Dignitatis Humanae Changing History

‘Dignitatis Humanae’ Changing History

Jack de Nijs for Anefo Pope Paul VI speaks during the Second Vatican Council as seen from this television screen. COMMENTARY: The declaration of religious freedom shattered the communist claim that there was no sanctuary of personal identity and integrity into which the party-state could not assert itself.

Dignitatis Humanae Changing History

On December 7, 1965, Pope Paul VI solemnly promulgated the Second Vatican Council’s Declaration on Religious Freedom, known by its Latin incipit (opening words) as Dignitatis Humanae. The Council thereby turbocharged the Catholic Church’s transformation into the world’s premier institutional defender of basic human rights—which the late Sir Michael Howard, Regius Professor of Modern History at Oxford, once told me was one of the two great revolu…