One of the more closely related issues to the Coronavirus Quarantine is Religious Liberty. Some have argued that the State demanding the shutdown of Church’s infringes upon the right to religious freedom. Arguments have but put forth, at least from a Constitutional perspective, that in general the demand that churches be shut down is not unconstitutional. We will set the constitutional question aside for the time being and examine it from the Church’s traditional teaching on religious freedom.
From the outset it must be admitted that examining religious freedom from the standpoint of traditional teaching is not without controversy. Ever since the Second Vatican Council this teaching has been contested thanks to what amounts to a document plagued by ambiguity. This despite the fact that the Declaration on Religious Freedom, Dignitatis Humanae, makes it clear that “it leaves untouched traditional Catholic doctrine on the moral duty of men and societies toward the true religion and toward the one Church of Christ” (DH 1). This “traditional Catholic doctrine” can be summarized as follows.
The Traditional Teaching on Religious Liberty
Man has an obligation to worship God, not just in any manner that he wishes, but according to the religion that God has revealed. More to the point, man has an obligation to be a member of the Catholic Church. This membership however must be voluntary. No one can be forced to embrace the True Faith against his will. Two corollaries follow from this. First, no one may be forced from acting against his religious conviction in private or in public. Vatican II affirms this teaching when it says that religious “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.”
In a discourse in 1953, Pope Pius XII said ‘That which does not correspond to truth or to the norm of morality has objectively no right to exist, to be spread or to be activated.” Because “error has no rights”, the public exercise of religion is another issue. Only the true religion has a right public expression and thus a person may be kept from publicly acting upon their religious convictions. To summarize, a man can’t be forced to act against his conscience but can be kept from acting on it. The second corollary then is that the State, because it is the custodian of the Common Good may prohibit public expression of false religions.
In Catholic countries the State may tolerate some public expression of false religions only for proportionate reasons in order to protect the Common Good. St. Thomas gives two reasons in general—to avoid civil unrest or avoid prejudicing non-Catholics toward the Church. What is clear is that this must be viewed merely as tolerance and not a right. No one has right to be tolerated. Either way a non-Catholic religion must not be given the space to flourish and propagate itself.
In non-Catholic States the obligation to protect and promote the true religion still remains in place, but the level of tolerance of false religions obviously increases because of the Common Good and the threat of civil unrest. This is where Dignitatis Humanae seems to veer from the traditional teaching of the Church saying both that “religious communities…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”(DH 4). It seems to confuse true rights from mere tolerance. How this can be reconciled with the traditional teaching remains to be seen.
The traditional understanding then differs from the American Model. The American Model treats all religions as equal. This is contrary to justice however. As Leo XIII put it:
“Justice therefore forbids, and reason itself forbids, the State to be godless; or to adopt a line of action which would end in godlessness-namely, to treat the various religions (as they call them) alike, and to bestow upon them promiscuously equal rights and privileges. Since, then, the profession of one religion is necessary in the State, that religion must be professed which alone is true, and which can be recognized without difficulty, especially in Catholic States, because the marks of truth are, as it were, engravers upon it.”
Pope Leo XIII, Libertas 21
This also means that the Church cannot be treated as merely one other social organization. This means that the constitutionality defense, namely that religious congregations have not been singled out, of the religious quarantine does not fly. The Church not only should be treated differently than other religious groups, but also from all social groups. Lumping it in with other “large gatherings” is unjust and does great harm to the Common Good.
Religious Liberty and the Power of the Church
The confusion regarding religious liberty has led to a grave misstep when it comes to the quarantining of the Church’s public worship and Sacraments. To be clear, the issue isn’t about whether Bishops should comply with the order of the State regarding not gathering. That question is best left up to the prudential judgment of the Bishops and their charism as Shepherds. But any compliance must be shown to be voluntary. It must be “we will comply” and not “we must comply”. Very few Bishops (if any) have made it clear that this is a voluntary cooperation, “signal proof of her motherly love by showing the greatest possible kindliness and indulgence” (Leo XIII, Immortale Dei 15) in cooperating with the State.
The Church has an obligation to repeatedly tell the State to stay in its lane and this situation is no different. Leo XIII, always aware of State encroachment upon the Church, said “Whatever, therefore in things human is of a sacred character, whatever belongs either of its own nature or by reason of the end to which it is referred, to the salvation of souls, or to the worship of God, is subject to the power and judgment of the Church. Whatever is to be ranged under the civil and political order is rightly subject to the civil authority” (ibid). This is because the spiritual common good always has precedent over the temporal common good.
When the transition back to normal life happens, the question is who decides when the Church may resume Masses? Is it the State or is it the Church? The way this has played out so far it appears that it will be the State which sets a dangerous precedent and gives the Church’s enemies great leeway in performing a “soft persecution” in the name of public health. The Shepherds of the Church must defend religious freedom and not cede any power over to the State.