The right to religious and moral freedom should be considered the „fundamental political norm“50 of global human rights morality, Perry says. He tries to find support for his argument for a right to religious and moral freedom in Article 18 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights,51 which he considers „canonical“. 52 Although the article speaks of a „right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion,“ Perry argues, among other things, that the reference to faith and conscience and the paragraph`s reference to „moral education“ provide sufficient support for its broader interpretation.53 Rafael Domingo, A right to religious and moral freedom?, International Journal of Constitutional Law, Volume 12, Number 1, January 2014, pages 226-247, doi.org/10.1093/icon/mou001 Some currents of modern thought have gone so far as to glorify freedom to the point that it becomes an absolute that would then be the source of values. This is the direction taken by teachings that have lost the sense of the transcendent or are explicitly atheistic. The individual conscience is granted the status of the supreme moral court that makes categorical and infallible decisions about right and wrong. To the assertion that one has a duty to follow one`s conscience is unduly added the assertion that one`s moral judgment is true only by the fact that it has its origin in conscience. But in this way, the inevitable claims of truth disappear and give way to a criterion of sincerity, authenticity and „peace with oneself“, so much so that some have come to a radically subjectivist conception of moral judgment. There is no reason to establish the minimum public morality required by a particular political community as a morality of human rights and legitimate interests or objectives. Perry`s argument is false because it is based on the idea that the equal morality of all people makes all morals equal, and that this in turn requires moral freedom in the sense of moral independence.
The status of the subject, „equal legal persons“, does not imply an extension of the object: „equality of morality“. On the contrary, pluralism and diversity as well as the collective moral self-determination of communities require a model in which secular reason and communal consent establish the legal norms of public morality beyond the morality of human rights. Public morality as such is a legitimate interest or objective of political communities. Following an intensive process of Western secularization in recent decades, the incorporation of infidels (atheists, agnostics, etc.) under the protection of the right to religious freedom implied a second long-term extension of the religious freedom paradigm, this time to protect people from religion. The particular discussion of „freedom of religion“ introduced by the founding clause of the American First Amendment anticipated the broader twentieth-century discussion of „freedom of religion.“ 64 The purpose of enlargement was to establish „bonds of solidarity“65, a kind of „overlapping consensus“66 of all kinds of worldviews and beliefs. After this second expansion, religious freedom must be the complete patrimony of believers and non-believers alike. It should therefore fully protect from religion those who have nothing to do with God or religion. Religion and morality cannot be treated equally by legal systems or protected by the same legal framework. There are different ontological realities that influence legal systems in different ways. Religion requires communities and institutions to adhere voluntarily, not compulsory membership in political communities. Political communities are not religious communities.
In this way, they can be neutral on religious issues and protect the right to religious freedom. Political communities, however, are inherently moral communities; They cannot be neutral on moral issues. Therefore, moral freedom and religious freedom require different treatment in secular legal systems. They cannot be treated as a single right. Many have embraced this deeper, relevant, and spiritual understanding of morality with joy. It builds on Thomas Aquinas and the Church Fathers, confirms the deepest meaning of moral norms and expands personalist aspects. But there are also many in our culture who seem to have missed this renewal of moral theology. They seem to be stuck in a dry version of morality, misunderstanding Christ and thus provoking a backlash against Christian moral norms. It is a tragedy with many implications.
Perhaps a deeper understanding of the shortcomings of voluntarism and nominalism could help people move closer to this deeper understanding of moral norms. See sections 4 and 6 below. Religious values and traditions may be important elements of the culture of a political community, but democratic political communities as such are not religious communities by nature, as they cannot use religious argument or impose an act of faith or membership in a specific religion on citizens. Moreover, the end of the political community is not the religious good, but the moral good. Understanding freedom is crucial to how we perceive God. It is the heart of who we are and who God is. For Ockham, God`s omnipotence prevailed insofar as his freedom had to be so absolute that it could not be limited by reason, by nature, by truth, by all that he had done in the past or promised for the future. God`s will was so absolute that God was free to be arbitrary, to change at any time, to change the laws of human nature, creation, good and evil, love and hate. God`s freedom was not determined by anything. Everything God wanted was good, simply because He wanted it. These different ideas are at the origin of currents of thought that postulate a radical opposition between moral law and conscience, between nature and freedom.
To understand the logic of Perry`s expansion of moral freedom, we can begin by examining other extensions of the concept of religious freedom. As Roger Williams, the first American defender of religious freedom, said, „God does not require that the uniformity of religion be promulgated and enforced in a civil state.“ 61 Freedom of conscience is the legal instrument protecting the free exercise of religion. The ultimate goal of freedom of conscience was not to protect one`s conscience from possible political immorality,62 but to freely choose one`s religious path. Political communities could accept religious moral justifications as elements of their legal system, since religious moral justifications can also be political moral justifications. This explains why a country can legally prohibit abortion or same-sex marriage on the basis of a political legal justification, even if that justification is compatible with a religious legal justification. Such political decisions do not run counter to religious freedom. They only reflect the fact that, for example, marriage is both a religious and a political institution. The fact that a religious community prohibits the consumption of alcohol does not mean that this religious-moral justification cannot be transformed into a political-moral justification (to avoid road accidents), because rational religious morality can be compatible with political morality in accordance with the paradigm of religious freedom. Prohibition of public religious nudity (e.g. that of naked Quakers); the legal prohibition of polygamy (accepted practice, for example, in Islam as well as in some North American fundamentalist sects); Or the prohibition of the ancient Hindu custom (sati) of a Hindu widow setting herself on fire at the stake of her husband should be an example of political decisions based on moral justifications against the overly rational, even irrational, moral claims of certain religions. It is important for Christians today to understand that the source of many contemporary attitudes to the moral life lies in the theology of voluntarism, which is closely related to the philosophy of nominalism that developed in the early 14th century and contributed to a rigid moralism that has been widespread since the 1600s.
