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Religious Tolerance in Catholic Tradition

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Religious Tolerance in Catholic Tradition The Catholic Lawyer Volume 7 Number 2 Volume 7, Spring 1961, Number 2 Article 8 Religious Tolerance in Catholic Tradition Giacomo Cardinal Lercaro Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarship.law.stjohns.edu/tcl Part of the Catholic Studies Commons This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Journals at St. John's Law Scholarship Repository. It has been accepted for inclusion in The Catholic Lawyer by an authorized editor of St. John's Law Scholarship Repository. For more information, please contact [email protected]. RELIGIOUS TOLERANCE IN CATHOLIC TRADITION t GIACOMO CARDINAL LERCARO* TOLERANCE IS A PARADOXICAL CONCEPT. It consists in permitting what one knows certainly to be an evil or an error. Permissio negativa mali (negative permission of evil), the theologians define it -negative, because the permission in no way implies encourage- ment of the evil. It would follow, therefore, that tolerance is not a virtue in the strict sense of the term. But virtue sanctions and requires the practice of tolerance, for the evil or error it permits is always in the interests of a greater good that is thereby defended or promoted. Tolerance finds its basic justification in the analogy between human law and the divine law which governs the universe. St. Thomas Aquinas taught: Human government is derived from divine government which it should imitate. Though God is all-powerful and sovereignly good, He permits the occurrence of evil in the universe which He could prevent. He does so in order that the suppression of evil may not entail the suppression of greater goods or even beget worse evils. Similarly in the case of human government, those who govern well will tolerate evil in order to foster good or prevent worse evil.1 Leo XIII returned to this thought in his encyclical "Libertas '' 2 when he said: With the discernment of a true Mother, the Church weighs the great burden of human weakness and well knows the course along which the actions of men are being borne in this our age. For this reason, while not conceding any right to anything save what is true and honest, she does not forbid public authority to tolerate what is at variance with truth and justice for the sake of avoiding some greater evil or preserving some t Translated by the CATHOLIC MIND from the French version of J. Thomas- d'Hoste which appeared in DOCUMENTATION CATHOLIQUE, Paris, March 15, 1959. Reprints are available from the America Press, 920 Broadway, N .Y. * Archbishop of Bologna. 1 AQUINAS, SUMMA THEOLOGICA, I-II, q. 10, art. 11, obj. 3. 2 ACTA LEONIS XlIl 205. 7 CATHOLIC LAWYER, SPRING 1961 greater good. God Himself in His Provi- sources of Revelation and to the practice dence, though infinitely good and power- of the Church. To omit here other scrip- ful, permits evil to exist in the world, tural texts which are adduced in support of partly that greater good may not be im- this argument, Christ in the parable of the peded and partly that greater evil may not cockle gives the following advice: let the ensue. In the government of states it is not cockle grow in the field of the world to- forbidden to imitate the Ruler of the gether with the good seed in view of the world; and, as the authority of man is harvest.5 The duty of repressing moral powerless to prevent every evil, it has, as and religious error cannot therefore be an St. Augustine says, "to overlook and leave ultimate norm of action. It must be sub- unpunished many things which are pun- ordinate to higher and more general norms ished, and rightly, by divine Providence." 3 which in particular circumstances permit, and perhaps even seem to.indicate as the If, in certain circumstances, human law better policy, toleration of error in order can and should tolerate evil for the sake of to promote a greater good. the common good - and for this reason But alone - this does not mean that it can ap- what is the greater good which justifies, even demands, tolerance on the prove of or wish evil for its own sake. part of Catholics in respect to other relig- Being in itself the privation of good, evil is ious confessions? opposed to the common welfare which the Prudence, in so far as it provides a man human legislator must seek out and pro- with a correct insight into how he must act, mote to the best of his ability. Human law is the virtue generally recognized as justify- should strive to imitate God who, though ing tolerance. In our case, however, should He allows evil to exist in the world, "wills this prudence amount to mere practical neither that it come to pass nor fail to come foresight? To put it graphically, are we pre- to pass. He simply permits it. And that is vented from once again condemning the good."4 This single brief formula of the heretic to the stake only because of the Angelic Doctor contains the entire Catholic peculiar historical situation of the Church doctrine on tolerance. to-day? Or should tolerance proceed from In the allocution to the Italian Catholic loftier principles, such as respect for the jurists on 3rd December, 1953, Pius XII truth or for the manner in which God acts remarked: on the human soul? Hence the affirmation that religious and Religious tolerance, we maintain, should moral error must always be impeded when proceed from respect for the truth and for it is possible, because toleration of them is in itself immoral, is not valid absolutely the manner in which the human intellect and unconditionally. Moreover, God has arrives at the truth, rather than from re- not given to human authority such an ab- spect for freedom in itself. Here we are solute and universal control in matters of drawing a distinction between the Catholic faith and morality. Such a command is concept of tolerance and the ideas ex- unknown to the common convictions of pressed by John Locke mankind, to Christian conscience, to the in his Letter on Tolerance. Pius XI clarified the essential elements of that distinction in his encyci- 3 ST. AUGUSTINE, DE LIB. ARBITR., Lib. 1, cap. 6, num. 14. 4 SUMMA THEOLOGICA, I, q. 19, art. 9, ad 3. 5 Matt. xiii, 24-30. RELIGIOUS TOLERANCE cal, Non abbiamo bisogno, where he de- the name of your principles of tolerance; clared: when we are a majority, we deny freedom . ..We are, as we stated above, happy to you in the name of our own principles." and proud to wage the good fight for the (Actually Veuillot never made any such liberty of consciences, not indeed for the statement.) liberty of conscience, as someone, perhaps At this point it is most important to re- inadvertently, has quoted us as saying. This [liberty of conscience] is an equivocal ex- call the thesis which lays the foundation pression, too often distorted to mean the for the secularist perspective of history. absolute independence of conscience which The proposition that a transcendent reli- is absurd in a soul created and redeemed gion must lead to intolerance is necessary to by God. the secularist view. That is why all secular- A False View ists hold it, even the most moderate. Their Before developing the Church's position position is the result of an historical judg- on tolerance, let us first view Catholic doc- ment according to which the Church ex- trine through the eyes of non-Catholics who hausted its positive civilizing function in have been influenced by the secular press. the Middle Ages. To-day it is unable to According. to the viewpoint commonly provide the spiritual ferment necessary for called radical to-day the principle of reli- the development of civil life. It is con- gious tolerance is part and parcel of those cerned only with its own survival. In its philosophical systems that are known as nostalgia for the past, the secularist main- relativism and philosophical historicism. tains, the Church resists the modern world These systems teach that truth is human and finds its strength in the inevitable crises rather than divine. They can be under- which accompany historical progress. stood in a twofold sense. I would call them In this view, the Church, from the Coun- dogmatic, in so far as they have given rise ter-Reformation on, inevitably became the to a new form of religiosity called "the centre around which every type of conserv- religion of freedom." They may also be atism rallied. The Church found it possible called sceptical, in so far as they inspired to ally herself with the established order, the decadent interpretations of historicism. and even to take on the colouring of its Renan, for example, considered himself the strongest ally. Thus, in the nineteenth cen- embodiment of the spirit of tolerance when tury, the secularists maintain, when the he taught that all views of the world were, ultimate victory of the ancien rdgime still in their essence, equally true. Similarly, seemed possible, the Church was anti-Lib- modern relativism claims to admit all posi- eral. To-day it is ready to borrow the tions save any which presents itself as ab- Liberal ideology proper to the bourgeoisie. solute truth. The secularist would argue, therefore, Because it is under the influence of rela- that the Church to-day is ready to accept tivism, our modern secularist culture has the principle of tolerance only because she no alternative but to define the Catholic would be otherwise incurably impotent in position on tolerance through words which the modern world.
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