Sandro Magister has a post in Chiesa today (on Traditionalists, following a January post on the "Dossettians"), on the matter of Dignitatis Humanae and the concept of religious liberty as proposed by the Fathers of the Second Vatican Council in that declaration. The basis of his articles is the Pope's epoch-making "Hermeneutics of Continuity" speech of December 2005.
As we mentioned in January 2006, in those days when we were the first English-speaking venue to discuss that address, and though Magister overlooks it in what could perhaps be considered a deliberate oversight, it is not very relevant to discuss the deeper theological aspects of Dignitatis Humanae as mentioned in the "Hermeneutics of Continuity" address because the Holy Father, in his address, made it clear that the notion of religious freedom as discussed in the Council was simply not a primarily theological proposition - it was a pragmatic solution for a practical consideration of the age (... hac nostra aetate...). Which is why it should not be incompatible with the specifically theological aspects of the matter as presented in earlier documents. [Image: repository.]
