Dignitatis Humanae and the Development of Moral Doctrine: Assessing Change in Catholic Social Teaching on Religious Liberty

THE CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY OF AMERICA Dignitatis humanae and the Development of Moral Doctrine: Assessing Change in Catholic Social Teaching on Religious Liberty A DISSERTATION Submitted to the Faculty of the School of Theology and Religious Studies Of The Catholic University of America In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements For the Degree Doctor of Philosophy By Barrett Hamilton Turner Washington, D.C 2015 Dignitatis humanae and the Development of Moral Doctrine: Assessing Change in Catholic Social Teaching on Religious Liberty Barrett Hamilton Turner, Ph.D. Director: Joseph E. Capizzi, Ph.D. Vatican II’s Declaration on Religious Liberty, Dignitatis humanae (DH), poses the problem of development in Catholic moral and social doctrine. This problem is threefold, consisting in properly understanding the meaning of pre-conciliar magisterial teaching on religious liberty, the meaning of DH itself, and the Declaration’s implications for how social doctrine develops. A survey of recent scholarship reveals that scholars attend to the first two elements in contradictory ways, and that their accounts of doctrinal development are vague. The dissertation then proceeds to the threefold problematic. Chapter two outlines the general parameters of doctrinal development. The third chapter gives an interpretation of the pre- conciliar teaching from Pius IX to John XXIII. To better determine the meaning of DH, the fourth chapter examines the Declaration’s drafts and the official explanatory speeches (relationes) contained in Vatican II’s Acta synodalia. The fifth chapter discusses how experience may contribute to doctrinal development and proposes an explanation for how the doctrine on religious liberty changed, drawing upon the work of Jacques Maritain and Basile Valuet. I argue that DH can be understood as a homogeneous development by clarifying the three elements of the problem in the following ways. First, two pre-conciliar developments in Catholic social teaching prepared for DH, namely, Pius XI’s personalistic doctrine of the common good and Pius XII’s articulation of the new demands placed upon nation-states in an international juridical order. Second, I argue that DH preserves in a new modality doctrines that some scholars assume were discarded by Vatican II, such as the duty of civil authorities toward the Catholic Church and the place of the objective moral law in limiting free exercise. Third, I draw upon Maritain and Valuet to argue that the inherent elasticity of society, being an operational and not substantial unity, indicates the limits and possibilities of change in Catholic social doctrine. In the process I introduce to the English literature Valuet’s theory of a development in the ius gentium as a necessary condition for universal exercise of the natural right of religious liberty. This dissertation by Barrett Hamilton Turner fulfills the dissertation requirement for the doctoral degree in Moral Theology/Ethics approved by Joseph E. Capizzi, Ph.D., as Director, and by David M. Lantigua, Ph.D., Christopher J. Ruddy, Ph.D., and F. Russell Hittinger, Ph.D., as Readers. ________________________________________ Joseph E. Capizzi, Ph.D., Director ________________________________________ David M. Lantigua, Ph.D., Reader ________________________________________ Christopher J. Ruddy, Ph.D., Reader ________________________________________ F. Russell Hittinger, Ph.D., Reader ii REGI JESU MISERICORDI SOCIETATUM OMNIUM VIRGINI MARIAE BEATAE UXORIQUE ELIZABETH MEAE iii Table of Contents Acknowledgements........................................................................................................................ vi Chapter 1: The Declaration on Religious Liberty and Doctrinal Development ............................. 1 The Noonan-Dulles Exchange ............................................................................................ 6 Traditionalist Difﬁculties .................................................................................................. 32 The Rhonheimer-Pink Exchange ...................................................................................... 43 Other Arguments for Homogeneous Development........................................................... 59 John Courtney Murray: American Theorist of Religious Liberty ..................................... 80 Problematic and Prospect ................................................................................................ 114 Chapter 2: The Theology of Doctrinal Development ................................................................. 118 The General Problem of Doctrinal Development ........................................................... 119 Newman’s Approach to Development: The Church Knows Revelation as an Idea ....... 128 The Status and Development of Non-Deﬁnitive Magisterial Teaching .......................... 151 Historicism and Modernism............................................................................................ 165 Conclusion ...................................................................................................................... 173 iv Chapter 3: A Century of Doctrinal Movement............................................................................ 179 From Reaction to Ralliement .......................................................................................... 185 Two Preparatory Developments in the Papal Teaching .................................................. 226 Chapter 4: Dignitatis humanae: An Analysis in Light of the Conciliar Relationes .................... 247 Genre, Authority, History................................................................................................ 250 Topical Analysis of DH in Light of the Relationes ......................................................... 271 John Paul II and Public Order ......................................................................................... 324 Chapter 5: Preliminary Conclusions regarding Development in Social Doctrine ...................... 332 Experience and the Development of Doctrine ................................................................ 333 Two Christendoms: The Analogy of Christian Civilization............................................ 347 Thomistic Social Ontology and the Fuzziness of Social Form ....................................... 363 Valuet, Ius Gentium, and Christian Civilization ............................................................. 373 A Concluding Comment on Social Doctrine’s “Elasticity” ............................................ 379 Bibliography ............................................................................................................................... 381 v Acknowledgements This dissertation would not have been completed were it not for the guidance and assistance of many people. First, I thank God for giving me the privilege of writing and the ability and light to complete this project. Second, I would like to thank my director, Joseph Capizzi, for his patient help throughout the entire program and especially during this dissertation. I also thank my readers, David Lantigua, Chris Ruddy, and Russ Hittinger. Their encouragement and criticism have improved my work tremendously, although all defects remain my own. I am grateful to other professors who have been formative influences during my time at The Catholic University of America: Bill Mattison, John Grabowski, Angela McKay Knobel, and Chad Pecknold. I also remember with devotion my co-travelers John Meinert and Joshua Evans. To Scott Roniger I owe not only warm respect but also gratitude for pointing out a certain pair of articles to me. Third, I owe more than can adequately be expressed to my parents, John and Gail Turner, for instilling in me a love of learning and for their generous support. I thank my in-laws, Fred and Martha Gramlich, for their great hospitality. I am delighted also to mention the assistance of John and June Mary Makdisi, and that of Stephanie Dannemiller and Saint Louis parish. Lastly, I would like to thank my wife, Elizabeth, whose companionship through joys and sufferings these last years has been sweet beyond words. vi Chapter 1 The Declaration on Religious Liberty and Doctrinal Development In any event, the document is a significant event in the history of the Church. It was, of course, the most controversial document of the whole Council, largely because it raised with sharp emphasis the issue that lay continually below the surface of all the conciliar debates—the issue of the development of doctrine. The notion of development, not the notion of religious freedom, was the real sticking- point for many of those who opposed the Declaration even to the end. The course of the development between the Syllabus of Errors (1864) and Dignitatis Humanae Personae (1965) still remains to be explained by theologians. But the Council formally sanctioned the validity of the development itself; and this was a doctrinal event of high importance for theological thought in many other areas.1 The fathers of the Second Vatican Ecumenical Council stated in the Declaration on Religious Liberty, Dignitatis humanae (hereafter DH or “the Declaration”), that they “intend[ed] to develop the doctrine of the more recent popes on the inviolable rights of the human person and the constitutional order of society” (n. 1). The Declaration is thus an instance of doctrinal development in the Catholic Church’s social doctrine. Scholarly consensus, however, on just what sort of development the Declaration

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