NATIONAL CATHOLIC REGISTER | Commentaries
By: Andrea Picciotti-Bayer and V. Bradley Lewis
COMMENTARY: It is our responsibility to work toward the fulfillment of his vision.
No pope in history has defended religious freedom with such eloquence and authority as Benedict XVI. His understanding of this complex subject wonderfully clarified the relationship between religion and freedom, as laid out in Vatican II’s declaration on religious freedom, Dignitatis Humanae.
And it is by virtue of the two parts of his teaching on religious liberty — the freedom of the person to believe and worship in accordance with conscience and the freedom of believers to bring their faith into the public square — that the Church can effectively contribute to forming culture and political life.
To the Roman Curia in a pre-Christmas address in 2005, Pope Benedict spoke of the martyrs of the early Church. They “died for their faith in that God who was revealed in Jesus Christ, and for this very reason they also died for freedom of conscience and the freedom to profess one’s own faith — a profession that no state can impose but which, instead, can only be claimed with God’s grace in freedom of conscience.”
