The Decrees of Vatican II Compared with Past Church Teachings

This series of articles studying the heretical teachings of Vatican Council II first appeared in The Reign of Mary several years ago. Its purpose is to show in a side-by-side comparison how the official decrees of Vatican II explicitly contradict past official decrees of the Catholic Church.

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Religious Liberty

Vatican II Declaration on Religious Liberty

Under the guise of demanding the right to practice religion from atheistic states, the Vatican II decree actually promulgates a heretical notion of religious liberty — the right to choose any religion, be it true or false. They base this notion on the so-called “rights of man”:

(Paragraph 2) “The Declaration of this Vatican Council on the right of man to religious freedom has its foundation inthe dignity of the person, whose exigencies have come to be more fully known to human reason through centuries of experience... Revelation does not indeed affirm in so many words the right of man to immunity from external coercion in matters religious. It does, however, disclose the dignity of the human person in its full dimensions.”

The Vatican II decree demands that states concede false religions the right to exist:

(P.2) “This Vatican Council declares that the human person has a right to religious freedom... The Council further declares that the right to religious freedom has its foundation in the very dignity of the human person, as this dignity is known through the revealed Word of God and by reason itself. This right of the human person to religious freedom is to be recognized in the constitutional law whereby society is governed; thus it is to become a civil right.”

(P.2) “Therefore, the right to religious freedom has its foundation, not in the subjective disposition of the person, but in his very nature. In consequence, the right to this immunity continues to exist even in those who do not live up to their obligation of seeking the truth... and the exercise of this right is not be be impeded?”

Past Infallible Church Teaching on Religious Liberty

The teachings of the true Church, regarding first the rights of God, give us a true notion of liberty — the right of man to seek the truth, induding the true Faith:

“Liberty is a power perfecting man, and hence should have truth and goodness for its object. But the character of goodness and truth cannot be changed at option. Those remain ever one and the same and are no less changeable than nature itself. If the mind assents to false opinions, and the will chooses and follows after what is wrong, neither can attain its native fullness, but both must fall from their native dignity to an abyss of corruption. Whatever, therefore, is opposed to virtue and truth, may not rightly be brought temptingly before the eye of man, much less sanctioned by the favor and protection of the law” (Pope Leo XIII, Immortale Dei).

As His Holiness, Pope Leo XIII said, “It is contrary to reason that error and truth should have equal rights.” The Popes, the true Vicars of Christ on earth, have had the perennial duty to root up and destroy heresy while planting and nourishing what is true. Divine Justice and the integrity of the true religion demand that error be condemned and that the forces of evil be thwarted. Evil and error can be, at most, tolerated in this vale of tears. Never can it be said to have the right to exist.

Pope Pius IX, in the Syllabus of Errors, condemned the proposition “that it is left to the freedom of each individual to embrace and profess that religion which by the guidance of the light of reason he deems to be the true one.”

Both Pope Leo XIII, above, and Pope Pius IX, below, condemn the notion that states should sanction false religions:

“They do not hesitate to put forward the view which is not only opposed to the Catholic Church, but very pernicious for the salvation of souls — an opinion which Gregory XVI, Our Predecessor, called absurd. This is the view that liberty of conscience and worship is the strict right of every man, a right which should be proclaimed and affirmed by law in every properly constituted state... When they rashly make these statements, they do not realize or recall to mind that they are advocating what St. Augustine calls a liberty of perdition” (Pope Pius IX, Quanta Cura).