“Evangelise this Freedom”

-         Cardinal M. Martini

Pope Benedict XVI is at pains to show that the teaching of Vatican II is not a break from the past but is implicit in some of what had gone before. The Council did not reinvent Catholicism but renewed it. Fifty years on from the Council, the Holy Father hails its documents on religious freedom (“Dignitatis Humanae”) and on relations with other faiths (“Nostra Aetate”) as Vatican II’s greatest achievements. Their riches are still being unpacked today, even though they were considered minor documents as compared to the great pastoral constitution “Gaudium et Spes” (Church in the Modern World).           

The straight forward reply of Peter and the Apostles to the Sanhedrin, “We prefer to obey God rather than men” laid down the basic claim that the state could neither decide on the truth nor prescribe any kind of worship. By its very nature, the Christian Faith demanded freedom of religious belief and practice without prejudice to the internal ordering of state. The world owes it to Christianity birthing the principle of religious freedom.

Thirteen years after the Council, it was providentially  relevant that Pope John Paul II hailed from Marxist Poland where freedom of religion was heartlessly trampled on, not to speak of the bitterness of Nazism that he had also tasted as a young man. It was he, together with some bishops from Communist countries, who were wary about state qualifications on the freedom of religion. The Council fathers had conceded that citizens exercising religious freedom had to pay due regard to pubic order and safety. When necessary, though, the state could constrain freedom of religion in order to safeguard the rights of all citizens and to maintain public order and decency. Hence the Council fathers had to navigate a tense middle course between those who insisted on the primacy of truth and those apprehensive of the state overstepping its competence. We return to the old problem that is ever new: what to do with our freedom? In 1993, the late Cardinal Mara Martini told Jesuit students in Rome: “More people today have the gift of freedom than ever before in history, and my task is to evangelise this freedom.”

The other document, extolled by Pope Benedict, is “Nostra Aetate” that treats about the Church’s relations with non-Christian religions. It has powerfully impacted the Church’s outlook and every department of its activity. Strongly influenced by the horrific memories of the Holocaust, the Council’s original intention was to issue a statement on the Church’s relationship with the Jews, but in the process of discussion and redaction it was realised that basic values were becoming increasingly operative. These were instigated by the contentions of the bishops of the Arabic continent. Why not make a similar statement about relations with Muslims? It also emerged that consideration was also due to Hinduism and Buddhism and to religion in general. Interestingly, there was no condemnation of atheism! Then the dynamic led to the feasibility and, indeed, the necessity of dialogue with and receptivity to the insights and values of other faith persuasions, since all inspirations are slated to the enrichment of the human condition. It was becoming increasingly apparent that the scope of all the common endeavour and responsibility was constantly expanding. Today the need for introspection is increasingly emphasised, especially in the exercise of authority and the requirements of the personal vis-à-vis the institutional, the local as confronting the universal. Listening to the Spirit is an ongoing task that calls for humility and collective meditation.

The positive scope of common endeavour began to take shape and broaden out. The Council’s bishops admitted themselves as apprentices of the Holy Spirit, supreme master of the school of reciprocal collaboration, and as witnesses to the Christian faith at the service of the Word. The Spirit was their supreme enabler not to found another Church but to deepen their understanding of their potential for the renewal of humanity.