What Is the Right to Religious Freedom? | Fr. Dylan Schrader | HPR
The most fundamental right in the area of religion is that which should be attributed to God, what we owe to God. God is absolutely sovereign.
Catholics of the United States are more than ever asserting a right to religious freedom, given by God and guaranteed by the Constitution of our country. Still, there is a grave danger that we may end up harming our cause by promoting, or seeming to promote, a false notion of the right to religious freedom. Pope Leo XIII wrote, “The world has heard enough of the so-called ‘rights of man.’ Let it hear something of the rights of God.” 1 It is only in the context of the rights of God that the rights of man have any firm foundation, and it is only on the basis of God’s sovereign rights that we can truly understand or defend our rights. 2
In its most basic sense, “right” means a thing that is attributed to someone by virtue of a title. The right (the objective right) is the thing that is owed, as in, “This paycheck is my right.” Since a person’s right is owed to him, he can demand it. Others, in turn, are bound by justice either to respect his right if he possesses it (e.g., by not robbing him) or to render it to him if they have deprived him of it (e.g., by paying back a debt).
More often, it seems that we use “right” to refer to the power to demand what is owed (the subjective right), as in, “I have a right to my paycheck.” The power to demand what is owed, however, is logically subsequent to the fact of a thing’s being owed. Thus, the subjective right, the power to demand what is owed, derives from the objective right, the thing that is attributed, and therefore, owed to someone by virtue of a title. The distinction between the objective right (the object that is owed) and the subjective right (the subject’s power to demand what is owed) is important for understanding the relationship between rights and debts. 3
The most fundamental right in the area of religion is that which should be attributed to God, what we owe to God. God is absolutely sovereign.
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