Born in late October of 1833, Tommaso Maria Cardinal Zigliara, O.P., (pictured above) was a member of seven Roman congregations, prefect of the Congregation of Studies and co-president of the Academy of St. Thomas Aquinas. Under the direction of Pope Leo XIII, he was a principal agent for promoting the revival of scholastic philosophy throughout the entire Catholic Church. Cd. Zigliara passed away in Rome on the 11th of May, 1893.

Article III — Thesis (66)

On the liberty of cult.

I. The concept of freedom of worship. Freedom of worship is intimately connected with freedom of conscience. For if every citizen is free to establish his religion at will, when religion also implies external worship, every citizen must be free to profess his religion by any external worship: and since the State cannot infringe the freedom of conscience, so neither can it prohibit the freedom of worship, unless it must be sanctioned by its laws. Thus liberalism, whose opinion the Church gave, as in the previous article1 was reported. Because, therefore, freedom of worship is entirely founded on freedom of conscience; it must be refuted by the same process and the same principles that we have laid down against freedom of conscience. Let the first conclusion be then:

II. Freedom of worship viewed in itself is absurd. This proposition remains primarily proved from what has been said above. For freedom of worship is inferred only from freedom of conscience. Because this is absurd, it must also be said to be absurd. — But further. By granting man freedom of worship, God is deprived of the power to impose a specific worship on men, and a certain obligation is imposed on God to accept or at least approve any worship presented to him by human reason. For if God can prescribe worship, if it is established that he himself has really prescribed a specific worship, if he is by no means bound to accept the arbitrary worship of men, men without manifest irreligion or impiety cannot rebel against God’s commandments, and their worship, arbitrary, is a true mockery of God and freedom of worship is superstition and impiety. But on the other hand, impiety is to deny God the faculty of determining worship, and to impose in a way the duty of approving any worship indiscriminately. Therefore, freedom of worship is absurd. — Let us also conclude the second:

III. Although civil social authority may sometimes tolerate freedom of worship, it cannot in any way sanction it by any law. Nothing needs to be added about tolerance, after what has been said about the tolerance of freedom of conscience. The thesis is therefore proven as to an approbative or prescriptive law. We have proved above that political atheism is completely repugnant. Therefore, just as every citizen, so too society itself, insofar as it assumes the character of a moral person, is bound by the strictest command of nature to the duties of religion and true religion. But religion also implies external worship. Therefore, civil authority, whose duty it is to direct society, is most strictly bound to observe, inculcate, and promote it: I say, civil authority is bound to worship that is consistent with the reason for sociality, namely, public, social, and proper, in short, to society as a society, or as a public and moral personality. But false worship is not religion, but superstition and consequently error and impiety. Therefore, to sanction freedom of worship is to sanction impiety, but the denial of any social worship is the denial of religion in society as society is. Therefore, social authority, although it may sometimes tolerate freedom of worship, can never sanction it by law. — These are evident to me, and I am surprised that they are denied not even by rationalists, who, since they either explicitly deny God or only verbally abandon him, logically reject all religion from the individual and from society, but by liberalism which wants to be called Catholic. For he should know that God must be worshipped with true worship, and therefore false worship cannot be approved; God spoke to man that it was necessary to have prescribed a specific form of worship, to have established the Catholic Church as the sole teacher in matters that concern religion, and therefore to approve only worship sanctioned by the Church, preserved by God himself.

IV. NOTE. The difficulty is solved. You will say: by virtue of the freedom of worship, The Catholic Church can also freely exercise her worship, when, on the contrary, when it is taken away, the Church’s own juridical freedom is taken away. I respond that this type of argument is intended to create a falsehood and to confuse things that are distinct and should be distinguished from each other. For we can speak of freedom of worship in two ways, to the individual and absolutely.2 To the individual, namely, against those who proclaim freedom of worship, and yet (as we heard from Rousseau about freedom of conscience) harass the Church and prevent her from freely exercising her own worship, we argue in this way: Either freedom of worship must be admitted as a true social principle, or otherwise. If it must be admitted, then Catholics are unjustly and irrationally prevented from enjoying that freedom; but if otherwise, then freedom of worship is proclaimed only through a solemn lie. Which argument is indeed correct and rebukes its adversaries: hence the Catholic Church itself does not disdain it, but urges it to defend the rights of its freedom. — But that does not imply that freedom of worship can be defended absolutely by Catholics. For freedom of worship, considered in itself, is absurd and impious, as has been proven. Therefore it is absurd and impious to defend it absolutely. And although from such freedom sometimes good things arise, namely the freedom of Catholics, Catholics cannot therefore teach or defend it absolutely; for it is not permissible to say an error in apparent defense of the truth: “For if the truth of God has more abounded through my lie unto his glory; why yet am I also judged as a sinner? And not rather, (as we are slanderously reported, and as some affirm that we say,) let us do evil, that good may come? whose condemnation is just.” (Rom. III, 7-8)

END.

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