Is Vatican II's teaching on religious liberty (Dignitatis Humanae) a heresy?
A viewer, Victor, asks whether Vatican II's Dignitatis Humanae is heresy, since it seems to say a man has a right not to be interrupted while preaching heresy, whereas the church once approved punishing heretics.
Answer
The basic thing about Dignitatis Humanae is that every man has a free will and cannot be coerced into accepting Christianity, because a person forced into the church against his will causes more harm than good and will backlash. Christianity is not a religion of coercion; that is the message in a nutshell. It also says that whatever prerogatives the unbeliever has outside the church are within certain limits, and it is the church, not you or me, who judges those limits. So it is not saying anything different from what the church has always said, that man has free will either to worship God or not, and that if he does not, he will pay the price; the church is simply saying we do not have the right to coerce him into Christianity, as some once did with the forced conversions of Jews, which was the worst thing to do. If the gospel we preach is a gospel of freedom, then coercing someone to be a Christian would make us hypocrites contradicting our own message. That is all Dignitatis Humanae is saying: no coercion.