Prologue
Dignitatis humanae, the Second Vatican Council’s Declaration on Religious Freedom, does not speak for itself. It, like all documents, must be read. Most documents nevertheless manage to say somethingto their readers.
Whether a document says something is a question of rhetoric. Put in the simplest form, a reader either takes a meaning from a document or not. If a reader takes a meaning, a document is, to that extent at least, a rhetorical success. If a reader does not take a meaning, the fault is either in the document itself, which is a rhetorical failure, or in the reader, which is a failure of another sort.[1]
Judging a document rhetorically therefore requires knowledge of the intended audience. No one would consider a technical engineering manual a failure because it mystified a fourth-grade class. One could consider a fourth-grade textbook a failure if it had the same effect, however.
This study assumes the educated Catholic laity are among the intended audience of Dignitatis humanae. It is an assumption because the document does not identify the intended audience. The assumption rests on the fact that the document addresses Church-State relations, and the laity are the Church members who work in government and primarily influence its conduct.
Given this assumption, the rhetorical test applied here is whether the educated Catholic laity can take a meaning from Dignitatis humanae. The detailed reading in the following pages concludes they cannot. Dignitatis humanae is therefore a rhetorical failure, at least in part.
This study does not address the further question whether Dignitatis humanae is a theological failure. There are several reasons for this, one being that a document must yield to the understanding before it can support a theological evaluation. If a document conveys no reliable meaning to its reader, the document obviously is not subject to evaluation. Another is that the present author lacks authority to judge a magisterial document. This study therefore only posits that the Magisterium can attempt to teach theologically and yet fail rhetorically.[2]
A few words are necessary on method. The council fathers divided Dignitatis humanae into 15 articles and provided 38 footnotes.[3] These articles and footnotes are the entire universe of the council’s declaration. The council fathers chose this material, and none other, to communicate their teaching.
Scholars nevertheless have spent decades examining materials such as statements of the council fathers and the various experts involved in the drafting of the document.[4] The approach is understandable because scholars cannot agree on the document’s meaning.[5] The scholarly disputes over Dignitatis humanae are in fact prolonged and complex.[6]
Scholarly disagreements are relevant to the document’s rhetorical success generally. But that is not the point of this study. The issue here is what the declaration says to an educated Catholic layperson, leaving scholars (and others) to explain what the document says from their own points of view.[7]
With this in mind, the following interpretive principles are applied: 1) the words of the document are taken in their plain meaning to an educated Catholic layperson, and 2) the document is read as a whole, i.e., although the document will be examined line-by-line, no line is read in isolation from the rest. The justifications for these principles are: 1) an assumption that the council fathers wanted the educated Catholic laity to understand their teaching, and 2) the council fathers’ decision to teach via a declaration which lacks distinct canons and other technical apparatus. Stated another way, this study attempts to take the council fathers at their word.
[1]Consider what St. Augustine said to the readers of his work, “On Christian Doctrine”: “To those who do not understand what is here set down, my answer is, that I am not to be blamed for their want of understanding. It is just as if they were anxious to see the new or the old moon, or some very obscure star, and I should point it out with my finger: if they had not sight enough to see even my finger, they would surely have no right to fly into a passion with me on that account.” Preface, ¶ 3. Retrieved on August 4, 2020, from: http://www.ntslibrary.com/PDF%20Books/Augustine%20doctrine.pdf.
[2] Cf. Bouyer, Louis, The Church of God, Body of Christ and Temple of the Spirit, Franciscan Herald Press, Chicago, 1982, p. 361.
[3] The English translation of Dignitatis humanae found on the Vatican website is used here. Retrieved on July 31, 2020, from: http://www.vatican.va/archive/hist_councils/ii_vatican_council/documents/vat-ii_decl_19651207_dignitatis-humanae_en.html. This study assumes that the English translation on the Vatican website is the version the hierarchy approves for use of the educated laity. The official Latin version, found at http://www.vatican.va/archive/hist_councils/ii_vatican_council/documents/vat-ii_decl_19651207_dignitatis-humanae_en.html, will be consulted occasionally. The English text of Dignitatis humanae and its footnotes will be quoted from this point on without further citation to the document. It should be noted that the English translation omits footnote 3 from the Latin version, and part of footnote 4. The omitted material cites to the Summa Theologica of St. Thomas Aquinas. The Latin version therefore has 39 footnotes.
[4] See, e.g., Schinder, David L. & Healy, Nicholas J., Jr., Freedom, Truth, and Human Dignity, The Second Vatican Council’s Declaration on Religious Freedom, Wm. B. Eerdmans, 2015.
[5]“In the history of the Church no magisterial document has generated as much controversy and contradiction among its interpreters as the Second Vatican Council’s Declaration on Religious Liberty Dignitatis Humanae.” Kwasniewski, Peter A., “Dignitis Humanae, The Interperative Principles,” Latin Mass: A Journal of Catholic Culture and Tradition, vol. 18, no. 1 (Winter 2009), 12-17.
[6] E.g., Guminski, Arnold T. & Harrison, Brian W., Religious Freedom, Did Vatican II Contradict Traditional Catholic Doctrine, A Debate, St. Augustine Press (2013); Pink, Thomas & Rhonheimer, Martin, “Vatican II’s Declaration on Religious Freedom: Revision, Reform, or Continuity?”, de Nicola Family Colloquy of the 2015 Notre Dame Center for Ethics and Culture. Retrieved on August 7, 2020, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KvoTYBOTz1g.
[7] Hence the present study refers to material outside the declaration’s text and footnotes only to explain how a Catholic layperson might view certain passages of Dignitatis humanae.