IRELAND
Association of Catholic Priests
“Truth can impose itself on the mind of man only in virtue of its own truth, which wins over the mind with both gentleness and power.” (Article 1, Declaration on Religious Liberty, Vatican II 1965)
Way back in 1965 this official statement reconciled me to the Catholic Church, after years of agonising as a student of history over its long record of religious persecution. That was all behind us now, I told myself. The church at its summit had at long last realised that truth cannot be conveyed or strengthened by coercion. The truth of the Creeds is centrally also love, so in future it would only be communicated lovingly, in freedom.
This conclusion was supported by the strong criticism directed by some eminent bishops during the council toward the formerly unjust practices of the church’s central theological monitor, the Holy Office (once the Roman Inquisition). This body became the ‘Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith’ on the same day the Declaration on Religious Liberty was formally ratified. Most of us then expected that the CDF would now develop procedures and structures that would bear comparison with the highest principles of jurisprudence in the secular world.
The CDF has instead reverted to the intellectual brutalities of the Holy Office, reneged on this key Vatican II declaration on religious freedom, and very seriously weakened the authority of the church.
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