Dignitatis humanae

Dignitatis humanae (Latin: Of the Dignity of the Human Person) is the Second Vatican Council's Declaration on Religious Freedom. In the context of the Council's stated intention “to develop the doctrine of recent popes on the inviolable rights of the human person and the constitutional order of society”, Dignitatis humanae spells out the Church's support for the protection of religious liberty. More controversially, it set the ground rules by which the Church would relate to secular states, both pluralistic ones like the U.S., and officially Catholic nations like Malta and Costa Rica.

The passage of this measure by a vote of 2,308 to 70 is considered by many one of the most significant events of the Council. This declaration was promulgated by Pope Paul VI on December 7, 1965.

Historically, the ideal of Catholic political organization was a tightly interwoven structure of the Catholic Church and secular rulers generally known as Christendom, with the Catholic Church having a favoured place in the political structure. This ideal was challenged by the Protestant Reformation, the rise of nation-states and the Enlightenment. The French Revolution, the failed radical Revolutions of 1848 and the loss of the Papal States traumatized many Catholic leaders, who held on to traditional ideas of relations with the secular powers.

Pope Pius IX had condemned the idea of abstract religious freedom. Pope Leo XIII, who had established working relationships with both the French and German secular statesmen issued the bull Testem benevolentiae nostrae against the Americanist heresy, alleged by some to be a specifically European problem wherein the attempt was made to apply democratic concepts and American models of church–state relations to Catholic Church governance in Europe.

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