Dignitatis humanae

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Dignitatis humanae ( Latin for " dignity of man ") means, after its opening words , the declaration on religious freedom , which was formulated by the Second Vatican Council and on December 7, 1965 by Pope Paul VI. was promulgated .

The essential content of the declaration is the recognition of freedom of conscience and religion as a human right by the Roman Catholic Church : “The Vatican Council declares that the human person has the right to religious freedom. This freedom consists in the fact that all human beings have to be free from any coercion both on the part of individual and social groups, as well as all human violence, so that in religious matters no one is forced to act against his conscience, nor is he prevented from doing so, privately and publicly to act individually or in conjunction with others [...] according to his conscience. "(DH 2)

With this declaration, the Catholic Church has "carried out a fundamental repositioning and also a correction of its teaching". The rejection of religious freedom culminated in the encyclical Quanta cura Pope Pius IX in 1864 . and the list of errors appended to it , the so-called Syllabus errorum . Because of this rigorous rejection of religious freedom as a human right, this repositioning was described as the “ Copernican turn ” of the Catholic Church, namely from the “right of truth” to “right of the person” ”, the importance of which“ can hardly be overestimated ”. In it new ground is gained for the doctrine of the freedom and rights of the human person, of the tasks and powers of the state in religious matters, "[...] which allows one to abandon obsolete and untenable positions in church teaching without actually doing so to question the truth claims of the Catholic faith ”.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Karl Gabriel, Christian Spieß, Katja Winkler: The recognition of religious freedom at the Second Vatican Council , Paderborn 2013, p. 7.
  2. ↑ Cf. Konrad Hilpert : The recognition of religious freedom. In: Voices of the Time, 12/2005, pp. 809–819, here p. 813.
  3. ↑ See also Reinhold Sebott: 'Dignitatis humanae' and 'Quanta cura' - The condemnation of religious freedom before the Second Vatican Council. In: Karl Gabriel, Christian Spieß, Katja Winkler: The recognition of religious freedom at the Second Vatican Council. Paderborn 2013, pp. 83–91.
  4. ↑ Ernst-Wolfgang Böckenförde : Introduction to the text edition of the 'Declaration on Religious Freedom'. In: German Bishops' Conference (Hrsg.): Declaration on religious freedom. Münster 1968, pp. 5–21, here p. 9.
  5. ↑ Ernst-Wolfgang Böckenförde: Introduction to the text edition of the 'Declaration on Religious Freedom'. In: German Bishops' Conference (Hrsg.): Declaration on religious freedom. Münster 1968, pp. 5–21, here p. 5.

literature

  • LThK ², The Second Vatican Council II, Freiburg 1967, 703–748 (Latin-German parallel text, introduced in detail and commented on by Pietro Pavan ).
  • Roman A. Siebenrock: Theological commentary on the declaration of freedom of religion Dignitatis humanae. In: Herder's Theological Commentary on the Second Vatican Council. Freiburg 2005, Volume 4, pp. 125-218 (there pp. 208-218 also a relatively detailed bibliography).
  • Karl Gabriel , Christian Spieß, Katja Winkler (eds.): Religious freedom and pluralism. Lines of Development of a Catholic Learning Process. Paderborn 2010.

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