期刊名称：Alpha Omega : rivista di filosofia e teologia dell'Ateneo Pontificio Regina Apostolorum
出版年度：2006
卷号：IX
期号：3
出版社：Athenaeum Pontificium Regina Apostolorum
摘要：The Vatican II declaration on religious freedom, Dignitatis Humanae , framed the issue of Church-State relations in terms of religious liberty, carefully avoiding the language of religious tolerance. This articles shows the wisdom behind this choice by exposing five serious problems with the notion of religious tolerance. First, religion is a good to be embraced rather than an evil to be suffered, so “toleration” fails as a proper category as applied to religion. Second, the idea of tolerance has so evolved in contemporary language that it is used both in its original sense and in the fundamentally different connotation of openness and respect for diversity. The deep-seating ambiguity surrounding tolerance allows for a selected application of the term and for manipulation. Third, as a child of the Enlightenment, religious tolerance was born in an environment of religious relativism and a project of limiting the influence of religion in society. The association between relativism and tolerance has only increased over time, and now the notion of tolerance explicitly involves “the rejection of dogmatism and absolutism.” Fourth, the modern understanding of tolerance as a virtue has lost its essential tie to an object to be tolerated, and thus one no longer understands what is to be tolerated and why, only that people are to “be” tolerant. Fifth, tolerance as a celebration of diversity undermines the Church’s evangelizing mission and promotes religious indifference, through a “theology of pluralism” that holds that all religions are good and conversion not only unnecessary but indesirable
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