A M D G
Does Pacem In Terris Teach A Heretical Doctrine of Religious Liberty?
by
John S. Daly
(a) Introduction
On 29th October 1958, for the first time in history, the College of Cardinals elected to the Sovereign Pontificate a man who was ineligible through previous public heresy for the off ice of Pope. Although it was immediately manifest that the new “pope” was a “pope” with a difference, and an extremely liberal one, it was several years before he manifested his denial of Catholic doctrine in such a way that his status as a heretic -and therefore as non-pope - became “public” within the meaning of Canon Law. This took place on 11th April 1963 with the promulgation of the encyclical Pacem in Terris, which contained the first heretical proposition presented to the Church as authentic Catholic teaching.
(b) The Heretical Proposition
The heretical proposition contained in Pacem In Terris is the opening sentence of paragraph 14. The Latin version, as published in the Acta Apostolicae Sedis, No. 55, 257-304, is as follows: -
“In hominis juribus hoc quoque numerandum est, ut et Deum, ad rectam conscientiae suae normam, venerari possit, et religionem privatim et publice profiteri.”
This means, “We must include among the rights of man that he should be able to worship God according to the rightful prompting of his conscience and to profess (his) religion privately and publicly.”
Catholic teaching, of course, is that man has the right to profess and practise the Catholic religion, but that he has no right to practise any other religion. Hence, no objection can be made to the assertion that man “should be able to worship God according to the rightful prompting of his conscience,” since the word “rightful” implies that one is not necessarily entitled simply to follow his conscience in the worship of God, unless his conscience is “rightful” - i.e., one presumes, in accordance with the teachings of the Catholic Church.
What no Catholic can admit, however, is that man should be able “to profess (his) religion privately and publicly”.
At this point it must be mentioned that the Latin original contains an ambiguity (almost certainly deliberate as we shall see), which is liable to tempt some to raise an objection; for the possessive adjective “his” which appears in brackets does not occur in the Latin. Its interpolation by translators is by no means unjustified, however - for two reasons:
(i) Latin very rarely includes such adjectives, frequently allowing them to be understood from the context;
(ii) abundant evidence shows that John XXIII's true meaning is represented by the inclusion of “his” - evidence which will be outlined below.
Now if we omit the word ''his'' the sentence can admit an orthodox interpretation: man certainly has the right to profess religion publicly and privately - provided that the religion in question is the Catholic religion. But we cannot omit that word without altering the intended sense of the encyclical - a sense that is undoubtedly heretical. And let no one object that this is a matter of trivial semantics rather than of heresy versus orthodoxy: the history of the Arian controversy teaches us that the difference between Heaven and Hell can depend upon something as seemingly insignificant as the Greek letter “i”. The semi-Arians, under pressure from the Emperor, were prepared to accept every syllable of the Nicene Creed except that they rejected the statement that Our Lord was consubstantial (homo-ousion) with the Father, insisting that he was merely (homoi-ousion) - of like substance. Such a slender line can certainly mark the all-important division between Catholic doctrine and heresy.
(c) The Correct Translation
It is beyond dispute that the meaning which John XXIII wished to convey and to which he consciously lent his authority was that man has the right to profess his religion - whatsoever it may be, within the limits of public order - privately and publicly. The evidence for this is as follows:
(i) The encyclical was not, as encyclicals traditionally are, addressed only to the members of the Catholic Church, but “to all men of good will”.
Had he been writing only to Catholics, it might have been arguable that they would have realised that men were only allowed to profess their religion if the religion were true, but it would be quite unreasonable to expect Protestants, Jews and atheists to realise this from the context. The only conclusion to which they could possibly have come was that the encyclical guarantees every single one of them the objective moral right to practise his particular religion.
(ii) It is remarkable that in the 32nd edition of Denzinger's Enchiridion Symbolorum (edited by Fr. Schonmetzer) the offending sentence has a footnote inviting comparison with an extract from article 18 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights:
“Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion; this right includes freedom to change his religion or belief, and freedom, either alone or in community with others and in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship and observance.”
It is evident that this passage is quite irreconcilable with Catholic dogma, but is in perfect agreement with the view propounded in Pacem In Terris. Indeed the verbal echoes would strongly suggest that the author of the offending sentence of Pacem In Terris was conscious of the extract from the Universal Declaration of Human Rights as he wrote.
Moreover, the same footnote in Denzinger quotes another convention of human rights to the effect that:
“The freedom of manifesting one's religion or convictions can be subject to no restrictions except those established by the law as necessary measures in a democratic society for public security, the protection of order, or of public health and morals, or for the protection of the rights and liberties of others.”
And if that does not contradict Catholic teaching, nothing does: in fact, it is the very teaching that Vatican II was later to propound and that even its strongest proponents have admitted is irreconcilable with traditional doctrine.
It is possible to object that there is no evidence that the footnote in Denzinger was authorised by John XXIII, but such an objection would be misplaced. The editors of the Enchiridion are selected precisely to ensure that their references and explanations will meet with official approval and any editorial remark misrepresenting the mind of the Holy See would certainly elicit an official protest, which was far from being the case. Moreover the involvement of the highest authorities in the editing of the 32nd edition of Denzinger's Enchiridion is much more readily demonstrated than in that of any other edition. This is because, for the first time since its promulgation, this edition pointedly omits the crucial passage of Quanta Cura in which Pope Pius IX infallibly condemns the doctrine of religious liberty. This startling omission is explicable only on the basis that it was intended to conceal the conflict between the infallible teaching of Quanta Cura and the new, heretical notion of religious liberty that was already gaining ground and was soon to be promulgated by John XXII in Pacem In Terris and then by Vatican II in Dignitatis Humanae.
Clearly, therefore, it cannot reasonably be maintained that those who took such great care to arrange the suppression of part of Quanta Cura were not also responsible for the footnote to the part of Pacem In Terris which concerned the same subject.
(iii) The fact that the relevant sentence of Pacem In Terris must be understood according to the (heretical) sense of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights is also confirmed by the fact that the encyclical itself explicitly approves of the Masonic United Nations movement and of its Declaration of Human Rights. John XXIII's words were that it:
“enshrines a recognition of the dignity of the human person, asserts the right of every man on earth to seek truth in freedom, to observe moral norms, to do what justice demands, to live as befits a human being and to enjoy other rights consequent upon these.”
... and if these “other rights” did not include the famous “right” to religious liberty is it not obvious that he would have made this clear?
(iv) It is a well-known fact that after John XXIII had been “inspired” with the initial idea of the encyclical on world peace, he confided almost all of the drafting of it to an old friend of his from Venice, Fr. Pietro Pavan, then teaching at the Pontifical University of the Lateran in Rome. (Cf. The Utopia of John XXIII by Giancarlo Zizola; Bilan du Concile by Fr. René Laurentin, Introduction to “Pacem In Terris” by Lucien Guissard etc.). Pavan came from a radical political background and the politico-social ideas which he was propagating have been likened to those of Maritain.
Now Pavan himself, writing in 1965 - after the Vatican II Declaration on Religious Liberty (Dignitatis Humanae) made it very clear that it was not Vatican II, but Pacem In Terris which first purported to sanction with the authority of the Catholic Church the principle of religious liberty:
“We did not acquire this 'right of the person' from the Council. The decree Dignitatis Humanae took it from Pacem In Terris and its formulas. That encyclical had at first been accepted just as it was, but its continued acceptance depended on its being watered down. However the declaration Dignitatis Humanae taken as a whole is not a withdrawal and indeed it gets rid of certain ambiguities which had been deliberately kept in Pacem In Terris.” (Liberta Religiosa e Publici Poteri - Religious Liberty and Public Powers.)
This revealing paragraph not only confirms that any ambiguity in Pacem in Terris was a calculated means of propounding heresy while allowing the possibility of retreat if necessary, but also shows that the heresy of Pacem In Terris was widely considered to be even more obvious than that of Dignitatis Humanae - hence Pavan says that “its continued acceptance depended on its being watered down.”
(v) The promulgation of the encyclical Pacem in Terris was greeted with riotous acclaim by John XXIII's Masonic toadies in the world press (Time magazine had just named him “man of the year”!) and their eulogies unanimously interpreted the encyclical as having approved the principle of religious liberty (cf. Lucien Guissard op. cit.). The Vatican's silence in the face of such interpretations can only amount to full approval, since nothing would have been simpler than to issue an official protest at any misunderstandings.
(vi) The duty of all Catholics, and more particularly of official teachers of the Faith, is to avoid all ambiguity in expressing theological truths. For this reason any deliberate ambiguity must be interpreted against the orthodoxy of the person expressing it. Propositions that are ambiguous, or admit of interpretations that are either orthodox or heretical, are termed “heretical by defect”. This also applies to propositions that are true, as far as they go, but calculatedly omit pertinent truths or terms that they ought to include.
A very striking example of this defective orthodoxy is provided by a proposition of the Jansenist Pseudo-Synod of Pistoia, which said:
“After the consecration, Christ is truly, really and substantially present beneath the appearances (of bread and wine), and the whole substance of the bread and wine has ceased to exist, leaving only the appearances.”
We recommend that readers should now re-read that proposition, preferably several times, trying to locate a fault in it.
...did you find one? Well, the fact is that the above proposition was condemned in the bull Auctorem Fidei (Denzinger 1529) as, “pernicious, derogatory to the exposition of Catholic truth about the dogma of transubstantiation, and favouring heretics”. The reason? This is given in the decree, which says that “it entirely omits to make any mention of transubstantiation or the conversion of the entire substance of bread into the Body, and of the whole substance of wine into the Blood which the Council of Trent defined as an article of faith ...insofar as, through an unauthorised and suspicious omission of this kind, attention is drawn away both from an article of faith and from a word consecrated by the Church to safeguard the profession of that article against heresies, and tends, therefore, to result in its being forgotten as if it were merely a scholastic question”.
It is very evident from this passage that it is impossible to excuse John XXIII from the charge of heresy by arguing that his sentence can admit of an orthodox interpretation. Even if his sentence really could admit of an orthodox interpretation, he would still be guilty of heresy by defect ... whereas, as has been shown, the obvious sense of the sentence, taken in text and context, is quite incontrovertibly heretical.
(d) Authoritatively Condemned
Although the true teaching of the Catholic Church on the subject of religious liberty is quite well known to faithful Catholics, it seems appropriate to recapitulate the correct doctrine at this point.
Pacem In Terris assures us that men have an objective moral right to practise any religion, publicly or privately, whether the religion be true or false. The teaching of the Catholic Church, however, is that no one has an objective right to practise a false religion, and hence the civic authorities, for any good reason, such as to foster the Catholic faith and to avoid scandal, are perfectly entitled to prohibit public profession of any false religion. In other words, the only “religious liberty” which the Catholic Church recognises is the right of all men to liberty to practise and profess the one, true religion.
This is demonstrated authoritatively in several documents, such as:
(i) The 77th error condemned in Pope Pius IX's Syllabus of Errors is the proposition that:
“In this age of ours it is no longer expedient that the Catholic religion should be the only religion of the state, to the exclusion of all other cults whatsoever.”
(ii) The infallible encyclical Quanta Cura of the same pope unequivocally condemns:
“... that erroneous opinion especially fatal to the Catholic Church and to the salvation of souls, called by our predecessor of recent memory, Gregory XVI, insanity: namely, that 'liberty of conscience and of worship is the proper right of every man...'”
(iii) Of course, to prove that religious liberty is heretical in the strictest sense of that term it is necessary to establish that it is contrary to divine revelation, and this is explicitly confirmed in the Code of Canon Law (Canon 1322/2) which says that:
“... all men are bound by divine law to embrace the true Church of God.”
(e) Another Heresy in Pacem In Terris
The whole of Pacem In Terris represents a dramatic abandonment of traditional Catholic attitudes and beliefs. Since, however, the constant flux of the social order in the world makes it difficult to formulate a universally applicable corpus of social doctrine, the many other innovations of the encyclical are difficult to expose from authoritative sources without under-taking a - surely superfluous - major study. Nevertheless there is at least one other passage that is plainly opposed to Catholic doctrine.
This is the passage in paragraph 136 and 137 concerning the need for a universal public authority, which culminates in the affirmation:
“We cannot therefore escape the conclusion that the moral order itself demands the establishment of some sort of world government.”
No one could deny that this sentence is a particularly egregious affront to traditional Catholic thought, which has always regarded the establishment of a world government as the principle aim of Satan rather than of God. As Pope Benedict XV observed in his motu proprio Bonum Sane (25th July 1920)
“The advent of a Universal Republic, which is longed for by the worst elements of disorder, and confidently expected by them, is an idea which is ripe for execution. From this republic, based on the principles of absolute equality of men and community of possessions, would be banished all national distinctions, nor in it would the authority of the father over his children, or of the public power over the citizens, or of God over human society, be any longer acknowledged. If these ideas are put into practice, there will inevitably follow a reign of unheard of terror...”
Particularly worthy of attention here is that John did not say that a one world government would be a good thing, nor did he content himself with saying that his opinion was in favour of one world government in our era; he said that the moral order itself demands the establishment of a one world government.
These words of Pacem In Terris are so strong as to imply that no Catholic may disapprove of one world government; that it is a moral imperative, and an implication of the Natural Law! By according such status to his view, we submit that John XXIII became guilty of what is termed “positive” heresy. This consists in representing an error, or a matter of doubt as a certain truth of the Faith, i.e. illegitimately imposing on the members of the Church the duty of accepting a proposition that, far from being obligatory, is in fact unorthodox.
J S Daly
Ante Festum Epiphaniae 1985.
John S. Daly
Le Bouchillou
24410 Servanches
France
Tel/Fax 05 53 82 15 02
E-mail: John Daly
Home