Denial of religious liberty

Denial of right to freedom of religion
Denial to right of freedom of belief
Curtailment of religious freedom

Nature

Denial of religious liberty takes many forms. An individual may be denied the right to manifest his religion in public or in private. He may be forbidden to have a specific religion. He may be denied the right to change religious belief. He may be denied the right worship, teach or practice as his religious belief dictates. Parents may be denied the right to provide their children with religious or moral education consistent with their own. It is in intruding on a person's relationship with the ultimate realities of his existence that the greatest danger to his self understanding and to his culture is present.

Incidence

A child or spouse of intermarriage with a Jew is not allowed to be Jewish without the rites of religious conversion.

Claim

Monotheistic religions such as Judaism, Christianity and Islam are guilty of violating the conscience of people of other faiths. Lasting peace in a number of regional conflicts will only be attained when world religions openly declare that religious liberty is a basic human right. No true democracy can be established when the manifestation of any religion in teaching, practice, worship and observance is denied. The denial leads in fact to inhuman superiority, ugly oppression, blatant racism, and homicide.

Certainly the curtailment of the religious freedom of individuals and communities is not only a painful experience but it is above all an attack on man's very dignity, independently of the religion professed or of the concept of the world which these individuals and communities have. The curtailment and violation of religious freedom are in contrast with man's dignity and his objective rights. In this case we are undoubtedly confronted with a radical injustice with regard to what is particularly deep within man, what is authentically human. Indeed, even the phenomenon of unbelief, a-religiousness and atheism, as a human phenomenon, is understood only in relation to the phenomenon of religion and faith. It is therefore difficult, even from a "purely human" point of view, to accept a position that gives only atheism the right of citizenship in public and social life, while believers are, as though by principle, barely tolerated or are treated as second-class citizens or are even, and this has already happened, entirely deprived of the rights of citizenship. (Papal Encyclical, Redemptor hominis, 4 March 1979).

Counter-claim

Any religious practice that endangers pubic safety, order, health, or morals or infringes on the fundamental rights and freedoms of others must be limited.