MANILA, Philippines - The problems of religious liberty have not totally disappeared. We still live in a world where governments might persecute religionists. Some important religions might still fan the flames of religious wars. And there are also those who would make government the instrument for promoting their own beliefs.

We are fortunate that we live in a society that honors religious liberty. One of the immediate effects of the advent of the American constitutional system in the Philippines was the denial to the Catholic church of the privileged position it occupied under Spanish sovereignty. Corollary to the cutting down of the privileged position of the Catholic church was the recognition of the equal position of other religions.

We have enshrined the doctrine in a constitutional provision which consists of two clauses: (1) the non-establishment clause and (2) the free exercise clause.

The first clause prohibits making any religion the official state religion. More than that, however, the non-establishment clause has been understood to mean that: (1) government must not prefer one religion over another religion; (2) government funds must not be applied to religious purposes except where the Constitution allows it; (3) government action must not directly aid religion; (4) government action must not result in excessive entanglement with religion.

What is behind all these among others is the desire to prevent inter-faith dissension in a pluralist society such as ours.

The second clause, the free exercise clause, prohibits the state from interfering with the religious behavior of people either by compelling them to do something or preventing them from acting according to their religious belief. The doctrine is succinctly put in a classic statement from jurisprudence: “The constitutional inhibition on legislation on the subject of religion has a double aspect. On the one hand, it forestalls compulsion by law of the acceptance of any creed or the practice of any form of worship. Freedom of conscience and freedom to adhere to such religious organization or form of worship as the individual may choose cannot be restricted by law. On the other hand, it safeguards the free exercise of the chosen form of religion. Thus the amendment embraces two concepts—freedom to believe and freedom to act. The first is absolute, but in the nature of things, the second cannot be.”

The constitutional doctrine on religious liberty is widely known in our society, even if perhaps not in its more detailed nuances. But what is perhaps not as well known is that religious liberty is also, especially since Vatican II, the official teaching of the Catholic Church. Learning what the Catholic teaching is on the matter is important for Catholics living and acting in a pluralist society such as ours.

What eventually came out as Vatican II’s was largely the work of the Jesuit theologian John Courtney Murray, who taught many Filipino Jesuits in the United States including myself, and Bishop Emile De Smedt, of Bruges. Murray considered religious liberty important for himself both as a theologian and as an American living in pluralist America.

Murray himself summed up two essential points of doctrine: “First, it is asserted that every man by right of nature (jure naturae) has the right to the free exercise of religion in society according to the dictates of his personal conscience. This right belongs essentially to the dignity of the human person as such. Secondly, the juridical consequences of this right are asserted, namely, that an obligation falls on other men in society, and upon the state in particular, to acknowledge this personal right, to respect it in practice, and to promote its free exercise.”

From this it is obvious that legislators who act for the state must, in formulating laws that affect matters of religious belief, remember that they are dealing not just with a constitutional doctrine but also with a right belonging essentially to the dignity of the human person.

Vatican II found it necessary to announce its official teaching generally for four reasons. First, it wanted to state the true doctrine of the Church as clarified by theological reflection and political experience. Second, the Church wanted to assume “patronage of the dignity of the human person” in an age of tyranny. Third, the Church recognized that now is the age of pluralist societies where men of all religions or no religion must live together in relationships of peace, justice and friendship. Fourth, it was part of the ecumenical hope of the Church, a hope for unity to be nourished in conditions of freedom in human society.

In upholding religious freedom, however, the Church did not mean to proclaim that the human conscience is not bound by any divine laws but only by self-created norms. As Murray again put it, the Church still rejects “a concept of religious freedom that would be based on the ideology of religious indifferentism, that is, on the notion that all religions are equally true, or equally false. Furthermore, the Church today must still reject a concept of religious freedom that would be based on the ideology of doctrinal relativism, that is, on the philosophical notion that there is no objective criterion of truth.”

Indeed, even as we in our Constitution proclaim non-establishment and free exercise of religion, we at the same time implore “the aid of Almighty God in order to build a just and humane society.”