John Courtney Murray, Religious Liberty, and Modernity: Part I: Inalienable Natural Rights

Abstract

I Religious toleration, or separation of church and state, appears to many to be a characteristically modern achievement, one that we owe to modern rationalist philosophers. But many Catholic intellectuals have a different understanding of its provenance. They follow thought of John Courtney Murray, American Jesuit theologian who, as a peritus at Second Vatican Council, had a large hand in writing Declaration on Religious Liberty (hereafter DRL). (2) And according to Murray, religious liberty, freedom of conscience, and separation of church and state are all doctrines that are fundamentally Christian in origin. With this claim Murray and his students attempt to reconcile Catholic thought with liberal democracy. That such an attempt can be successful is doubtful. But sorting out just why this is so can provide us with a better grasp of inherent aims of liberal democracy as a form of modern rationalism, and so with a better grasp both of what can reasonably be expected of it and of how one might reasonably expect to improve it. More than this, it can allow us to begin to see abiding value of classical rationalism over and against modern rationalism. While Murray's influence has waxed and waned over past fifty years, it has been waxing of late with attempt to combat what his followers see as a version of relativism in American courts. They cite opinion of majority in Planned Parenthood v. Casey: heart of liberty is right to define one's own concept of existence, of meaning, universe, and of mystery of human life. Belief about these matters could not define attributes of personhood were they formed under compulsion of State. (3) Those who disagree, and who make an attempt to guide public life according to standards of justice that transcend autonomous self, are in court's view necessarily guilty of irrational animosity toward those who refuse to recognize such standards. (4) Students of Murray have therefore been attempting to provide what they believe to be a more sound, more coherent understanding of our polity. (5) Noting that Murray recognized as early as 1953 growing loss or denial of transcendent in American life, and in particular Murray's attention to what he called moral confusion ... suspended over a spiritual vacuum, (6) they hope to restore an understanding of those truths that, according to Murray, we must hold if our civic life is to be healthy and morally sound. They do so, moreover, with confident understanding, inspired by Murray, that best understanding of constitutional democracy is to be found in Thomistic tradition of Catholic Church. At heart of their understanding of Thomism is Murray's twofold claim that, first, political and social life has a natural purpose, namely, to ordain what common good, exigencies of a humanly virtuous life in common demand; and second, that the human person is free in society when all his inalienable rights are juridically guaranteed immunity from inhibition and provided with due conditions of their exercise. (7) Murray, a champion of religious liberty and rights of individual, was also a champion of natural law and obligations it imposes upon human beings in light of common good. Hence his thought is, as his growing number of admirers believe, able to guide us out of present crisis in American public life. They regard Murray's thought as liberal but teleological. There is much to admire in both Murray's thought and work of those who have begun elaborating upon that thought in face of our present difficulties. Nonetheless, there are practical and theoretical difficulties that attend that endeavor, not least of which is his attempted synthesis of natural law and inalienable natural rights, a synthesis that threatens to lead to a serious confusion on part of Catholics and non-Catholics alike. …