Religious Liberty (Continuity or Contradiction?): Reading Dignitatis Humanæ within Tradition

Among the problems posed by Dignitatis Humanæ, there are the following: is its principal teaching infallible, or merely the "simply authentic Magisterium"? May a Catholic suspend assent to this teaching, or even refuse it, and if so, under what conditions? And, more importantly, does the Council's definition of religious liberty contradict the Church's former magisterium? As Alan Fimister puts it:

"If the faithful and their pastors for over a thousand years held (and they surely did) that the Church had the right to employ coercion and even lethal force to correct erring members of the faithful, and they were in fact wrong, then this claim is completely empty and with it Christ's teaching that the Church is a city set upon a hill that cannot be hidden, and His promise to remain with her until the end of time (Matt 5:14; 28:20).

If the teaching of the ordinary and universal or the extraordinary magisterium can and has contradicted itself then this does not mean that the new teaching is true or that the Church has foundered but that Catholicism was never true and we are of all men most to be pitied.

The task of reconciling the declaration Dignitatis Humanæ and the previous definitions and tradition of the Church is therefore no trifling matter. Upon it hinges the credibility of Catholicism itself."

In this compelling study, Fr. Bernard Lucien along with a commentary by Fr. Antoine-Marie de Araujo, FSVF, seek to argue, without doing violence to the text, for a correct interpretation of the central teaching of Dignitatis Humanæ as well as for a correction of its deficiencies. The ongoing debates within the Church about Tradition and the secularist aim to make Christianity politically irrelevant confirm the timeliness of this study.

Born in 1952, Fr. Bernard Lucien entered the seminary at Écône in 1972 and was ordained by Archbishop Lefebvre in 1978. He first published works to demonstrate the contradiction between the teaching of Gregory XVI and Pius IX on freedom of conscience and worship and the teaching of Vatican II on religious liberty. He fundamentally changed his view (a change for which he credits the grace of God) on Christmas 1991 and published a retraction in 1992 to show how this contradiction was merely apparent and not substantial. This led him to regularize his canonical status in 1992; he was incardinated in the archdiocese of Vaduz (Liechtenstein) in 2004 by Archbishop Haas. Since his regularization he has been teaching Thomistic theology in seminaries and houses of formation and has published various works of theology, including for the non-specialist public such as "The Sacred Theology for Beginners" and the "Initiated" series.

Fr. Antoine-Marie de Araujo was born in 1979 of a Swiss mother and Argentinian father in Geneva, Switzerland, and was raised Catholic. He earned a Master's Degree in Classics at the University of Fribourg (Switzerland), and collaborated on a scholarly edition of Jean Bodin's "Six Books of the Republic" (1576). A friend introduced him to the thought of St. Thomas Aquinas, which helped him deepen his faith and commit himself to serving the Church. In 2010 he entered the Fraternity of Saint Vincent Ferrer (FSVF), a traditional religious community inspired by the Dominican spirit, whose priory is located in Chémeré-le-Roi (France), where he was ordained priest in 2019. Fr. Antoine-Marie is secretary of the Fraternity's quarterly review "Sedes Sapientiæ," and has authored several articles. He is also the editor of two English-language issues of "Sedes Sapientiæ" (2022 and 2024). When not studying theology for his licentiate, Fr. Antoine-Marie preaches to students and goes hiking with scouts.