Religious Liberty: Continuity or Contradiction?

by Fr. Bernard Lucien | Translated by John Pepino | Foreword by Alan Fimister

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Product Code: rlcc
Publication date: May 15, 2025
Pages: 134
Size: 5.5 x 8.5

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Among the problems posed by Dignitatis Humanæ, there are the following: is its principal teaching infallible, or merely the “simply authentic Magisterium”? May a Catholic suspend assent to this teaching, or even refuse it, and if so, under what conditions? And, more importantly, does the Council’s definition of religious liberty contradict the Church’s former magisterium? As Alan Fimister puts it:

If the faithful and their pastors for over a thousand years held (and they surely did) that the Church had the right to employ coercion and even lethal force to correct erring members of the faithful, and they were in fact wrong, then this claim is completely empty and with it Christ’s teaching that the Church is a city set upon a hill that cannot be hidden, and His promise to remain with her until the end of time (Matt 5:14; 28:20).

If the teaching of the ordinary and universal or the extraordinary magisterium can and has contradicted itself then this does not mean that the new teaching is true or that the Church has foundered but that Catholicism was never true and we are of all men most to be pitied. The task of reconciling the declaration Dignitatis Humanæ and the previous definitions and tradition of the Church is therefore no trifling matter. Upon it hinges the credibility of Catholicism itself.

In this compelling study, Fr. Bernard Lucien along with a commentary by Fr. Antoine-Marie de Araujo, FSVF, seek to argue, without doing violence to the text, for a correct interpretation of the central teaching of Dignitatis Humanæ as well as for a correction of its deficiencies. The ongoing debates within the Church about Tradition and the secularist aim to make Christianity politically irrelevant confirm the timeliness of this study.
The question of religious liberty is no longer a matter of interest only to political philosophers. By the ambiguity of its teaching, the Second Vatican Council elevated the issue to one that concerns all Catholics inasmuch as it touches on the consistency and reliability of the Church herself in her official teaching. Fr. Lucien's work makes an important contribution to resolving the question in favor of that consistency and reliability. —Dr. John Joy, author of On the Ordinary & Extraordinary Magisterium: From Joseph Kleutgen to the Second Vatican Council

Many Catholics have been disturbed by an apparent contradiction between the teaching of the Vatican II declaration on religious liberty Dignitatis Humanæ and more than one document of the prior magisterium. As a result several writers have offered competing solutions to this apparent contradiction. This present work consists of three essays with two by Fr. Bernard Lucien setting forth his own carefully argued approach. And until one particular solution gains more widespread acceptance as the most probable answer to this difficulty, it is good that theologians and philosophers continue to study and debate this important question that goes to the heart of the Church's ability to know and define truth. —Thomas Storck, author of Foundations of a Catholic Political Order

Fr. Bernard Lucien is considered one of the best French traditionalist theologians. His explanation of religious liberty has three merits in my eyes: it is simple and clear; it is based on the literal meaning of the text of Dignitatis Humanæ, and it displays a truly traditional spirit. Let us hope that, thanks to this publication, it will receive greater recognition. —Fr. Louis-Marie de Blignières, founder, Fraternity of St. Vincent Ferrer (Chémeré-le-Roi, France)

This book makes an original and valuable contribution to the debate on religious liberty. It deserves to be read by all who wish to understand Dignitatis Humanæ and the duty of human societies “toward the true religion and toward the one Church of Christ.” —Fr. Thomas Crean, O.P., co-author with Dr. Alan Fimister of Integralism: A Manual of Political Philosophy

Father Lucien began studying the conciliar declaration Dignitatis Humanæ in order to demonstrate its incompatibility with traditional teaching. This search for truth, however, led him to reverse his previous position and to find a way out in full agreement with classical moral theology. Analyzing the differing concepts of “conscience” occurring in Western thought since Aquinas, he concluded that the “liberty of conscience and cult” condemned by the nineteenth-century popes was something much more radical and sweeping than the right to religious freedom affirmed by Vatican II. While some of us who have reached the same conclusion have arrived at it by a rather different path from Fr. Lucien, giving more attention to the “due limits” to religious freedom affirmed by DH, his work is a serious contribution to this quaestio disputata that deserves the attention of every theologian. —Fr. Brian W. Harrison, OS, STD, author of Religious Liberty and Contraception