TOLLERANZA. — In common usage, it indicates a disposition of the spirit and a consequent practical attitude of indulgence and forbearance toward a way of thinking, an action, or a fact that conflicts with one’s convictions or infringes upon one’s rights. Thus, the person who feels injured does not react, although he might have the power to do so, nor does he outwardly manifest his disapproval; rather, he adopts a benevolent attitude, allowing evil and error to exist and enduring their consequences. T., therefore, in its original meaning, necessarily has evil as its point of reference: its presence induces one to endure it, for natural or supernatural reasons, despite the contrary prompting of the conscience,
which condemns evil, and of the moral law, which would wish it suppressed. When applied to religious ideas and convictions, its proper object is error, which is the evil of the intellect and of the soul. One tolerates evil and error; one does not tolerate good and truth, toward which the intellect and the will are drawn by the spontaneous movement of rational nature. More synthetically, t. may be defined as a negative attitude toward present or anticipated evil. Consequently, its concept includes the speculative condemnation of evil and error and practical indulgence toward them and toward those who commit and embrace them. It therefore presupposes a different evaluation of the fact, derived from the objective order of values, and thereby excludes any equation between good and evil, between truth and error.
In a subjectivist conception, in which every stable criterion of truth loses its value, or in one that is in any case morally and religiously agnostic, t. loses its content and object, and the word is given a meaning different from the original. In the former case, it either amounts to speculative indifference, seasoned with skepticism, toward all opinions and beliefs, or is reduced to a practical attitude that attributes the same value to truth and error as subjective expressions of consciousness. In this sense, the term was used by Catholic liberalism and is still used today by those who connect themselves with liberal religious agnosticism. In reality, t. presupposes an objective inequality, the presence of a positive value and a negative one, toward the latter of which consideration is granted for reasons of prudence. It is not a virtue, but results from the exercise of charity or prudence, not imposed by a norm of law granted to the negative value, but by contingent necessities which, in a term that has become common, are usually called hypotheses.
I. GENERAL NOTIONS
T. is intimately connected with the hypothesis, which is the opposite of the thesis. Whereas the latter, in fact, consists of universal principles and sets forth perennial and immutable requirements, from which moral and juridical norms valid at all times and among all peoples arise, the former indicates a factual condition, a contingent political and religious situation, variable in time and space. From this it follows that t. does not obey a single criterion; rather, the criterion is deduced each time from the objective conditions of the society to which it must be applied. The more or less pressing need for its application arises from the disagreement that often exists between thesis and hypothesis, which t. seeks to bridge by suggesting a prudent attitude toward evil and error.Every practical science consists of two moments: first, it investigates the universal laws of private or public conduct; second, it proceeds to apply them to the concrete, to the individual case, to a particular situation in which the subject finds himself acting. It does not descend to the ultimate consequences without first examining the elements that may influence his conduct, creating either facilities or impediments for him. This double movement expresses the distinction between speculative science and casuistry, of which the former formulates the thesis, while the latter is modeled on the hypothesis. When a disagreement arises between the two, the principles of the thesis cannot be applied in their entirety, and t. therefore intervenes to suggest an adaptation. It may thus be regarded as a practical and prudent solution to the conflict existing on the level of reality between the law and its complete application. Its moral foundation is therefore neither an objective equality of all opinions and all religious confessions, nor the false concept of freedom that grants man the faculty to orient himself as he wishes, nor a particular positive evaluation of the so-called rights of subjective conscience, but solely the necessity of adapting the principle to the possibilities of application offered by concrete life. T. does not deny the principle, which always remains the ideal term, but suggests a flexible attitude. Truth and goodness remain the pre-eminent values, and error and evil do not occupy the same plane as they do.
The legitimacy of such a compromise between principles and reality was grounded by the ancient writers in prudence, which, as recta ratio in agibilibus, manifests itself in the art of knowing how to adapt oneself to reality in order to avoid the greater evil. Practical life in its actual development rests upon two pillars: the ideal, to which the supreme directives of action belong, and the real, from which emerge the elements that condition their application. The same criterion of adopting the lesser evil, by which t. is guided, was developed by Leone XIII in the encyclical Libertas (20 June 1888).
T., in accordance with the immediate object to which it refers, may be religious or civil: the former concerns opinions in matters of faith and religious confessions, while the latter properly concerns political ideologies and the forces operating within the State. Nevertheless, the t. of the State toward religious confessions is often called civil. It is nevertheless advisable to adhere to the more common division, observing that, with regard to religious t., a distinction is also usually made between dogmatic and practical t.; the former concerns revealed truth and has the Church alone as its subject. The exercise of t. may concern the individual in his private conduct, supernatural society, and civil society. A word must be said about each of these subjects.
II. RELIGIOUS TOLERANCE ON THE PART OF THE CHURCH
It is always lawful and even obligatory for every Christian, provided that he preserves his faith intact in his soul, without dangerous compromises with error, to show inexhaustible benevolence toward all those in error. He must hate evil and error, but he must love those who commit and embrace and profess them. This obligatory tolerance rests on two reasons. First of all, he is bound to respect the right to free inquiry into the truth, which every human being possesses by virtue of his rational nature; moreover, he is obliged to observe the precept of charity toward all. If, according to Christ’s commandment, he must be disposed to love even his enemies, then all the more must he have the same disposition toward those who were or are committing evil. The conduct of the individual may be summed up in the following phrase: intolerance toward error and evil considered in themselves, and broad and welcoming tolerance toward those in error.In the supernatural society founded on the common bond of faith, dogmatic tolerance is impossible. The mission of the Church and her intrinsic reason for existing consist, in fact, in the jealous safeguarding of the deposit of revealed truth, whose integral acceptance is an absolute condition for salvation. Tolerance of error, whether it insinuated itself subtly or openly into the fabric of revealed doctrine, would mean for the Church a failure to fulfil the divine mandate to teach the nations what Christ taught and commanded; it would be an internal corruption that would deprive her, if this were possible, of her supernatural seal. This does not, however, prevent the Church, by making use of the counsels of prudence and conforming to the precept of charity, from delaying or waiting for the error to dissipate of itself and those in error to return to the truth. Only proven obstinacy leads her to resort to spiritual sanctions, in order to preserve the purity of the faith and prevent contagion. Nor, when extreme cases compel her to resort to punitive measures—which today are limited to the separation of the heretic and the denier from her communion, and to certain disabilities (cann. 167 § 1, n. 4; 731 § 2; 762, n. 2; 795, n. 1; 1240, n. 1 § 2; 1453 § 1; 1470 § 1, n. 6; 2314 § 1, nn. 1-2 § 2; 2315, 2316, 2339, 2372 etc.)—does she do violence to freedom, since her act is nothing other than the ratification of a separation already voluntarily effected by the person who persists in error.
Her attitude is even milder toward those who were born in schism or heresy (cann. 1070 § 1 1099 etc.). Although, by virtue of the Baptism they have received, they are subject to her, she does not exercise this right toward them. Nevertheless, in order to reconstitute the unity willed by Christ, she cannot enter into compromises with the religious confessions to which they belong by yielding ground on the frontiers of dogmatic truth. At this boundary tolerance gives way to intransigence. Dogma is a single granite whole, from which it is not lawful to dislodge even one splinter. Toward unbelievers, so long as they have not freely accepted the Christian faith, she has no power other than that communicated to her by Christ to announce revealed truth to all nations (cf. can. 87, Mt. 28, 19; Mc. 16, 15-16; Lc. 24, 47). In exercising this ministry, two principles guide her action. Acceptance of the faith is a free act, which in no way can be extorted by coercion. Can. 752 prescribes that an adult may not be baptized except sciens et volens, and 1351 that in accepting the Catholic faith nemo invitus cogatur. These prescriptions derive from the principle enunciated by s. Tommaso, who develops an idea already adumbrated by s. Agostino (Serm., 112, 8; Contra Cresc., III, 55), according to which believing is an absolutely free act, quia voluntatis est. Having affirmed the absolute freedom of belief for unbelievers, s. Tommaso adds that they may lawfully be prevented from opposing the religious faith through blasphemies, perverse counsels, and persecutions: that is, he denies the freedom to cause harm, emphasizing the social aspect of the right (Sum. Theol., 2ᵃ-2ᵃᶜ, q. 10, a. 8).
The second principle consists in preserving and defending the customs, traditions, and ethnic and linguistic particularities of unbelieving peoples that contain nothing contrary to the natural law, revealed truth, or the right worship of God. As an example of this constant directive in the conduct of missionary apostolate, one may cite the instructions that s. Gregorio Magno gave to s. Agostino, whom he sent to the British Isles. He advised him not to destroy the pagan temples, but to consecrate them to the worship of the true God, and allowed the preservation of local customs and traditional festivals, provided that they were purified of all idolatrous significance (cf. G. Cappello, Gregorio I e il suo pontificato, Salerno 1904, pp. 33-37). Pio XII expressed the same concept in the encyclical Summi Pontificatus (20 Oct. 1939) and in the more recent one on the missions of 2 June 1951. In a Christian society, as s. Tommaso had already clearly stated (Sum. Theol., 2ᵃ-2ᵃᶜ, q. 10, a. 8), the rites of unbelievers may be tolerated, always according to the principle already noted of the lesser evil dictated by prudence.
III. RELIGIOUS TOLERANCE ON THE PART OF THE STATE
The question of religious tolerance on the part of the State is somewhat more complex; it has already been obscured by the agnostic ideology of liberalism and confused by those Catholic currents that have yielded to its allure and accepted its conclusions. The thesis still maintained by the latter today can be summarized in the following propositions. Before the civil power, in the temporal order, all religious confessions are equal, and all must be granted the same freedom of life and propaganda, applying the democratic criterion of juridical equality. Consequently, the State must assume toward them a superior attitude of impartiality and indifference, without granting any of them privileges or special treatment. The old distinction between thesis and hypothesis must be regarded as anachronistic and superseded; accordingly, tolerance must be understood as recognition of the juridical parity of religions and the granting of the same freedom to each of them, independently of its content of truth or error. The thesis just expounded, solely in its statements concerning religious freedom, was expressly condemned by Gregory XVI (encyclical Mirari vos, 15 August 1832; Denz-U, 1614), by Pius IX in propositions 77–79 of the Syllabus (Denz-U, 1777–79), and by Leo XIII in the encyclical Libertas (20 June 1888); this alone would suffice to set it aside as contrary to Catholic thought. It will not, however, be out of place to mention the more recent arguments by which an attempt has been made to bring it up to date.It is asserted that the true religion may be understood in an objective sense and in a subjective sense. In the former, only the Christian religion is true; in the latter, the true religion is that which each person in good faith regards as such.
It is further added that conscience is the proximate norm of morality, which must always be followed, even when it is in error, on pain of falling into moral guilt. Whoever, therefore, has an invincibly erroneous conscience must conform his conduct to it; and since a duty corresponds to a right, he possesses the faculty of asserting it before the State, which must respect and protect II. All the more so since modern civilization differs from ancient and medieval civilization through the importance it assigns to subjective values. On the other hand, the State lacks the means to implement a policy favoring true religion in the objective sense, since in its political action it follows natural criteria that do not enable it to distinguish true religions from false ones. It therefore has no alternative but to adopt an impartial attitude toward all confessions, granting them all the same freedom. Moreover, by virtue of its purpose, the State is called to act on the merely human plane, not on the transcendent plane, to which true religion belongs; it is not its office to investigate the truth of that religion, and thus, once again, it has no alternative but to treat all confessions alike. The objection arising from ecclesiastical teaching against this solution to the problem of religious freedom is then overcome by applying a historical criterion, through which a distinction is made between what is essential to the Christian message and what is merely a temporary reflection. The propositions of the Syllabus (8 December 1864), the teaching of Leo XIII (especially in the aforementioned encyclical Libertas), and the common Catholic tradition, which arose under the influence of the political conditions of the Middle Ages and was elevated by writers of that period to the status of a thesis, would belong to this reflection.
The common doctrine nevertheless remains firmly anchored in the following propositions, the exposition of which will help to assess the value of the reasons on which the new thesis concerning religious freedom is being grounded. The first proposition concerns the right to freely seek the truth. This is a right inherent in the rationality of the human person, which prevents the State from interfering in the conscience of the individual, especially in religious matters. Man cannot believe nonnisi volens, according to the phrase of s. Augustine (cf. De libero arbitrio, I, 6, 14). The State can only facilitate the personal attainment of truth by removing obstacles and cooperating in its dissemination. Tolerance has no application in this sphere, since where a right exists, there is a duty of respect.
The conclusion changes when one passes from private life to public life, in which every subjective right remains limited by the requirements of the common good and by the juridical order that protects II. Once, therefore, the State’s incompetence to interfere in private beliefs has been recognized, its power to impose limits on the exercise of freedom must also be acknowledged, in order to coordinate its use with the common good. This principle is adopted by all modern positive legislations, even the most liberal, which have never sanctioned an unlimited right to freedom, but have subjected it to restrictions, often derived from the general criterion of common morality. The same Charter of Human Rights of the United Nations proclaimed the right to freedom in conditional terms. The second proposition common to Catholic doctrine concerns the State’s power to regulate the social manifestations of freedom, including religious freedom. The third determines the manner of this legitimate intervention.
The action of the State rests upon law and is regulated by law. In order, therefore, to determine what its concrete attitude in religious matters should be, it has the obligation to ascertain where the law lies, so as to protect II. Now, law is rooted in truth and always accompanies it, whereas error is without II. Consequently, the State must protect the truth, which it can in no way place on the same level as error, and must therefore safeguard the true religion; its special treatment cannot be viewed as a privilege, but must be regarded as a strict duty of justice. Once these principles have been established, it is easy to see how an attitude of superior indifference toward all religious confessions is morally and juridically illegitimate, and how the asserted juridical equality of all religions is incoherent. Such a thesis presupposes political agnosticism.
To reinforce the preceding conclusion there is also, as Leo XIII had already pointed out in the encyclical Libertas (20 June 1888), the duty of the State as such to render public worship to the true God in the manner established by Him; in carrying this out, it must necessarily abandon an attitude of neutrality toward all confessions. The arguments set forth possess an autonomous value on the plane of pure rationality; revelation confirms them with two dogmatic points, from which Catholic speculation cannot depart without denying itself. First of all, it is a revealed dogma that the true religion is one and unique, and that this characteristic belongs only to the Christian religion, founded on the divine message of Jesus Christ, revealer and redeemer. Secondly, it is likewise a dogma that the one true religion is organized in a visible and transcendent society, the Catholic Church, to which it is necessary to belong in order to be saved. Given this, it smacks of heresy to affirm the juridical equality of all religions and even to assign to the Catholic State the task of maintaining a superior neutrality toward all the religions present and active within II. The Catholic State, as the supreme ecclesiastical magisterium has invariably taught, has the duty of justice to protect and assist the Church, facilitating its moralizing and sanctifying mission. Nor, in doing so, does it violate the democratic principle of equality. Quite apart from the fact that objective equality does not exist between the true religion and false religions, its interpretation is erroneous when it disregards the necessary proportionality that the application of the principle requires in social life, which grades favors according to the objective importance of the subjects and their greater or lesser contribution to the common good. The adoption of a leveling equality would be contrary to justice, since it would deny the natural hierarchy of rights.
Nevertheless—and this is the fourth proposition common to Catholic doctrine—the rights of the true religion and the duties of the State toward it are not opposed to the application of the principle of t. toward other confessions. Respect for individual freedom in the search for truth, and the right to conform one’s conduct in the sphere of private life to one’s personal opinions in religious matters, even when they are manifestly erroneous, must also be maintained in the Catholic State. In the social sphere, where its action directly takes place, it is not forbidden to grant error a more or less broad freedom, not because an erroneous and subjective conscience has any right whatsoever to assert itself in public life, but because of the demands of the common good, to which authority is compelled, in order to avoid the greater evil, to adapt the application of theoretical principles. Nor is there anything to prevent t. from being expressed in legal safeguards for other religions, which may even extend to the granting of legal equality if circumstances require it in order to secure the peaceful coexistence of citizens. Legal protection and legal equality do not in themselves imply a judgment of evaluation. It must be noted, however, that in applying the principle of t. it is impossible to establish a single rule; the measure must each time be deduced from the factual conditions in which each individual society finds itself and from the more general tendencies of the age. T. is an extremely flexible attitude, adapting itself to all the contours of the terrain on which political authority operates, and taking account of the prevailing orientations of thought in a given period of civilization. It becomes rigid only in the face of practices, associations, and confessions that are contrary to the common principles of morality and to the good of the community. It may be affirmed that at the present time, when human beings have acquired a particular sensitivity toward whatever in any way appears contrary to freedom of conscience and to personal dignity, the State must handle the question of religious freedom with the utmost prudence, showing itself tolerant toward other religions without, however, disregarding the rights of the true religion. A tempering of the demands of the thesis by the requirements of the hypothesis is today more necessary than ever, in order to meet the sensitive contemporary conscience. Love and understanding are more effective than any coercion in the spread of truth.
The objection that the State cannot adopt a policy of preference for the true religion because it lacks the means to know which religion it is has no foundation. Against it stands the definition of the First Vatican Council, according to which human beings possess the power, by pure reason, to attain knowledge of the existence of God and of the duties that bind them to Him. As for revealed religion, to know it one might suffice with the historical criterion of its insertion into the course of time, and to evaluate its truth, with the content of its doctrine (First Vatican Council, sess. III, chaps. 3–4; Denz-U, 1789–1800). The assertion of a total separation between the temporal and the spiritual must likewise be considered false if by this it is meant that the State, called to operate in the former sphere, cannot take account of the principles enunciated by the latter. It must be borne in mind that, according to Revelation, the economy in which human beings and consequently the State now live is a supernatural economy and that, therefore, in the Catholic sense politics cannot be conceived as an activity founded on purely human principles, according to the thesis of so-called integral humanism. The State too is obliged to accept Revelation and to shape its conduct according to its higher prescriptions; this becomes a more urgent political necessity when the majority of its citizens have embraced the Christian religion. The order of Grace is realized in the human being, who is at once Christian and citizen; nor can the State, as the political organization of a people whose faith it is obliged to respect and protect by its own means, disregard this twofold formal character.