Political and Catholic Perspectives on the Freedoms of Speech and Religion
Freedom of speech and freedom of religion are constantly being discussed in today’s print and electronic media. Proponents of views on a wide range of issues help spark this interest; they include radical Islamists who would like to make Shari‘a the law of the land, orthodox Roman Catholics who articulate the defence of life from conception to natural death, and atheists who disapprove of public displays or speech based on religious belief. Although freedom of speech and religion are prominent in the public consciousness (perhaps because of the emphasis placed upon them both by the media and the politicians), there is a questionable number of Americans who understand either the scope of these freedoms or their relationship to each other and to other freedoms. It is even more questionable how many Roman Catholics understand how a Catholic perspective on these freedoms differs from a secular one. And yet, this information is necessary for living a fully Catholic life.
This paper compares the political understanding with the Catholic understanding of freedom of speech and religion. President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s address to the 77th Congress of the United States, and the subsequent pamphlet published by the Office of War Information, The United Nations Fight for the Four Freedoms (1942) are used to articulate the political perspective. These documents, which are more than sixty-five years old, were chosen because they are foundational documents. The understanding of these freedoms during World War II and its aftermath, particularly that of President Roosevelt and his wife, Eleanor, was influential in the drafting of the United Nations Charter and the United Nations Declaration on Human Rights. The political thought of that time has had a direct impact on the political thought of today.
Magisterial documents in the tradition of Catholic social teaching are used to articulate the Catholic understanding. The Church is the expert on man, and it teaches that God created man with an unchanging human nature. Neither his nature nor anything that flows from it changes, although the political contexts in which they are enjoyed, and the manner in which they are recognized and enforced, do change.
The Political Perspective
In an address in 1941 to the 77th Congress, President Roosevelt explained “unprecedented threats” to the United States’ security, national safety and continued independence. He stated that in response to those threats the United States would work for a “secure world founded on four essential human freedoms”. They were freedom of speech and expression, freedom of every person to worship God in his own way, freedom from want and freedom from fear.1
In the next year, the Office of War Information produced a pamphlet to define and expand upon these four essential freedoms enumerated by President Roosevelt.2 The two of interest here, freedom of speech and of religion, were referred to by the Office of War Information as cultural. It said, “They are prerogatives of the thinking man, of the creative and civilized human being. Sometimes, as in the United States, they are guaranteed by organic law. They are rather clearly understood, and the laws protecting them are continually being revised and adjusted to preserve their basic meaning.”3
As Catholics we do not regard these freedoms as cultural; we see both culture and these freedoms in association with man’s spirit. The freedoms are realized in and affected by the cultural setting, or more specifically by the political setting, but they are not cultural in the sense that they come forth from, or are produced by, the culture. These freedoms belong to all men because of man’s nature.
Freedom of Speech and of Religion
The political understanding of these two freedoms was articulated by the Office of War Information in the following way. Freedom of speech is the recognition that a man has the right to express his thoughts and opinions without fear of punishment by other individuals or groups, or by the government. The right to speak includes free expression of thought and opinion, and the right of access to accurate information and its sources (e.g., freedom of the press).
Freedom of speech is not an absolute right. The Office of War Information said that literacy is a prerequisite to free speech because it enables a man to speak “on point”. It stated, “Denied education, denied information, suppressed or enslaved, people grow sluggish; their opinions are hardly worth the high privilege of release.” 4 This freedom is limited by laws against libel and slander; by national security and the suppression of overt acts against peace and order; and by the standards of good taste. Those who would limit freedom of speech must have a serious reason for doing so; they must meet an appropriate standard for imposing such a limitation.
Freedom of religion is the recognition that man has a spirit that belongs only to himself and to God. The Office of War Information said it “includes freedom of worship [which] implies that the individual has a source of moral values which transcends the immediate necessities of the community, however important these may be.” 5 It continued, saying “The democratic guarantee of freedom of worship is not in the nature of a grant—it is in the nature of an admission. It is the state admitting that the spirit soars in illimitable regions beyond the collectors of customs.”
Like freedom of speech, freedom of religion is not an absolute right. The freedom to seek the truth (especially Absolute Truth), and to believe in that truth when found, is firm. But public expression of that belief is limited by the common good and a peaceful order, as well as the well-being of individuals.
Much of what President Roosevelt said (later explained and expanded upon by the Office of War Information), is correct. However, there are several important aspects of this political perspective that are different from the Catholic perspective, and which merit discussion.
The Catholic Perspective: Freedom and Rights
The first difference between the two perspectives is the distinction between freedom and rights, and “freedoms”. The “four freedoms” do not guarantee freedom, although they are clearly constitutive of living in a free, or at least somewhat free, society. The four freedoms are the result of rights—the right to freedom of speech and religion, and the right to security (i.e., from want and fear). The rights define, promote and defend the associated freedoms. The relationship between freedom and rights is articulated in the Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church. Drawing upon Gaudium et Spes, the Catechism of the Catholic Church, and Libertatis Conscientia, the Compendium says:
Freedom is the highest sign in man of his being made in the divine image and, consequently, is a sign of the sublime dignity of every human person. ‘Freedom is exercised in relationships between human beings. Every human person, created in the image of God, has the natural right to be recognized as a free and responsible being. All owe to each other this duty of respect. The right to the exercise of freedom, especially in moral and religious matters, is an inalienable requirement of the dignity of the human person.’ The meaning of freedom must not be restricted, considering it from a purely individualistic perspective and reducing it to the arbitrary and uncontrolled exercise of one's own personal autonomy. . . [Emphasis in original.6]
Summarizing this information in the next article, the Compendium cites John XXIII in Pacem in Terris, saying, “The fullness of freedom consists in the capacity to be in possession of oneself in view of the genuine good, within the context of the universal common good.” 7
Freedom is lived by each man individually but within a social context. God created each of us with the same nature, and thus with the same rights. As individuals with a social nature, each of us has a responsibility to respect the rights of others by ensuring that their rights are protected from those who would deny them, and by not denying them ourselves. If we fail in this duty, we, they and the common good all suffer: freedom is reduced or, perhaps more accurately, it is restricted.
Man’s Nature
The second difference between the two perspectives lies in their understanding of man’s nature. In discussing “freedom from fear”, the Office of War Information says that “Fear is the inheritance of every animal, and man is no exception.” 8 The implication seems to be that man is just another animal. Yet, as Catholics, we know that man is a person. Created by God in His image and likeness, he has an intellect to know the truth, a will to select and love it and a call to community that mirrors the inner life of the Trinity. Each man is unique and unrepeatable. He has consciousness and is subjective: hence, he has self-understanding, self-possession, self-determination and self-reflection, and is independent.9 He is the noblest visible creature on earth. In one of the most beautiful passages in the Old Testament, the question is asked which resonates with the awe of man’s being:
When I consider Thy heavens, the work of Thy fingers,the moon and the stars, which Thou hast ordained;what is man, that Thou art mindful of him? and the son of man, that Thou visitest him? For Thou hast made him a little lower than the angels,
and hast crowned him with glory and honour. Thou madest him to have dominion over the works of Thy hands: Thou hast put all things under his feet… (Ps 8: 3-6) 10
When he is defined as “no exception” to “the inheritance of every animal” his nature is reduced to something that is inferior to what he is—man is animalized.
Although he is matter like the animals, man is not an animal. As person he is also, and more importantly, spirit. Because he is a material being he has material needs, and these cannot and should not be minimized. He has rights to food, water, shelter, clothing and health care, to list a few. These rights are necessary for man to sustain biological life and to fulfil himself. But as a spiritual being, man has greater needs, which are interior and spiritual, particularly as regards the two essential freedoms of speech and religion. As St. Augustine put it, we have restless hearts until we are with God. While we are here on earth we seek God because we are made to spend eternity with the Creator. In this life we cannot be happy unless we know God and freely choose Him. To do this, man must have freedom of speech and of religion.
The Compendium states this in great detail. Citing Gaudium et Spes and theCatechism of the Catholic Church, it says,
In no case, therefore, is the human person to be manipulated for ends that are foreign to his own development, which can find complete fulfilment only in God and his plan of salvation: in fact, man in his interiority transcends the universe and is the only creature willed by God for itself. For this reason neither his life nor the development of his thought, nor his good, nor those who are part of his personal and social activities can be subjected to unjust restrictions in the exercise of their rights and freedom. . . All this, once more, is based on the vision of man as a person, that is to say, as an active and responsible subject of his own growth process, together with the community to which he belongs. [Emphasis in original.11]
Within the confines of the common good, man must have these rights because he is a person. Without these rights he cannot find fulfilment. His integral development requires them.
The Office of War Information, on the other hand, said “We state these things as ‘rights’—not because man has any natural right to be nourished and sheltered, not because the world owes any man a living, but because unless man succeeds in filling these primary needs his only development is backward and downward, his only growth malignant, and his last resource war.”12
The Basis of Rights
The third difference between the two perspectives is the basis of rights. The Office of War Information’s perspective is secular. Its members believe that rights are granted by the State, that is, by human government. As the government changes, rights may change. From a Catholic perspective the primary source of rights is God and the secondary source is human dignity. As Creator, God made man’s nature in a particular way. These rights are founded in man’s nature and, because man’s nature does not change, neither do his rights, although the way they are recognized, engaged and protected changes with the political environment.
Man is a self-determining free being; man is, in fact, the only being in the universe made for himself. The Compendium, citing works of John XXIII, Paul VI and John Paul II, says,
The ultimate source of human rights is not found in the mere will of human beings, in the reality of the State, in public powers, but in man himself and in God his Creator. These rights are ‘universal, inviolable, inalienable’. Universal because they are present in all human beings, without exception of time, place or subject. Inviolable insofar as ‘they are inherent in the human person and in human dignity’ and because ‘it would be vain to proclaim rights, if at the same time everything were not done to ensure the duty of respecting them by all people, everywhere, and for all people’. Inalienable insofar as ‘no one can legitimately deprive another person, whoever they may be, of these rights, since this would do violence to their nature’. [Emphasis in original.13]
These rights are also indivisible, as the Compendium mentions in the next article. It cites John Paul II’s World Day of Peace Messages for 1998 and 1999, saying that
Human rights are to be defended not only individually but also as a whole: protecting them only partially would imply a kind of failure to recognize them. They correspond to the demands of human dignity and entail, in the first place, the fulfilment of the essential needs of the person in the material and spiritual spheres. ‘. . . The integral promotion of every category of human rights is the true guarantee of full respect for each individual right.’ Universality and indivisibility are distinctive characteristics of human rights.14
The duty of governments is to recognize these universal, indivisible, inalienable and inviolable rights, to affirm them and to protect them. These rights are not granted by States; their basis is God as He created man’s nature and resulting human dignity.
The Office of War Information did correctly articulate the attributes of rights, saying that “Although these freedoms are separate, they are interdependent. Individually and together, they support liberty. If one freedom is absent, the others are all in danger. Each of the freedoms is an essential right, needed in its entirety, for man to live freely, regardless of creed, race or location.”15
The Essential Freedom
The final difference between the two perspectives is their respective ranking of freedom of speech and freedom of religion. The Office of War Information states that freedom of speech is the essence of the four freedoms. Without freedom of speech, it argues, the other three essential freedoms cannot be realized. The Church, conversely, regards freedom of religion as the essential one. The Compendium cites Gaudium et Spes and documents by Paul VI and John Paul II, giving particular attention to Centesimus Annus. In it John Paul II lists many rights. Of those, he said that the right to life, from conception to natural death, is the condition for the exercise of all other rights. But he went on to say that “In a certain sense, the source and synthesis of these rights is religious freedom, understood as the right to live in the truth of one's faith and in conformity with one's transcendent dignity as a person.” He continued, drawing on Dignitatis Humanae and his own teaching in Redemptor Hominis, saying,
Emphasis is given to the paramount value of the right to religious freedom: ‘all men are to be immune from coercion on the part of individuals or of social groups and of any human power, in such wise that no one is to be forced to act in a manner contrary to his own beliefs, whether privately or publicly, whether alone or in association with others, within due limits’. The respect of this right is an indicative sign of ‘man's authentic progress in any regime, in any society, system or milieu’. [Emphasis in original.16]
Thus, as “the source and synthesis” of human rights, freedom of religion is considered to be more essential than freedom of speech.
Conclusion
There are four important differences between the political and the Catholic perspectives concerning freedom of speech and of religion. They are the distinction between freedom and rights and “freedoms”; the different understanding of the nature of man; the difference about the basis of rights; and the differing perceptions as to which freedom is the essential freedom.
The root of these differences is that the former perspective is secular; it is not founded on God. The latter is founded on Him and on knowing truth from Scripture and Tradition (as taught, developed and guarded by the Magisterium) and from right reason. We should not be surprised by this difference in perspective, as we have known for some time now that the United States have become a post-Christian society.
It is easy to be deceived about the basis of the differences between the two perspectives, and herein lies a trap for the unsuspecting and/or ill-informed Catholic. Proponents of both the political and the Catholic perspectives on these freedoms use the same or very similar language in speaking about them. What is meant by the language used is not necessarily the same. To be realistic we must recognize that most Catholics will not question a politician’s meaning when he supports these freedoms. Yet this is exactly what the Catholic must do if he wants to live a fully Catholic life within the Catholic social tradition: he must question every political statement and ask for definitions.
For instance, both President Roosevelt and The United Nations Fight for the Four Freedoms make reference to God. Roosevelt told Congress that “This nation has placed its destiny in the hands and heads and hearts of its millions of free men and women, and its faith in freedom under the guidance of God.”17 The Office of War Information prefaced its text by quoting Roosevelt’s statement that “The belief in the four freedoms of common humanity—the belief in man, created free, in the image of God—is the crucial difference between ourselves and the enemies we face today.”18
Both President Roosevelt and the members of the Office of War Information may have had a deep belief and abiding trust in God. However, in these public speeches and documents the references to God are probably an example of civil religion. Civil religion is the
[s]et of quasi-religious attitudes, beliefs, rituals, and symbols that tie members of a political community together. As originally formulated by Jean-Jacques Rousseau, the concept referred to the virtues that citizens need to serve the state. The concept was later elaborated by the American sociologist Robert N. Bellah (b. 1927), who found in the U.S. a strong sense of ‘American exceptionalism’ and reverence for secular elements such as the national flag, the Constitution, the Founding Fathers, the annual holiday calendar, and the concepts of individualism and self-reliance. . .19
The concept of civil religion has fallen out of vogue with many social scientists. But unquestionably, references to God can be made to influence public opinion. In these speeches and documents, references to God are probably not to His love or power as known by Catholic believers. But Catholics who read them or hear them often assume a commonality of belief and/or religious understanding that probably does not exist.
The rôle of Catholics should be to support freedom of speech and religion, as well as other freedoms and rights. We should expose and fight against any violation of these rights by other individuals, groups, or governments. At the same time we should invest our effort into understanding these issues and making that understanding available to others.
Notes
1. http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/fdrthefourfreedoms.htm (accessed 7/29/09). (Hereinafter, Roosevelt.) By freedom from want, President Roosevelt said he meant “economic understandings which will secure to every nation a healthy peacetime life for its inhabitants”. By freedom from fear, he said he meant “a world-wide reduction of armaments to such a point and in such a thorough fashion that no nation will be in a position to commit an act of physical aggression against any neighbour”.
2. The United Nations Fight for the Four Freedoms (Washington, D.C., 1942). (Hereinafter, Four Freedoms.) The pamphlet was used to demonstrate differences relating to these freedoms between the National Socialist and the American systems, and thus it propagandizes as well as informs.
3. Four Freedoms
4. Ibid.
5. Ibid.
6. Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church, §199.
7. Compendium, §200.
8. Four Freedoms
9. Vide Compendium, §§131-3.
10. King James Version
11. Compendium, §133.
12. Four Freedoms
13. Compendium, §153.
14. Ibid., §154.
15. Four Freedoms
16. Compendium, §155.
17. Roosevelt
18. Four Freedoms. God was mentioned in several other paragraphs.
19. Vide http://encyclopedia2.thefreedictionary.com/Civil+religion (accessed 7/24/09).
