Religious tolerance, freedom of religion

Freedom of conscience is the fundamental right of the individual to get to know and serve the truth, the religious truth in the fi rst place.

We can talk about freedom of religion in secular and religious sense, and we must differentiate between right (ius) and possibility (potentia). For ex-ample a citizen has the right to buy property, but if he does not have enough money, he does not have the possibility. At the same time an individual has the possibility to rob a property for himself, but he has no right to do it.

The Saint and Eternal God himself is perfectness, full life and ab-soluutum, the only reason and ultimate aim of the life of man. The minute creature of man has no right what so ever opposite him. If man had the right to anything else opposing the will of God, then there would be no sin, neither good nor bad.

Man is the image of God (imago Dei), that is, created and invited for eternal life, who has sense and free will. Sense in its essence is none else than the ability to choose what will lead to achieving the ultimate aim to reach redemption. The person, who has the power to choose one from many options is in control of his actions. Since everything which serves to achieve redemption is called useful good, and good is motivating by nature, freedom is the property of will, what is more it is will itself, if it has the freedom of choice. Man is a moral being, because with his sense he can recognise good and the truth, and with his will he can commit himself to the right direction. So this is the basis of our moral responsibility before God.

God entered human history. He declared his will, his laws and his teaching through the forefathers and the words of the prophets. And in Jesus Christ he entirely and defi nitively revealed himself to us. Finally he founded the

one, saint, Catholic and apostolic Church, which despite all the divisions of Christianity, is the protector and proclaimer of the total and entire deposit of faith (depositum fi dei) and the conveyor of the totality of the instruments of grace necessary for redemption.⁶⁵

The Holy Script deems the practice and even the toleration of false cults as unlawful or even spiritual fornication. When the members of the chosen people keep deviating from the worship of JHWH, the prophets of the Old Testament held out the prospect of God’s lawful punishment. Moses de-molished the golden calf, the symbol of a false culture by the will of God.

Forty years of wandering in the desert and the Babylonian enslavement was a punishment for practising a false religion. “I the Lord your God am a jealous God” (Deut 5,9); and “’You shall have no other God before me”

(Deut 5,7). The books of the Old Testament (e.g. Judges, Kings, Chronicles) give account of several historical events when Jews took over the idolatry of neighbouring peoples thereby incurring God’s punishment.

In the New Testament Jesus says: “So everyone who acknowledges me before men, I also will acknowledge before my Father who is in heaven; hut whoever denies me before men, I also will deny before my Father who is in heaven.” (Mt 10,32–33) About salvation he states: “He who believes and is baptised will be saved; but he who does not believe will be condemned.”

(Mk 16,16), and he introduces the Church as the regular way to salvation:

“You are Peter and on this rock I will build my church ... I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven.” (Mt 16,18.19)

People can become members of false Christian communities, they can practise some pagan religions, and they can even live a life without religion or in atheism, or they can be Satanists, but according to the Commandments of God, to common sense, to the Holy Script and to the teachings of the Church (synods, Papal declarations) they have no right to do it before God.

Since if they had, then all the sect founders, or everybody else could create a religion for themselves as they please with rules and teaching formulated by them, as the neologists (Luther, Calvin, Zwingly) had done. If this were possible, everything would become relative, where it is not God, who is the source of truth, but the subjective judgement and interest of the indi-vidual. “If the possibility of defl ection from good belonged to the essence

65 Cf. Dominus Iesus, Declaration on the unicity and salvifi c universality of Jesus Christ and the Church by the Congregation of the Doctrine of Faith, Rome, 6 August 2000.

or perfection of liberty, then God, Jesus Christ, and the angels and saints, who have not this power, would have no liberty at all, or would have less liberty than man has in his state of pilgrimage and imperfection.”⁶⁶

False religions can also have values, but these are mostly philosophi-cal recognitions, or natural human values (charity, solidarity). The Eastern Orthodox Church is the most nonconformist, with real hierarchy and with all the seven sacraments. It is least characterised by heresy, its teaching more or less corresponds the faith of the universal Church. However, the Protestants have only one sacrament, baptism, because on the one hand they do not have valid clergy and on the other hand they either reject the sacraments or just imitate them. They profess heretic views, their teaching greatly differs from the total and entire faith of the Church. All the honour-able elements in Christian denominations are all from Catholicism or the remnant of Catholicism, since there is nothing to add to the Revelation or to the instruments of grace, the sacrament cannot be copied, and the beauty of the fi ancée of Christ (cf. Ef 5,25) is unsurpassable. In this sense every theologically good, beautiful and true found in the Byzantine schismatic Christianity and in Protestantism is present in the Catholic Church, in fact it originates from here.

Pagan religions (e.g. tribal religions, religions of the Far-East, Islam) however, have several unnatural and demonic elements, which deeply hurt not only God and the order of the created world, but human dignity as well. What is true and holy in us is also present in a cleaner and more perfect form – due to the universality of the oeconomia sacramentalis – in the Catholic Church. The truths found in false religions are parts of the natural and supernatural universal revelation, but only parts, what is more they are mixed with delusions. Besides all these religions are characterised by the fact that they do not want to accept the entire truth and call Catholic faith false. These religions therefore, are not only imperfect, because they haven’t reached the entirety of truth yet (this is only true of the Jews of the Old Testament before Christ), but mistaken also, because they fi rmly refuse the universal revelation.

A false cult is objectively a serious sin, but in order for a person to be-come a sinner because he followed a false cult, it is important that he did it consciously and willingly. Therefore followers of false religions, provided

66 Pope Leo XIII: Libertas Praestantissimu, encyclical on human feeedom, 20 June 1888.

they are honest and follow their conscience, can fi nd salvation, but not through their own religion, but because of their desire for the Catholic Church and for the true God. God can write straight even on crooked lines, but this does not make the crooked lines straight.⁶⁷

So if someone at the light of Wisdom recognises the true Church of God in the Catholic Church he is bound to follow it. If after this recognition he still remains in the false church, he commits a serious sin against God, who is truth himself.

Thus freedom of religion as a right against God is impossible. So in the light of the above to demand, protect and grant the freedom of religion as a natural right is impossible in any way because if these rights had really been given to man by nature, then it would be rightful to reject the rule of God and it would be impossible to limit human freedom by any law. The mission of the Church is to lead our Christian brethren, who had seceded from us, from half-truth to entire truth that is to reintegrate them in itself; to take Jesus’ gospel, the good tidings of the Kingdom of God to the pagans.