TOLERANCE. - In common usage it indicates a disposition of the soul and a consequent practical attitude of indulgence and longanimity toward a way of thinking, an action, or a fact that clashes with one's convictions or injures one's rights. Therefore the subject who feels wronged does not react, as he might have the power to do, nor does he outwardly manifest his disapproval, but adopts a benevolent attitude, permitting evil and error to exist and enduring their consequences; tolerance, then, in its original meaning, has as its necessary term of reference evil, whose presence induces one to endure, for natural or supernatural motives, despite the contrary suggestion of conscience, which condemns evil, and of the moral law, which would wish it suppressed. Referred to ideas and religious convictions, it has as its proper object 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 motion of rational nature. More concisely, tolerance can be defined as a negative attitude toward present or foreseen evil. It consequently includes in its concept the speculative reprobation of evil and error and practical indulgence toward them and toward those who commit and embrace them. It presupposes, therefore, a different evaluation of the fact, deduced from the objective order of values, and for that very reason excludes the equation between good and evil, between truth and error.
In a subjectivist conception, for which every stable criterion of truth loses its value, or in any case one that is morally and religiously agnostic, tolerance loses its content and its object, and a meaning different from the original is attributed to the word. For such a conception it either amounts to speculative indifference, seasoned with skepticism, toward all opinions and faiths, or it is reduced to a practical attitude that attributes the same value to truth and to error, as subjective expressions of conscience. In this sense the term has been employed by Catholic liberalism and is still employed today by those who link themselves to liberal religious agnosticism. In reality tolerance presupposes an objective inequality, the presence of a positive value and of a negative one, to which latter a regard dictated by motives of prudence is granted. It is not a virtue, but results from the exercise of charity or of prudence, not imposed by a norm of right granted along with the negative value, but by contingent necessities which, with a term that has become common, are usually called hypotheses.
I. GENERAL NOTIONS
Tolerance is intimately connected with the hypothesis, which is the opposite of the thesis. For while the latter is composed of universal principles and sets forth perennial and immutable demands, from which emerge moral and juridical norms valid in every age and among all peoples, the former indicates a state of fact, a contingent political and religious situation, variable in time and space. Whence it follows that tolerance does not obey a univocal criterion, but this is deduced from time to time from the objective conditions of the society to which it must be applied. The necessity, more or less pressing, of its application arises from the conflict which often exists between the thesis and the hypothesis, which it tends to bridge, suggesting a prudential attitude toward evil and error.
Every practical science is composed of two moments: in the first it investigates the universal laws of private or public conduct, in the second it passes to the application of those same laws 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 unless it first examines the elements that can influence his conduct, creating facilities or impediments for him. This double movement expresses the distinction between speculative science and casuistry, of which the first formulates the thesis, the second models itself on the hypothesis. When a conflict arises between the one and the other, the principles of the thesis cannot be applied in an integral manner, and therefore tolerance supervenes to suggest an adaptation. This can, then, be considered as a practical and prudential solution of the conflict existing on the plane of reality between the law and its integral application. Its moral foundation is therefore neither an objective equality of all opinions and all religious confessions, nor the false concept of liberty which recognizes in man the faculty of orienting himself as he wishes, nor a particular positive evaluation of the so-called rights of the subjective conscience, but solely the necessity of adapting the principle to the possibilities of application offered by concrete life. Tolerance does not deny the principle, which always remains the ideal term, but suggests a flexible attitude. Truth and good remain the pre-eminent values, and error and evil are not placed on the same plane as these.
The lawfulness of such a compromise between principles and reality was founded by the ancient writers on prudence, which as recta ratio in agibilibus manifests itself in the art of knowing how to adapt to reality, in order to avoid the greater evil. Practical life in its actual unfolding is sustained by two pillars: on the ideal, to which belong the supreme directives of action; on the real, from which emerge the elements that condition its application. The same criterion of the adoption of the lesser evil, by which tolerance is guided, was developed by Leo XIII in the encyclical Libertas (June 20, 1888).
Tolerance, in conformity with the immediate object to which it refers, can be religious or civil: the first concerns opinions in matters of faith and religious confessions, the second properly concerns political ideologies and the forces operating within the State. Nevertheless, the tolerance of the State toward religious confessions is often called civil. It is well, however, to adhere to the more common division, noting how, with regard to religious tolerance, a distinction is also usually made between dogmatic tolerance and practical tolerance, of which the first concerns revealed truth and has as its subject solely the Church. The exercise of tolerance can concern the individual in his private conduct, supernatural society, and civil society. On each of these subjects a word must be said.
II. RELIGIOUS TOLERANCE BY THE CHURCH
It is always lawful and even obligatory for every Christian, provided he keeps the faith intact in his soul without dangerous compromises with error, to be of an inexhaustible benevolence toward all who err. He must hate evil and error, but he must love the one who commits it and the one who embraces and professes it. This obligatory tolerance rests on two reasons. He is, first of all, bound to respect the right to the free search for truth, which every man possesses by virtue of his rational nature, and furthermore he is bound to observe the precept of charity toward all. If, according to Christ's commandment, he must be disposed to love even his enemies, all the more must he nourish the same disposition toward those who were or who commit evil. The conduct of the individual can be summed up in the following phrase: intolerance toward error and evil considered in themselves, broad and welcoming tolerance toward those who err.
In the supernatural society founded on the common bond of faith, dogmatic tolerance is not possible. The mission of the Church and its intrinsic reason for existing consist, in fact, in the jealous custody of the deposit of revealed truth, whose integral acceptance is an absolute condition for salvation. Tolerance of error, which might insinuate itself in a subtle or open manner within the meshes of revealed doctrine, would be for the Church a failure in the divine mandate to teach the nations what Christ has taught and commanded, an internal corruption that would deprive it, if that were possible, of its supernatural seal. This nevertheless does not prevent the Church, making use of the suggestions of prudence and conforming to the precept of charity, from temporizing or waiting for error to dissipate of itself and for those who err to return to the truth. Only proven obstinacy decides it to have recourse to spiritual sanctions, in order to preserve the purity of the faith and prevent contagion. Nor, when extreme cases compel it to have recourse to punitive means, which today are reduced to the separation of the heretic and the denier from its communion, and to certain incapacities (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 it do violence to freedom, since its act is nothing other than the ratification of a separation already brought about voluntarily by the one who persists in error.
Its attitude is still more lenient with 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 it, it does not exercise this right of its own toward them. Nevertheless, in order to re-establish the unity willed by Christ, it cannot descend to compromises with the religious confessions to which they belong, yielding ground on the frontiers of dogmatic truth. On this limit tolerance gives way to intransigence. Dogma is a granitic whole, from which it is not lawful to blast away a single chip. Toward unbelievers, as long as they have not freely accepted the Christian faith, it has no other power than that communicated to it by Christ to announce the revealed truth to all nations (cf. can. 87, Mt. 28, 19; Mk. 16, 15-16; Lk. 24, 47). In the exercise of this ministry two principles sustain its action. The acceptance of the faith is a free act, which can in no way be extorted by coercion. Can. 752 prescribes that an adult cannot be baptized unless sciens et volens, and can. 1351 that to accept the Catholic faith nemo invitus cogatur. These prescriptions derive from the principle enunciated by St. Thomas, who develops a thought already adumbrated by St. Augustine (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 believing for unbelievers, St. Thomas adds that they may lawfully be prevented from opposing the religious faith with blasphemies, perverse counsels and persecutions: that is, he denies the freedom to do harm, bringing out the social aspect of the right (Sum. Theol., 2ᵃ-2ᵃᵉ, q. 10, a. 8).
The second principle consists in the preservation and defense of the customs, traditions and ethnic and linguistic peculiarities of unbelieving peoples, which present nothing contrary to the natural law, to revealed truth and to the right worship of God. As an example of this constant directive in the carrying out of missionary apostolate, one may adduce the instructions that St. Gregory the Great gave to St. Augustine, whom he sent to the British Isles. He advises not to destroy the pagan temples, but to consecrate them to the worship of the true God, and permits the preservation of local customs and traditional festivals, provided they are purified of every idolatrous meaning (cf. G. Cappello, Gregorio I e il suo pontificato, Salerno 1904, pp. 33-37). The same concept was set forth by Pius XII 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 St. Thomas had already clearly stated (Sum. Theol., 2ᵃ-2ᵃᵉ, q. 10, a. 8), the rites of unbelievers may be tolerated, again for the already noted principle of the lesser evil dictated by prudence.
III. RELIGIOUS TOLERANCE ON THE PART OF THE STATE
Somewhat more complex is the question of religious toleration on the part of the State, already obscured by the agnostic ideology of liberalism and rendered confused by those Catholic currents which have yielded to its fascination, accepting its conclusions. The thesis, still upheld by the latter today, is summed up in the following propositions. Before the civil power in the temporal order all religious confessions are equal, and to all of them must be granted the same freedom of life and of propaganda, applying the democratic criterion of juridical equality. Consequently the State must assume toward them a superior attitude of impartiality and indifference, without granting to any of them privileges or special treatment. The old distinction between thesis and hypothesis must be regarded as anachronistic and superseded, and therefore toleration must be understood as recognition of the juridical parity of cults and the granting of the same freedom to each of them independently of its content of truth or error. The thesis just set forth, at least in its statements concerning religious freedom, was expressly condemned by Gregory XVI (encyclical Mirari vos, 15 Aug. 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), and this alone would suffice to set it aside as contrary to Catholic thought. Nevertheless it will not be out of place to mention the more recent arguments with which an attempt has been made to bring it up to date.
The true religion, it is asserted, can be understood in an objective sense and in a subjective sense. In the first, only the Christian religion is true; in the second, on the other hand, that religion is true which each person in good faith believes to be such.
Conscience, it is added, is the proximate norm of morality, which must always be followed, even when it is in error, under penalty of falling into moral guilt. Whoever therefore has an invincibly erroneous conscience must conform his conduct to it, and since a right corresponds to a duty, he possesses the faculty of asserting it before the State, which must respect and protect it. All the more so since modern civilization is distinguished from ancient and medieval civilization by the emphasis given to subjective values. On the other hand, the State does not possess the means to carry out a policy of favor toward the true religion in the objective sense, since in its political action it is guided by natural criteria, which do not permit it to distinguish true religions from false ones. There remains for it, then, only to adopt an impartial attitude toward all confessions, granting to all the same freedom. Moreover, the State is called by its end to operate on the merely human plane, and not on the transcendent plane, to which the true religion belongs, concerning whose truth it is not its office to inquire, and therefore, once again, there remains for it only to treat all confessions in the same way. The objection that derives against this solution of the problem of religious freedom from the ecclesiastical magisterium is then overcome by the application of a historical criterion, by means of which a distinction is drawn between what is essential to the Christian message and what is a mere temporary reflection. To this reflection would belong the propositions of the Syllabus (8 Dec. 1864), the teaching of Leo XIII (especially in the aforementioned encyclical Libertas), and the common Catholic tradition, born under the influence of the political conditions of the Middle Ages, raised by the writers of that time to the rank of thesis.
The common doctrine nevertheless remains firmly anchored on the following propositions, the exposition of which will help to weigh the value of the motives on which an attempt is made to base the new thesis on religious freedom. The first proposition concerns the right of the free search for 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 St. Augustine (cf. De libero arbitrio, I, 6, 14). The State can only make easier the personal conquest of truth, removing obstacles and cooperating in its diffusion. Toleration in this field finds no application, since where a right prevails there exists the 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 it. Once the incompetence of the State to interfere in private beliefs is recognized, therefore, its faculty of imposing limits on the exercise of freedom must be recognized, 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 very charter of the rights of man of the United Nations proclaimed the right to freedom in a conditional manner. The second proposition common to Catholic doctrine concerns the faculty of the State to regulate the social manifestations of freedom, including religious freedom. The third determines the modalities of this legitimate intervention.
The action of the State rests on law and is regulated by law. To determine, therefore, what its concrete attitude in religious matters must be, it has the obligation to explore on which side the right lies, in order to protect it. Now right is rooted in truth and always accompanies it, whereas error is devoid of it. Consequently the State must protect the truth, which it can in no way place on the same level as error, and therefore must protect the true religion, whose particular treatment cannot be viewed under the aspect of privilege, but must be considered as a strict duty of justice. Once these principles are laid down, it is easy to perceive how morally and juridically illegitimate an attitude of superior indifference toward all religious confessions is, and how incoherent the asserted juridical equality of all cults is. Such a thesis presupposes political agnosticism.
To reinforce the preceding conclusion there is added, as Leo XIII already pointed out in the encyclical Libertas (June 20, 1888), the duty of the State as such to render public worship to the true God in the manner established by him, for the execution of which it must necessarily abandon its attitude of neutrality toward all confessions. The arguments set forth have an autonomous value on the plane of pure rationality; revelation confirms them with two dogmatic points, from which Catholic speculation cannot prescind without denying itself. First of all, it is a revealed dogma that the true religion is one and unique and that this note 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. This being established, it smacks of heresy to affirm the juridical equality of all cults and even to assign to the Catholic State the office of maintaining a superior neutrality toward all religions present and operating within its bosom. The Catholic State, as the supreme ecclesiastical magisterium has invariably taught, has the duty of justice to protect and assist the Church, facilitating her moralizing and sanctifying mission. Nor, in doing so, does it violate the democratic principle of equality. Apart from the fact that an equality objectively does not exist between the true religion and false ones, its interpretation is erroneous when one prescinds from the necessary proportionality that the application of the principle requires in social life, which graduates favors according to the objective relevance 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 do not oppose the application of the principle of tolerance 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 personal opinions in religious matters, even if manifestly erroneous, must be maintained even in the Catholic State. In the social sphere, where its action directly unfolds, it is not forbidden to grant a more or less broad freedom to error, not because the erroneous and subjective conscience has any right to assert itself in public life, but because of the exigencies of the common good, to which the authority is constrained, in order to avoid the greater evil, to adapt the application of theoretical principles. And nothing prevents tolerance from expressing itself in juridical protections toward other cults, which can even extend to the concession of legal equality, if the hypothesis requires it, in order to obtain the peaceful coexistence of citizens. Protection and legal equality do not in themselves imply a judgment of evaluation. It must be noted, however, that in the application of the principle of tolerance it is not possible to establish a univocal rule, but the measure must be deduced from time to time from the factual conditions in which each individual society finds itself and from the more general tendencies of the time. Tolerance is a most flexible attitude, which adapts to all the sinuosities of the terrain on which the political authority operates, and does not neglect the orientations of thought of a given period of civilization. It becomes rigid only before practices, associations and confessions that are contrary to the common principles of morality and to the good of the collectivity. It can be affirmed that at the present time, in which man has acquired a particular sensitivity toward anything that in any way appears contrary to the freedom of conscience and to his personal dignity, the State must handle with the utmost prudence the matter of religious freedom, showing itself tolerant toward other cults, without however disavowing the rights of the true religion. A tempering between the exigencies of the thesis and the demands of the hypothesis is today more than ever necessary, in order to meet the sensitive contemporary conscience. Love and understanding are more effective than any coercion for the expansion of truth.
The objection that the State cannot adopt a policy of preference for the true religion, because it does not have the means to know which it is, has no foundation. Against it stands the definition of the Vatican Council, according to which man has the power to attain by pure reason the knowledge of God's existence and of the duties that bind him to him. As for revealed religion, moreover, to know it the historical criterion of its insertion having occurred in the course of time could suffice, and to evaluate its truth, the content of its doctrine (Vatican Council, sess. III, chaps. 3-4; Denz-U, 1789-1800). False, furthermore, must be held the assertion of a total division between the temporal and the spiritual, if by this one means that the State, called to operate in the former, cannot take into account the principles enunciated by the latter. It must be borne in mind that, according to Revelation, the economy in which man today lives and consequently the State, 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 model its conduct on its superior prescriptions, which becomes a more urgent political exigency when the majority of its citizens has embraced the Christian religion. The order of Grace is realized in man, who is at once Christian and citizen, nor can the State prescind from this double formality as the political organization of the people, whose faith it is bound to respect and protect with its means.