Libertatem Religionis: Remembering Our Origins

At a time when the Catholic Church in the United States is publicly berated with accusations of being an outdated, oppressive institution concerned only with depriving women of their reproductive rights and devaluing freedom of conscience, many contemporary Catholics and others see only the stubbornness and isolationism rather than the constructive good of the church or the scope, depth, and fluidity of the Catholic Church’s teachings about modern society. This paper will assess the extent to which American political thought is ingrained in the Dignitatis Humanae: The Declaration on Religious Freedom from the Second Vatican Council. It will include: a) an explanation of the Declaration on Religious Freedom from the Second Vatican Council, b) an exploration of relevant founding-era political texts from the United States, c) a brief synopsis of the development of relevant Christian teachings on church-state relations, d) an introduction of the person of Fr. John Courtney Murray. This paper will be a multi-step textual analysis of the documents and will seek to draw connections between the Declaration on Religious Freedom and elements of the American religious experience, then relating these connections to Christian political thought. It will show that there is a correlation between the Declaration on Religious Freedom and the American religious experience, and will argue that the former could have been modeled after the latter