POLITICAL FREEDOMS. - They are the most immediate practical applications of the principle of liberty in a truly democratic State, that is, one that recognizes the right of all citizens to participate in the government of public affairs, through representatives.
1. Personal liberty, by which no one may be arrested or brought to trial except in the cases provided for by law, and in the forms it prescribes. 2. Freedom of domicile. No house search by the public force may take place except within the limits set out above. 3. Freedom of movement. Every citizen may change his domicile, move about and travel as he wishes, provided he respects public order. 4. Freedom of petition. Every citizen has the right to address the Chamber, presenting petitions, individual or collective, in the forms regulated by law. 5. Freedom of election. The formalities for electing the representatives of the people must be established by law, and the security of citizens must be guaranteed in proceeding with full freedom in their choice. It is clear that one of the best guarantees is the secret ballot. Public discussions on the matter and propaganda must also be free. 6. Freedom of assembly and association. Citizens may assemble peacefully and unarmed in the forms required by public order. They may form associations among themselves provided they are not secret. This right is nullified if the end the associations propose to themselves is immoral and contrary to the fundamental principles of the constitution of the State; or if it appears that the members abuse their association, lawful in itself, for unlawful purposes. The judgment on this should be given not by the ordinary courts, but by the Supreme Court established to safeguard the essential rights of citizens against possible encroachments by the state power. An example of the inconsistencies of the governmental liberalism of the last century was the suppression and dispersal of the religious Orders, in which there was violated precisely one of the most loudly proclaimed rights of liberalism itself, namely the freedom to associate for lawful ends: nothing was more lawful than to associate for the end of one's own sanctification. Governments sought to justify themselves by resorting to the right of the State to grant or withdraw legal personality according to its own criteria, that is to say, at its own arbitrary discretion; it was not seen that precisely in such uncontrolled arbitrariness lay the absence of a true liberalism.
7. Freedom of thought and of the press. Citizens use their intelligence without depending on the State in the various cultural, scientific and philosophical activities, and may not be disturbed in the exercise of such activities and in the expression of them, by word or through the press, save for the laws common to the protection of morality and public order and the particular laws aimed at repressing the specific abuses of the press. This freedom, as also the freedom of religious propaganda, can constitute a danger to the detriment of the truth, which in its private and public manifestations is thus reduced to a level with error. The danger is pointed out by the Syllabus, n. 79, and it would be folly to deny it. That the State then has the same obligations toward error as toward truth would be absurd to maintain; but in the practical case this kind of freedom is taken as a tolerance, a permission of what in itself can be an evil, in view of a greater good: the greater good would be to avoid the danger of despotism on the part of a human authority, as the State is, and to stimulate the spontaneous forces of good to combat and overcome evil by themselves, without placing too much reliance on the helps of the government. There always remains the risk, which is inherent in general in the system of liberties. For a more accurate examination of freedom of the press and its concrete implementation in Italy, v. STAMPA, libertà di.
8. Freedom of teaching (v. INSEGNAMENTO).
9. Freedom of conscience and of worship
Individual convictions concerning religion, the profession of this or that faith, and the exercise of this or that worship cannot constitute an impediment to the possession and use of all the civil and political rights recognized by the Constitution. This principle is admitted by modern States, which for this reason are no longer "confessional," even if they officially declare that a given religion is the "religion of the State." If this were interpreted in the sense of approving "indifferentism" in the face of the different religions, as though they were all equally good, one would fall under the condemnation of the Syllabus (nn. 77, 78 and 79). But that principle can be taken only as an abstention of the State from examining and judging the consciences of individual persons, a thing altogether inadvisable in the present historical circumstances and always dangerous, as the experience of the past demonstrates. Nevertheless there remains with the State the obligation not only to guarantee the true freedom of the religious profession of individual citizens, but to favor, with the means within its competence, religious action as a factor in the spiritual elevation of individual human persons and of the whole nation. The State must not "ignore," under the pretext of freedom, the religion of citizens; on the contrary it must watch, in legislation and in government, to do nothing that can violate their religious conscience, as happens when it claims to impose civil marriage as true marriage on Catholics, whereas for them it is a dogma of faith that true marriage is only the Sacrament. Freedom of worship also has its limits, inasmuch as the State cannot tolerate rites contrary to natural morality, such as sacred prostitution and human sacrifices.
Bibliography17 works
Giuseppe Bozzetti