I should first direct you to Catechism #1897-1904, which lays out a general view of civil authority, its foundation and purpose, etc. In short, the Catholic view is that human societies, by their nature, need an organizing structure with authority. It's not hard to see why this is so. If human beings are to live together, there have to be rules to prevent chaos and to protect the rights and values the people hold to be worth protecting. Without any authority with power to enforce the rules, there will not be adequate protection of these things. The role of human authorities, sanctioned by God, is to enforce boundaries that protect the people's basic rights and core values from harm and allow the best conditions for human flourishing.
Now, let's get into #2104-2109 in the Catechism.
2104 "All men are bound to seek the truth, especially in what concerns God and his Church, and to embrace it and hold on to it as they come to know it."26 This duty derives from "the very dignity of the human person."27 It does not contradict a "sincere respect" for different religions which frequently "reflect a ray of that truth which enlightens all men,"28 nor the requirement of charity, which urges Christians "to treat with love, prudence and patience those who are in error or ignorance with regard to the faith."29
All human beings have a moral duty to seek the truth, especially in the most fundamental matters. As the Westminster Shorter Catechism beautifully puts it, "Man's chief end is to glorify God and enjoy him forever." We are made to love God and enjoy his beauty and be happy in him. And he is Ultimate Reality, Ultimate Truth. Knowing and loving God therefore involves a seeking after and love of truth.
The Catholic worldview claims that the beliefs of the Catholic faith are actually true. This logically implies that any beliefs which are contrary to Catholic beliefs cannot be true. (Yes, there is such a thing as "paradoxical truths," where two claims that appear or are presented as contradictory turn out to be actually complementary, such as Jesus's famous saying that we must lose our lives to find them. But actual contradictory claims, in the strict sense of the terms, cannot both be true. They necessarily exclude each other.) But the Catechism wants to emphasize here that this does not mean that non-Catholic religions are entirely false. There is typically much truth and goodness in all religions. And the belief that Catholicism is true should not lead to a kind of triumphalist attitude that looks down on non-Catholics in a way that does not respect their full dignity as equal human persons. (Unfortunately, however, this has often happened. It is an inevitable risk: People who believe they have knowledge of what is true and good will be naturally at risk of being triumphalistic. That doesn't mean that no one actually knows any truth or that no one should claim to know any truth, but it is a danger that must be guarded against.)
2105 The duty of offering God genuine worship concerns man both individually and socially. This is "the traditional Catholic teaching on the moral duty of individuals and societies toward the true religion and the one Church of Christ."30 By constantly evangelizing men, the Church works toward enabling them "to infuse the Christian spirit into the mentality and mores, laws and structures of the communities in which [they] live."31 The social duty of Christians is to respect and awaken in each man the love of the true and the good. It requires them to make known the worship of the one true religion which subsists in the Catholic and apostolic Church.32 Christians are called to be the light of the world. Thus, the Church shows forth the kingship of Christ over all creation and in particular over human societies.33
As individuals, we want our lives to be guided by what is true. Falsehood, by its very nature, leads us astray. We want our beliefs to be in conformity to reality as much as possible so that we can live our lives in accordance with reality and not contrary to it (for when our lives and reality get into a conflict, reality always wins). This is no less true for groups of individuals going forward together - or, in other words, for human societies.
This leads to a crucially important realization, and one that is sometimes lost on modern Americans: There can be no such thing, nor should there be such a thing, as individual or societal neutrality with regard to the fundamental questions of life. Neutrality is impossible, for we are always acting on the basis of what we believe about the world. We have some idea of what we think is real and true, and from that we form ideas about what we think is good and beneficial, and we act on those beliefs in deciding how to live. In a society, we makes rules and laws and perform communal actions based on what we believe to be true and good. As I like to put it, "societal laws/policies are applied ethics, and ethics is applied worldviews."
Nor is neutrality desirable, for to be neutral with regard to some belief or claim is practically to adopt an agnostic attitude towards that claim - that is, to act as if we do not have knowledge regarding the truth of the claim. If that is so, then to seek neutrality is to seek a kind of ignorance. It is to deliberately withhold important information about reality from our decision-making processes. If we have access to knowledge about what is true and good, particularly if that knowledge has significant practical relevance, then wisdom says we should take that knowledge into account in our decisions about how to live. It is irrational to deliberately ignore vital information relevant to living well.
Of course, it may be the case that we don't actually have sufficient knowledge to determine the truth of certain claims. Perhaps agnosticism on certain points is a rational choice because, in fact, we don't or can't know what is true. If that's the case, then both our individual lives and our communal lives should reflect that agnostic approach. But then we should notice that we still do not have a society that is neutral with regard to fundamental disputes about reality. For example, a Muslim and an agnostic have different ideas about what we do or can know about reality. Muslims think we know things about God, God's values, etc., that agnostics think we don't know. If society adopts laws/policies that assume an agnostic approach, it is siding with an agnostic view over against a Muslim view. Siding with an agnostic view is no more neutral than siding with an Islamic view. So worldview neutrality is impossible both for individuals and for societies, and agnosticism is only a desirable basis for individual or communal life if we assume that the agnostic approach correctly approximates what we can and can't know - a claim that will be disputed by non-agnostics.
So what if it is the case that it is possible to know that Catholicism is true? A person who does not hold the Catholic worldview, such as an agnostic, of course will not agree that we can know this, but the Catholic faith teaches that we can. That doesn't mean that everyone knows it is true, or that it is always easy to know that it is true. But it means that, for most people (at least if the Catholic faith has been made known to them), it is possible to know that it is true. If I, as an individual, think that I have reason to believe the claim that Catholicism is actually true, what should I do? I should act on it, of course. I should live my life in accordance with it, for to do otherwise would be to irrationally choose to direct my life in a direction contrary to reality and thus to embrace falsehood and harm. Well, what if a human society comes to believe that Catholicism is true? What should they do? Should they ignore or reject that truth, or should they take it into account in their societal decisions and actions and in their laws and policies? I don't think this is a very hard question, once we think it through. A lot of people have pointed out that the ideal of "religious neutrality" in society, which has come to be associated with the idea of "secularism" for a lot of people, is an ideal that lacks principled consistency. For some examples, see here, here, and here. (The first two authors, by the way, are atheists, and the third is a Latter-day Saint.)
Paragraph #2105 in the Catechism teaches that human individuals and societies have an obligation to seek the truth and follow it and to offer God genuine worship (for, if God is the Supreme Being, then to honor him should be our deepest value). As the Church puts it in another place,
Authority should always be exercised as a service, respecting fundamental human rights, a just hierarchy of values, laws, distributive justice, and the principle of subsidiarity. All those who exercise authority should seek the interests of the community before their own interest and allow their decisions to be inspired by the truth about God, about man and about the world (Compendium of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, #463).
But the Catechism also points out that Christians should influence society towards the truth by means of evangelizing the members of society - that is, by communicating the gospel to them in the hope that they might come to voluntarily embrace it. If the people of society voluntarily embrace the gospel and live according to it, society will come more and more to reflect its beliefs and values.
It should also be pointed out that none of this means that Christians cannot coexist with non-Christians within human societies or that they cannot work together in the governance of society. If "secularism" is presented as a strict worldview-neutrality, it is problematic from a Catholic point of view. But if "secularism" simply means that people with different worldviews should work together in society and govern it in a cooperative and non-violent way, then it is perfectly consistent with and congenial to the Catholic worldview. In a less naive version of secularism, the idea is that we have a society full of people with different worldviews - different beliefs and values. Everyone is trying to live in accordance with their own beliefs and values, and everyone is trying to shape society to better match their beliefs and values. Everyone - not just Evangelical Christians, or Catholics, or Muslims, but also atheists, agnostics, Buddhists, etc. Everyone has an idea of what they think society should be like, and everyone (well, everyone who cares about the common good anyway) is working to help bring that kind of society into existence using the influence they have. But, in a pluralistic society, while there may be a lot of overlap in beliefs and values, there is not always complete overlap, for different worldviews with different beliefs can lead to different values and priorities, and so there is a struggle as different visions compete to be implemented by the society. Thus arises our cultural battles over such things as abortion, euthanasia, capital punishment, and many other things. Some worldviews might advocate violence as the proper method for resolving worldview disputes in society, and this will obviously create difficulties for coexistence. But many other worldviews, Catholicism included, have the resources to recognize the value of working together by means of a non-violent and democratic process to move society forward.
2106 "Nobody may be forced to act against his convictions, nor is anyone to be restrained from acting in accordance with his conscience in religious matters in private or in public, alone or in association with others, within due limits."34 This right is based on the very nature of the human person, whose dignity enables him freely to assent to the divine truth which transcends the temporal order. For this reason it "continues to exist even in those who do not live up to their obligation of seeking the truth and adhering to it."35
Human societies must have rules. There must be limits on what is allowed in order to protect society from harm and allow the common good to flourish. However, society must also avoid overregulating human behavior. Why? Because of conscience and free will. Conscience, in Catholic terminology, refers to the role and capacity of reason to examine and come to conclusions regarding matters of right and wrong. Free will refers to the ability God has given us to use our reason to make rational choices. We have been designed by God with the capacity to examine the world around us and to seek and arrive at truth as we follow the evidence where it leads, as well as the capacity to choose freely to follow truth once we have found it. We have a moral obligation to do these things. Therefore, we have a right to have sufficient freedom and "free space" to be able to perform these functions. In short, we have a right to be granted room to perform the duties of forming our moral conscience and of following it. Human authority in society should facilitate the ability of its members to properly exercise their consciences by avoiding interfering with their independence and freedom without good cause.
If the authorities micromanage the members of society, there will not be sufficient room for them to exercise their reason and their free will. If the authorities pressure people to violate their consciences, they will be pressuring them to choose what is wrong or to sin, because it is always a sin to go against one's conscience (Catechism #1790). Why is it always a sin to go against one's conscience? Because following one’s conscience is just another way of saying following what one sincerely believes to be actually right. Conscience is a judge rather than a lawmaker. It does not make something good or bad, but simply attempts to discern what is objectively good or bad. As a judge, it must be informed by the sources of the objective moral law in both reason and revelation and it is required to be in conformity with the objective moral law. From thence arises the obligation we all have to properly form our consciences–that is, to gain accurate knowledge and develop wisdom so that our consciences will properly reflect the moral law. Conscience can be wrong, and yet, still, there is always an obligation to follow one’s conscience because we must always choose to follow what we believe to be right. Consider a math class analogy. With math problems, there are objective answers as to what is right and wrong (correct and incorrect). For example, 2+2=4, not 5. When taking a math test, students should always put down what they sincerely believe to be the right answer, even though it is possible that they might be wrong in what they think is the right answer. Sometimes they might be wrong through no fault of their own, but sometimes a student might get a wrong answer because he failed to adequately study for the test, and then he is more culpable for his wrong answer. But society has to give space for its members to be able to form and follow their consciences so as to avoid, as much as reasonably possible, pressuring people into sinning. St. Paul addresses this kind of situation in Romans 14:13-23 (New Revised Standard Version Catholic Edition [NRSVCE], verse numbers and footnotes removed and formatting slightly edited):
Let us therefore no longer pass judgment on one another, but resolve instead never to put a stumbling block or hindrance in the way of another. I know and am persuaded in the Lord Jesus that nothing is unclean in itself; but it is unclean for anyone who thinks it unclean. If your brother or sister is being injured by what you eat, you are no longer walking in love. Do not let what you eat cause the ruin of one for whom Christ died. So do not let your good be spoken of as evil. For the kingdom of God is not food and drink but righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit. The one who thus serves Christ is acceptable to God and has human approval. Let us then pursue what makes for peace and for mutual upbuilding. Do not, for the sake of food, destroy the work of God. Everything is indeed clean, but it is wrong for you to make others fall by what you eat; it is good not to eat meat or drink wine or do anything that makes your brother or sister stumble. The faith that you have, have as your own conviction before God. Blessed are those who have no reason to condemn themselves because of what they approve. But those who have doubts are condemned if they eat, because they do not act from faith; for whatever does not proceed from faith is sin.
Here we have a situation where some people think that something is wrong to eat when in fact it is not. But even though there is in fact nothing wrong with eating, the person who eats thinking he is doing something wrong is sinning, because he is making a choice (as he thinks) to break God's moral law. St. Paul warns those who are not confused over what can be eaten and what cannot be eaten not to use their knowledge as an occasion to tempt into sin (to scandalize) those who do not have this knowledge.
From all of this arises the Catholic version of the principle of freedom of conscience. As the Catechism says, human beings have a moral right to have this freedom protected by society. But this freedom is not absolute. It has due limits. This is because, as we said earlier, societies always have to balance the protection of freedom and conscience with the protection of society and its values from the harm of certain actions. If, for example, my conscience tells me that I ought to kill all my neighbors who live on my street, society should still prohibit me from doing this and even, if necessary, use force to prevent me from doing it, despite the fact that such prohibition and force interferes with my freedom in acting on the dictates of my conscience. In such a case, the weight of the harm my action would cause within society outweighs the weight of the harm of prohibiting and preventing me from acting in obedience to my conscience. In other cases, this might go the other way–the harm of preventing me from acting out my conscience would be greater than any harm I might do by acting out my conscience, and so society should not prevent me from following my conscience. It takes the skill of moral and political prudence to figure out where best to draw that line in any particular case, and this skill ought therefore to be cultivated and practiced by society and its governing authorities.
2107 "If because of the circumstances of a particular people special civil recognition is given to one religious community in the constitutional organization of a state, the right of all citizens and religious communities to religious freedom must be recognized and respected as well."36
This doesn't require too much commentary. Everyone has a right to liberty of conscience (religious freedom means the same thing in this context), and so, even if a particular society gives special recognition to some particular religious community, it has to make sure that that special recognition doesn't lead to neglect for the rights of those who are not members of that community. Unfortunately, such neglect is very common and hard to fight against, as it is human nature to show favoritism and to care more about some people than others. But we must fight to protect the rights of all, for all people, regardless of what religious community they belong to, have equal value and deserve equal respect as human beings made in the image of God.
2108 The right to religious liberty is neither a moral license to adhere to error, nor a supposed right to error,37 but rather a natural right of the human person to civil liberty, i.e., immunity, within just limits, from external constraint in religious matters by political authorities. This natural right ought to be acknowledged in the juridical order of society in such a way that it constitutes a civil right.38
This is an important paragraph, because, in modern Western culture, there is a tendency for liberty of conscience to become associated with what is sometimes called religious indifferentism - the idea that all religions are the same in all relevant respects and that therefore it doesn't matter what religion one holds. In this indifferentist point of view, I have a moral right to believe and follow whatever beliefs and values I want, just as I have a right to listen to whatever music I like or to enjoy whatever food suits my taste. But this is erroneous from the Catholic point of view, because, as we've seen, we have a moral duty to seek and to follow truth. We have the right to use our reason to try to figure out what the truth is, and the right to use our will to choose the truth we think we've found, and we have the right to be granted freedom by the governing authorities to have the space to pursue and to follow truth, but we do not have a moral right to intentionally embrace beliefs and values we know to be wrong or even that we have no reason to believe to be right.
The last sentence in this paragraph of the Catechism simply takes the step of saying that the right to liberty of conscience the society ought to protect should be formally acknowledged as a right by the society and treated as such.
2109 The right to religious liberty can of itself be neither unlimited nor limited only by a "public order" conceived in a positivist or naturalist manner.39 The "due limits" which are inherent in it must be determined for each social situation by political prudence, according to the requirements of the common good, and ratified by the civil authority in accordance with "legal principles which are in conformity with the objective moral order."40
We've already talked above about how liberty of conscience cannot be unlimited. Society has to draw a line somewhere between what will be tolerated and what will not be tolerated. That line will be drawn, ideally, based on the best estimate that can be made of what will best serve the common good and protect the core values of the society. There is no hard and fast rule as to where to draw that line. There might be more than one reasonable possibility in some cases. The decision has to be made on a case-by-case basis, taking into account the whole host of relevant factors, which will include things like the beliefs and values of members of the society, how diverse the society is, how people will be likely to react to various rules/laws, what is feasible, etc., etc. It takes the skill of "political prudence" to know how best to draw that line in particular situations. This is just as it is in individual life. Making choices in life, most of the time, is not a matter of looking up "the right thing to do" in some kind of ready-made textbook. It involves the application of moral principles on a case-by-case basis, taking into account the myriad of relevant factors, using the skills of wisdom and prudence.
The Catechism adds that the basis upon which decisions are made with regard to where to draw the "due limits" line should not be a "positivist" or a "naturalist" viewpoint. Rather, it should be in conformity with "the objective moral order." In other words, as we discussed earlier, governing decisions should not be made on the basis of the false assumption of a naturalistic worldview - that is, a worldview which assumes that the natural world is all that exists or that can be known, an atheistic or an agnostic worldview - but should rather be rooted in a point of view which takes into account all the truth which the Catholic faith believes can be known - "the truth about God, about man and about the world." Again, this is the ideal to strive for by means of working together with everyone in the society and sharing the gospel.
Published on the feast of St. Camillus de Lellis.
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