#22: Compromise (Religious Liberty):In a May 11, 2012 interview given to the Catholic News Service (CNS), Bishop Fellay explains his view on
Dignitatis Humanae (the Vatican II docuмent on so-called "religious liberty"), beginning at minute 1:25:
"Religious liberty is used in so many ways, and looking closer I really have the impression that not many know what really the council says about it. The council is presenting a religious liberty which in fact was a very, very limited one, very limited. It would, in our talks with Rome they clearly said that, to mean that there would be a right to error or a right to choose each one its religious - religion - is false."
That statement -which was cause for immediate scandal among SSPX clergy and faithful- is unacceptable, because Bishop Fellay seems to suggest that if "religious liberty" is "very, very limited" then it would be implicitly acceptable.
Bishop Fellay's statement is also suggestive of the idea that perhaps the SSPX itself has been mistaken in its understanding of
Dignitatis Humanae and religious liberty.
Yet the Angelus Press website, in the advertisement for Archbishop Lefebvre's "
Religious Liberty Questioned" (quoting the Archbishop) lays out quite clearly:
"
Archbishop Lefebvre and Bishop Tissier de Mallerais meticulously explore the question of religious liberty and give a crystal clear picture of what the Church has always taught, what the Second Vatican Council taught, and how they are contradictory...That is why, personally, I do not believe that the declarations of the Council on liberty of conscience, liberty of thought, and liberty of religion can be compatible with what the popes taught in the past. Therefore we have to choose. Either we choose what the popes have taught for centuries and we choose the Church or we choose what was said by the Council. But we cannot choose both at the same time since they are contradictory. --Archbishop Lefebvre, Religious Liberty Questioned" https://angeluspress.org/products/religious-liberty-questioned-dubiaOne more observation:
Bishop Fellay also recounts how Rome told the SSPX during the doctrinal discussions that it is a false understanding of DH to say that it taught there was a "right to error."
Yet he (and Rome) seem to forget how, after the promulgation of
Dignitatis Humanae, the Holy See modified all its concordats still in force with the few remaining officially Catholic (i.e., "confessional") states, so that countries like Italy, Spain, Columbia, etc. all were forced to remove or modify their constitutions to permit religious liberty. Where these states had formerly declared the Catholic religion the official religion of the state, and precluded public proselytism of the false sects, the state after
Dignitatis Humanae, through the action of the Vatican, became officially laicized and religiously indifferent.
(See for example: Davies, Michael. The Second Vatican Council and Religious Liberty: Appendix III. pp. 275-282. Neumann Press).
Yet Bishop Fellay wanted to believe (and wanted
you to believe) the Romans when they said DH taught no right to error, when it was these same Romans who destroyed the last of the Catholic governments to bring them into compliance with DH's religious liberty?
"Very, very limited" indeed!
Topic: Catalog of Compromise, Change, and Contradiction in the SSPX (Read 45567 times)