My attitude regarding the Reinder Bruinsma kerfuffle has been to ignore it. The man was well known to be a liberal and he is now 82 years old, the age around which most us of begin to lose cognitive sharpness. There seemed little point in belaboring the issue, especially given that his book sells for $100.00 and hence very few people will ever read it.
But the Left took this opportunity to push Rome on us; something in the liberal mind seems to need to overthrow the old verities. There were not one but two articles at Spectrum arguing that, yes, Rome has changed, and it is past time we acknowledged it. One was entitled, “The Enduring Obsession with ‘Rome Never Changes’,” by “An Adventist.” Another, by Thomas Domanyi, was called, “Is Bruinsma Right About Change? A study of Religious Freedom in Modern Catholicism.”
But has Rome changed? Just a few days ago, one of our commenters called my attention to a nine-part series by Matthew McCusker published just last month in “Life-Site News,” a very prominent Roman Catholic pro-life website. McCusker has a startlingly retrograde view of religious freedom. He’s in favor of it, but only for Roman Catholics. Here’s the headline of part six:
Separation of Church and State is a sin: here’s why
This headline might seem shocking to some readers. Many of us have grown up under political systems which enshrine separation of Church and State in constitutional law. But as we will see, the Catholic Church repudiates this idea in the strongest of terms.
However, this headline reflects the teaching of the Catholic Church as transmitted to us by the Roman Pontiffs. This teaching has been explained with particular clarity and detail by Pope Leo XIII [pope from 1878 to 1903] in his encyclical letter Immortale Dei, “On the Christian Constitution of States,” and in Libertas, “On Human Liberty.” . . . The assertion made in the headline, that “separation of Church and State is a sin”, is derived from the teaching of Pope Leo XIII, who wrote:
“It is a public crime to act as though there were no God. So, too, is it a sin for the State not to have care for religion as a something beyond its scope, or as of no practical benefit; or out of many forms of religion to adopt that one which chimes in with the fancy; for we are bound absolutely to worship God in that way which He has shown to be His will.”
McCusker boldly sums up the doctrine he has inferred from the writings of Pope Leo XIII:
It is the teaching of the Catholic Church, that when Catholics come together to form a state, that state should also have a Catholic character. And just as all men and women are obliged to believe in God, and to receive the gospel, so too are all states obliged to publicly acknowledge God, and the truth of the Catholic religion. The duty of states follows logically from the duty of individuals.
Part seven of McCusker’s series is a jeremiad against liberalism, i.e., freedom of religion, freedom of speech, freedom of the press, and economic freedom or free enterprise. He rightly understands that this liberalism (which we now call “classical liberalism”), best seen historically in the United States, is very much the creation of Protestantism, and he does not approve:
Liberalism first arose in the aftermath of the Protestant Reformation, when the principle of private judgement was introduced into religious matters. While in theory Protestants recognized the existence of a divine revelation and a divine law to which man must conform, in practice, the principle of sola scriptura forced the intellectually engaged Protestant to form his own understanding of the meaning of scripture, and to assert his independence from any human authority that attempted to compel him to accept a particular set of doctrines.
Furthermore, the division caused by the fracturing of Christendom, and the associated persecutions and wars, led many men to argue for tolerating individual judgment in religious matters. But toleration as a practice, in order to secure social peace, soon developed into the assertion of a fundamental right to believe whatever one wished in religious matters.
The origin of liberalism lies in the assertion of man’s independence from the claims of any external religious authority.
McCusker’s reasoning against freedom leads him to the conclusion, reached in part nine of the series, that the government has the right to restrict (persecute) non-Catholic religions:
There is no right to the public practice of a non-Catholic religion
Public acts which are harmful to the common good are directly subject to the constraining power by the state. This is something accepted by everyone, as a matter of course, in countless areas of life. However, the ideology of liberalism holds that some of the most important aspects of public life – the public worship of God and the public propagation of religious doctrine – are outside the state’s purview. On the contrary, there are few things more gravely immoral, and more gravely harmful to the common good, than false worship (we are not at present considering the subjective dispositions of those involved) and the spreading of false doctrines, which undermine the true faith and will lead to souls being deprived of the beatific vision of God for all eternity.
It is this incalculable harm to the common good which is the basis of the state’s right to prevent the public practice of non-Catholic religions and to prevent the propagation of religious error. For this reason, the state may, and often ought, to use its coercive power to prevent such things as: non-Catholic rites of public worship, the construction of non-Catholic places of worship, the public preaching of false religions, and the publication of heretical or immoral books.
Oh, my! This is raw, genuine Roman Catholicism, unvetted and certainly undiluted by any public relations firm. McCusker might as well go all the way, and he does:
The state may coerce those who have abandoned the Catholic faith
Thus, those who have had the faith, and abandoned it, are in a different category to those who have never known it. Heretics, schismatics and apostates may be compelled to return to the faith which they have betrayed, and may be punished if they do not. This is the basis of the laws against heresy which have at certain times existed and been implemented in Catholic states. At some periods of time this has resulted in the death penalty being applied to those who have persisted in heresy. This is because of the grave threat that heresy can pose to the common good, especially when it is a new heresy emerging among a Catholic populace. Such coercion is not a violation of liberty, because moral liberty is the use of natural liberty in accordance with reason.
We’re going to burn you at the stake, heretic, and it is not a violation of your liberty, so shut up.
As to tolerance, well, sometimes Catholics find it prudent to exercise tolerance toward non-Catholic religions, but this is prudential only; no one should confuse mere tolerance as ratifying an enforceable right to practice a non-Catholic religion in a Catholic state:
However, tolerance of a false religion is never the same thing as to recognize a moral right to practice that religion. It is always a concession made to achieve a greater good. Hence, religious tolerance by the state is quite distinct from the assertion of a right to religious liberty.
Religious liberty is the assertion that everyone has a moral right to practice any religion of their choice, without regard for whether it is true, but only for whether it infringes upon the “rights” of others.
Religious tolerance is shown by the state towards the public practice of non-Catholic religions, when it judges that such tolerance is necessary for achieving its end, which is the happiness of the people over which it rules.
Clearly, Matthew McCusker does not view Vatican II as having abrogated the teachings of Pope Leo XIII and many other popes of the era preceding 1965. The old-time Roman Catholicism is good enough for him and many others, and they’re not falling for any modernist innovations such as the mass in the vernacular, or religious liberty, or any other of that liberal nonsense.
I’m not arguing that most Catholics agree with McCusker. I imagine that most American Catholics have absorbed the norms of Protestant America, including the idea that religious liberty should be protected and taken for granted.
But the Catholics who read Life Site News are the most faithful, the most motivated, the best Catholic believers out there. They certainly put Seventh-day Adventists to shame in their laudable defense of the lives of the unborn, and they are far more resistant than we are to the agenda of rebellion against the created sexual order, especially as seen in the hideous, satanic gender ideology.
The energy that comes from fervent faith and tightly held orthodoxy is with McCusker and those like him. Many of them think Vatican II was at best ill-advised, at worst a conspiracy of traitors within the church hierarchy (conservative Catholics are just as prone to conspiracy theories as conservative Adventists—maybe more so).
With respect to Vatican II, it is crucial to note that the Roman Catholic Church does not throw out any prior statements by popes and councils just because the zeitgeist—the spirit of the times—has dictated that new councils and new popes issue new statements. In other words, nothing is ever repudiated; the Catholic Church does not work that way. You will find no statement emerging from Vatican II to the effect that, “everything that Pope Leo XIII said was a bunch of nonsense,” and his encyclicals, such as Immortale dei and Libertas are posted online, not just moldering in some Vatican basement archive.
With that in mind, we ought to examine exactly what emerged from Vatican II. The document most often pointed to as having innovated a new appreciation of religious liberty is Dignitatus humanae. What does that document actually say:
2. This Vatican Council declares that the human person has a right to religious freedom. This 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.
We had best read a document of this type carefully and closely, the same way it was drafted. What are we to be immune from?: “coercion on the part of individuals or of social groups and of any human power . . .” Think carefully. Who is not included in this list of those who may not persecute?
Why, the Catholic Church itself, which does not consider itself to be a human power but a spiritual one. Under a strict reading of Dignitatus humanae, the Catholic Church remains free to religiously coerce whomever it wants, using whatever instrumentality it chooses, including the state. This was its pattern throughout the Middle Ages, and Vatican II did not any way restrict its ability to follow that pattern.
Dignitatus Humanae is just as clear as Matthew McCusker in stating that once someone has found the truth of Roman Catholicism, he is not free to leave:
“It is in accordance with their dignity as persons-that is, beings endowed with reason and free will and therefore privileged to bear personal responsibility-that all men should be at once impelled by nature and also bound by a moral obligation to seek the truth, especially religious truth. They are also bound to adhere to the truth, once it is known, and to order their whole lives in accord with the demands of truth.”
This is Rome’s foremost religious liberty document? That men are morally bound to seek the truth and adhere to it once it is known, and live their whole lives in accord with it? Doesn’t religious liberty consist in a man’s freedom to ignore religious truth if he feels like ignoring it? To cease to believe something he once believed?
“On his part, man perceives and acknowledges the imperatives of the divine law through the mediation of conscience. In all his activity a man is bound to follow his conscience in order that he may come to God, the end and purpose of life. It follows that he is not to be forced to act in a manner contrary to his conscience. Nor, on the other hand, is he to be restrained from acting in accordance with his conscience, especially in matters religious. The reason is that the exercise of religion, of its very nature, consists before all else in those internal, voluntary and free acts whereby man sets the course of his life directly toward God. No merely human power can either command or prohibit acts of this kind.”
A man is bound to follow his conscience that he may come to God? This is not any Protestant conception of religious freedom. The Protestant, and American, idea of religious freedom is that man may ignore his conscience in matters purely religious. He can go to church or not; he can keep the Sabbath or not; he can believe there is a God, or not; he can love God or scream imprecations at Him.
And, again, pay careful attention to the last sentence: “No merely human power can either command or prohibit acts of this kind.” But the church can, because the church does not consider itself a “merely human power”!
The gist of Dignitatus Humanae is that human groups and governments may not compel the conscience; the quiet part, the part understood only by the initiates, is that holy mother church can compel the conscience, and may even do so through the instrumentality of the state. This is why, in issuing statements like Dignitatus Humanae, Rome does not feel the need to abrogate prior statements, like those of Pope Leo XIII. Because when you read the new documents very closely and carefully, they do not contradict the old documents. Nothing has changed but the tone.
Moreover, Vatican II denies that freedom of conscience is a Bible doctrine: “Revelation does not indeed affirm in so many words the right of man to immunity from external coercion in matters religious.” So they base religious freedom not on Scripture but upon the dignity of the “human person,” hence the title “Dignitatus humanae.”
But freedom of conscience is part of God’s character. God does not want forced worship; He wants to be worshiped out of love, which is why he created us free moral agents, who may accept or reject Him. If God had created automatons or robots, rather than men with free moral agency, there would have been no Fall and no need for Jesus Christ to die on the cross to redeem fallen humanity. Thus, all of Bible history, from Genesis right up to the present moment, testifies to God’s esteem of freedom, of free moral agency; it is the theme of the great controversy between Christ and Satan.
No, Rome has not changed. She awoke in the 1960s into a world that been shaped over the course of two centuries by two great, English-speaking, liberty-loving Protestant powers, Great Britain and, after World War II, the United States. International norms and values, and international organizations, had come to reflect the values of those two great Protestant powers.
So Rome did what she always does when she is out of power: present a false façade of liberalism, charity, and tolerance to the world.
“The Roman Church now presents a fair front to the world, covering with apologies her record of horrible cruelties. She has clothed herself in Christlike garments; but she is unchanged. Every principle of the papacy that existed in past ages exists today. The doctrines devised in the darkest ages are still held. Let none deceive themselves. The papacy that Protestants are now so ready to honor is the same that ruled the world in the days of the Reformation, when men of God stood up, at the peril of their lives, to expose her iniquity. She possesses the same pride and arrogant assumption that lorded it over kings and princes, and claimed the prerogatives of God. Her spirit is no less cruel and despotic now than when she crushed out human liberty and slew the saints of the Most High.” GC 571.1