Original scientific paper
CATHOLICS AND THE POLITICS: FROM THE SYLLABUS OF PIUS IX TO THE 2nd VATICAN COUNCIL
Marko Medved
orcid.org/0000-0002-2221-9121
; Theology of Rijeka, Dislocated Studies of Catholic Faculty of Theology, University of Zagreb, Rijeka, Croatia
Abstract
The Council stresses the responsibility of Christians in respect to the world, invites the Christians to take part in politics and recognizes the autonomy of secular realities. The celebration of the 1700th anniversary of Edict of Milan, is an occasion to examine how did the doctrine of the Catholic Church change in the period from the mid-19th century up to the Council in respect to the understanding of the relationship between the Church and the State, and in respect to the liberty of confession. A new understanding of the relationship Church/state began to gain strength in the midst of the nouvelle théologie of the fifties. During the Council, the Catholic Church pleaded for a lay state, and not for a confessional state. The Declaration of the freedom of confession Dignitatis humanae of the 2nd Vatican Council is the clearest and univocal expression of the modernization of the 2nd Vatican Council. Thus the Church removed itself from the medieval concept of a state that had the right and the duty to help the Church in her saving mission, even coercively. The declaration appeals for the right of the individual: to his freedom in pursuing his own conscience, free from the impediments of the state. While the Syllabus of Pius IX (1864) condemned the freedom of conscience considering it indifferentism, Dignitatis humanae of the 2nd Vatican Council accepted it as the basic need of the human person. This is not only the appliance of a certain principle, but a change in the principle and the doctrine.
Keywords
Council; politics; freedom of conscience; modernity; liberalism
Hrčak ID:
116604
URI
Publication date:
31.1.2014.
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