Wednesday, May 18, 2005
ERROR HAS NO RIGHTS
“For a long time in Roman Catholicism, the principle “error has no rights” was used to secure a special position for Roman Catholicism and to prevent full religious freedom for non-catholics in predominantly Catholic cultures.”
Monastic Interreligious Dialogue website
http://monasticdialog.com/a.php?id=346
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In the context of the system of European state churches that developed in Europe following the Protestant Reformation and the wars of religion in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, this moral obligation of all to seek the truth and embrace it in the one true Church tended to be formulated and expressed in accordance with the basic idea that “error has no rights.”
“Summrizing the Controversy” by Kenneth D. Whitehead
http://www.catholic.net/rcc/Periodicals/Dossier/00MarApr/CONTROVERSY.html
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14. This shameful font of indifferentism gives rise to that absurd and erroneous proposition which claims that liberty of conscience must be maintained for everyone. It spreads ruin in sacred and civil affairs, though some repeat over and over again with the greatest impudence that some advantage accrues to religion from it. "But the death of the soul is worse than freedom of error," as Augustine was wont to say.21 When all restraints are removed by which men are kept on the narrow path of truth, their nature, which is already inclined to evil, propels them to ruin.
“Mirari Vos” (On Liberalism and Religious Indifferentism) – Pope Gregory XVI
http://www.ewtn.com/library/encyc/g16mirar.htm
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From which totally false idea of social government they do not fear to foster that erroneous opinion, most fatal in its effects on the Catholic Church and the salvation of souls, called by Our Predecessor, Gregory XVI, an "insanity,"2 viz., that "liberty of conscience and worship is each man's personal right, which ought to be legally proclaimed and asserted in every rightly constituted society; and that a right resides in the citizens to an absolute liberty, which should be restrained by no authority whether ecclesiastical or civil, whereby they may be able openly and publicly to manifest and declare any of their ideas whatever, either by word of mouth, by the press, or in any other way." But, while they rashly affirm this, they do not think and consider that they are preaching "liberty of perdition;"3 and that "if human arguments are always allowed free room for discussion, there will never be wanting men who will dare to resist truth, and to trust in the flowing speech of human wisdom; whereas we know, from the very teaching of our Lord Jesus Christ, how carefully Christian faith and wisdom should avoid this most injurious babbling."4
“Quanta Cura” – Encyclical of Pope Pius IX
http://www.papalencyclicals.net/Pius09/p9quanta.htm
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15. Every man is free to embrace and profess that religion which, guided by the light of reason, he shall consider true. -- Allocution "Maxima quidem," June 9, 1862; Damnatio "Multiplices inter," June 10, 1851.
16. Man may, in the observance of any religion whatever, find the way of eternal salvation, and arrive at eternal salvation. -- Encyclical "Qui pluribus," Nov. 9, 1846.
17. Good hope at least is to be entertained of the eternal salvation of all those who are not at all in the true Church of Christ. -- Encyclical "Quanto conficiamur," Aug. 10, 1863, etc.
“The Syllabus of Errors Condemned by PiusIX” http://www.papalencyclicals.net/Pius09/p9syll.htm
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Pages 235-238 of The Rhine Flows Into the Tiber by Ralph M. Wiltgen
This is part of the section titled “black week” by Wiltgen, and discusses the hijacking of the Council. A main issue was religious liberty which was a break with the past.
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“St. Vincent Ferrer and the Conversion of the Jews” E. Michael Jones, Culture Wars, Vol. 24, No. 5, pg. 10 describes the conversion of the Jews in Spain. The choice was death or baptism.
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Another possible locus of doctrinal development would be the traditional idea that “error has no rights.” This theme finds expression in the teaching of Leo XIII, who said that what some call “liberty of worship . . . is not liberty at all but the depravation of liberty and the servitude of a soul abandoned to sin” [Acta Leonis XIII 8, pp. 229-30],” as well as in the teaching of Pius XII, who in 1953 said that “that which does not correspond to the truth and to the moral norm has objectively no right either of existence or of self-propagation or of action” [AAS 45 (1953), p.799].
“Dignitatis Humanae and the Development of Doctrine” by Kevin L. Flannery, S.J. http://www.catholic.net/rcc/Periodicals/Dossier/00MarApr/doctrine.html
