Dominican Father Thomas Crean, a member of the Priory of St. Michael the Archangel in England, says many Catholics today erroneously believe we should no longer seek to build a Catholic society — that that notion belongs to the past. But if that were true, where would that leave the social kingship of Christ — the teaching that Pius XI emphasized when he instituted the feast of Christ the King — that Our Lord must reign over both individuals and nations?

This is just one of the questions to be tackled at an Oct. 30-Nov. 1 colloquium of scholars from around the world to mark the 50th anniversary of the Second Vatican Council’s declaration on religious freedom, Dignitatis Humanae. It will be hosted by the Dialogos Institute at its headquarters in Norcia, Italy, the birthplace of St. Benedict.

In this recent interview, Father Crean discusses how he hopes the colloquium will help lead to a better grasp of its doctrinal core. Read more at NCRegister.com.

 

Why did you decide to hold this conference, and what do you hope it will achieve?

There are theoretical and practical reasons. Theoretically, religious liberty is one of the great unresolved theological questions of modern times. People have been disputing Dignitatis Humanae for exactly 50 years now. There are many different views, among Catholics loyal to the magisterium of the Church, about how to understand it and about how to reconcile it with the teaching and practice of the Church down the ages; and also about the degree of authority enjoyed by these various teachings. I wanted to bring together people who have written interesting and important things about these questions, so that they could, so to speak, hammer it out among themselves. So one of the features of this colloquium is the time set aside for plenary discussion after each talk. I hope this will lead to a genuine theological dialogue. The aim is to understand the Church’s teaching as well as possible.

Practically, the question is important because an idea seems to have got about among Catholics that we should no longer seek to build a Catholic society; that that notion belongs to the past. But if that were true, where would that leave the social kingship of Christ — i.e., the teaching that Pius XI emphasized when he instituted the feast of Christ the King that Our Lord must reign over both individuals and nations? We need to understand what the Church tells us about what society should be like; and that means examining the whole gamut of the Church’s teaching on the relations of church and state.

Again, Catholics and other Christians who resist the attempts of states to force them to accept same-sex “marriage” have often abstracted from the question of what is true and good and appealed simply to the right to religious liberty. Such appeals, however, have generally proved unsuccessful. This fact poses a challenge for those who would de-couple the right to religious liberty from religious truth. This will be one of the questions explored at this colloquium.

One other important point is that people agitating for a U-turn in the Church’s teaching on this or that question often point to Dignitatis Humanae as a precedent for doctrinal change. It is good that people understand why this is not so.

 

In short, what, in your view, has been achieved, in terms of upholding human dignity, since Dignitatis Humanae was promulgated?

The Council Fathers said rather optimistically, “A sense of the dignity of the human person has been impressing itself more and more deeply on the consciousness of contemporary man.” No doubt they were referring to many people’s determination that the horrors of World War II should not be repeated. But from today’s perspective, one has to say that there has been a widespread collapse of human dignity since then: Our dignity consists in living according to the truth, and the laws of the world are increasingly contrary to the truth about marriage, sexuality and the sacredness of innocent human life.