Document Type
Article
Publication Date
2016
Publication Information
9 Citizens & Statesmen 22 (2016).
Abstract
It is a commonplace to say - as Pope Benedict XVI did in his 2005 Christmas Address to the Roman Curia - that the Second Vatican Council gave "a new definition to the relationship between the Church and the modern State." This is true enough. But the Council's initiatives were more daring than that. It is closer to the truth to say - as many have, including in so many words Pope Benedict - that the Fathers at Vatican II took up a complex set of questions about important human activities, both personal and social and with a long tradition of answers proposed both authoritatively by the Church and more speculatively by learned commentators, which came to them bundled together as "church and state." And they then substituted for it for a fresh way of apprehending and dealing with those matters, a new bundle (if you will).
It would be closer to the truth to say that the Council "redefined" the relationship between church and state as the relationship between faith and culture.
Recommended Citation
Gerard V. Bradley,
A Culture of Religious Liberty,
9 Citizens & Statesmen 22 (2016)..
Available at:
https://scholarship.law.nd.edu/law_faculty_scholarship/1766
Included in
Law Commons, Religious Thought, Theology and Philosophy of Religion Commons, Sociology of Culture Commons