Permission to Speak: Religious Arguments in Public Reason

Abstract

In an important late essay John Rawls acknowledges the development in the Catholic Church’s attitude to politics. 1 He recognizes elements of the Catholic intellectual heritage and the contribution which it might make to political discourse, relying on the notions of natural law, common good and solidarity, as presented by authors drawing on that tradition. While acknowledging the development that has taken place, Rawls also reminds the reader of the problems that form the background to the emergence of political liberalism. A persecuting zeal has been the great curse of the Christian religion. It was shared by Luther and Calvin and the Protestant Reformers, and it was not radically changed in the Catholic Church until Vatican II. In the Council’s Declaration on Religious Freedom – Dignitatis Humanae – the Catholic Church committed itself to the principle of religious freedom as found in a constitutional democratic regime. It declared the ethical doctrine of religious freedom resting on the dignity of the human person; a political doctrine with respect to the limits of government in religious matters; and a theological doctrine of the freedom of the Church in its relations to the political and social world. All persons, whatever their faith, have the right of religious liberty on the same terms. y As John Courtney Murray, S.J., said: ‘A longstanding ambiguity had finally been cleared up. The Church does not deal with the secular order in terms of a double standard – freedom for the church when Catholics are in the minority, privilege for the Church and intolerance for others when Catholics are a majority.’ 2 The background to this acknowledgement has been an ongoing conversation, conducted mostly in the United States of America, about the role of religion in public life. In the literature of this conversation, religious thinkers recognize that philosophical liberalism as it is found in the American polity is hospitable to religion in public life, at least to the extent of being tolerant. 3 Finding themselves at home in the public space, these thinkers investigate the appropriate role of religious language and what religion has to contribute. Of course there is an acceptance of some separation and some difference, so that the rules of participation in the two spheres of religion and politics are different. Out of this literature has