the Second Vatican Council. There might indeed be stronger rights or lesser rights to religious liberty, and perhaps different reasons for each, but Professor Dunnigan insists on getting to the precise right adopted by the Council. This is not easy work. He sifts through both the history of the conciliar debates and the plethora of post-conciliar opinions. I deem it fair not only to the Council but, perhaps just as importantly, to the scholarly debates thereafter.

—Russell Hittinger, Catholic University of America

One problem with Dignitatis Humanae is not what it said but what it didn’t say. There was so much left to the imagination and future theological reflection. With this volume Dunnigan presents the principles of Dignitatis Humanae in the context of the broader theological tradition rather than leaving people to believe that the declaration was an endorsement of philosophies undergirding the French and/or American Revolutions. The work is essential reading for anyone interested in Catholic jurisprudence and political theory

—Tracey Rowland, University of Notre Dame (Australia)

Product Details

• Title: Religious Liberty and the Hermeneutic of Continuity: Conservation and Development of Doctrine at Vatican II (Renewal Within Tradition)
• Author: R. Michael Dunnigan
• Series: Renewal Within Tradition
• Publisher: St. Paul Center for Biblical Theology
• Print Publication Date: 2023
• Pages: 520
• Language: English
• Resources: 1
• Format: Digital › Logos Research Edition
• ISBNs: 9781645853329, 1645853322
• Resource ID: LLS:RLGSLBRTYDCVTCN
• Resource Type: Monograph
• Metadata Last Updated: 2025-03-05T15:54:53Z

About R. Michael Dunnigan

R. Michael Dunnigan (JD, Georgetown University; JCD, Pontifical University of the Holy Cross) is associate professor of canon law at Saint Meinrad Seminary, having previously practiced both civil and canon law. His research interests include the rights of the faithful, comparative law, and doctrinal development.