Civil and religious liberty

“ our contest is not only whether we ourselves shall be free, but whether there shall be left to mankind an asylum on earth, for civil and religious liberty ? ”

“ A union of the Protestants, Jews, Spiritualists, Free Religionists, Infidels, Atheists, Turners, Free Germans, and of all non-Catholics, without regard to creed, race or color, on a basis of universal civil and religious liberty, with a judicious policy, and a corresponding system of measures, will prove adequate to the emergency. ”

“ Civil liberty is impossible without religious liberty. But here the founders of our constitution were confronted with a great difficulty. To follow out the old Catholic tradition, and grant freedom to the “church of God,” was impossible. There were so many “churches of God,” antagonistic to one another, that to pronounce for one was to pronounce against all others, and so establish a state religion. ”

“ Freedom of religious confession, of meeting in religious societies (Art. 30 and 31) , and of the common exercise of religion in private and public, is guaranteed. The enjoyment of civil and political rights is independent of religious belief, yet the duties of a citizen or a subject may not be impaired by the exercise of religious liberty. ”

“ How much better are modern Pagan nations? These evils have been extinguished in the ratio of the circulation and influence of the Bible. The relation between the state and its citizens the Bible recognizes as of divine appointment; the foundation of civil government is the will of God. Government is an ordinance of God. “The powers that be are ordained of God.” The great author of our rights, life, liberty, peace, order, public morals and religion, has not left these interests to chance, anarchy or the social compact. ”

“ Religious freedom has been attained.—The sixteenth and seventeenth centuries witnessed many struggles for religious liberty, which resulted in no decided victory. It was not until the last two centuries that complete religious freedom was gained. Men are no longer bound to accept ecclesiastical decrees without question, but every one may weigh and consider, and freely decide for himself. Civil law protects, civil society sustains, and public opinion justifies men in the exercise of personal liberty in religious matters. ”

“ Has the liberty of speech, the liberty of the press, the liberty of conscience, become odious to this religious generation? Is the foundation of all liberty, civil and religious to be sapped and the beautiful superstructure erected thereon by our fathers to be razed to the ground to gratify whom? the whole community beside our brethren? ”

“ Religious Liberty, likewise, is a power of acting as we like in religion; or of professing and practising that mode of religious worship which we think most acceptable to the Deity.—But here the limitation to which I have referred must be attended to. All have the same unalienable right to this Liberty; and consequently, no one has a right to such a use of it as shall take it from others. ”

“ Neither can any state acquire such an authority over other states in virtue of any compacts or cessions. This is a case in which compacts are not binding. Civil Liberty is, in this respect, on the same footing with Religious Liberty. As no people can lawfully surrender their Religious Liberty, by giving up their right of judging for themselves in religion, or by allowing any human beings to prescribe to them what faith they shall embrace, or what mode of worship they shall practise ”

“ We find ourselves under the government of a system of political institutions conducing more essentially to the ends of civil and religious liberty than any of which the history of former times tells us. We, when mounting the stage of existence, found ourselves the legal inheritors of these fundamental blessings. We toiled not in the acquisition or establishment of them: they are a legacy bequeathed us by a once hardy, brave, and patriotic, but now lamented and departed race of ancestors. Theirs was the task (and nobly they performed it) ”

“ Our sentiments are uniformly on the side of religious liberty: that Religion is at all times and places a matter between God and individuals, that no man ought to suffer in name, person, or effects on account of his religious opinions, [and] that the legitimate power of civil government extends no further than to punish the man who works ill to his neighbor. But sir, our constitution of government is not specific. Our ancient charter, together with the laws made coincident therewith, were adapted as the basis of our government at the time of our revolution.
And such has been our laws and usages, and such still are, that Religion is considered as the first object of Legislation, and therefore what religious privileges we enjoy ”

“ The idea that religious liberty is the generating principle of civil, and that civil liberty is the necessary condition of religious, was a discovery reserved for the seventeenth century. ”

“ The soul is free. No power can compel one to belong to any church, nor in any manner to hold or exercise religious faith, or religious duty or obligation. In other words, men are free, and this freedom, aside from any other guaranty of the Constitution, should make us all feel affection and veneration for this great charter of human liberty.
But freedom of worship is only one of the many rights and privileges guaranteed to the people—to all the people. ”

“ Hence, the church in asserting and vindicating the rights of God, asserts and protects in the fullest manner possible the so-called inalienable rights of man, opposes with divine authority all tyranny, all despotism, all arbitrary power, all wrong, all oppression, every species of slavery, and asserts the fullest liberty, political, civil, social, and individual, that is possible without confounding liberty with license. The liberty she sustains is true liberty ”

“ Yet it was only for this right of private judgment, for this independence of another man’s control in religious concernments, that the godlike champions of religious liberty perilled themselves and perished. ”

“ It is a fact which entitles to the hope that your nation will revive the law of Christ, even on earth. However, the guarantee which your Constitution affords to religious liberty is but a negative part of a Christian government. There are, besides that, positive duties to be fulfilled. ”

“ We do not believe it just to mingle religious influence with civil government, whereby one religious society is fostered and another proscribed in its spiritual privileges, and the individual rights of its members, as citizens, denied. ”

“ Although we live in what is called a free government,—and politically we are free,—there is but little religious liberty in America. Society demands, either that you belong to some church, or that you suppress your opinions. ”

“ So powerful, indeed, were the example and teachings of those wise men who laid broad and deep the foundations of our happy country that, during the first half-century of our national existence, scarcely a voice was raised in opposition or protest against the principle of religious liberty as emphatically expressed in the first amendment to the Constitution. ”

“ III. Another great and precious principle enthroned in the founding of our commonwealth was that of religious liberty.
One of the saddest chapters in human history is that of persecution on account of religious convictions—the imposition of penalties, torture, and death by the sword of government on worthy people because of their honest opinions of duty to Almighty God. ”

“ Perhaps no principle embodied in these Canons lies so deep under the whole movement against free government in religious and civil society as the principle that confounds civil rights with natural ones, and, by denying that the State is the source of all rights, covers the denial of the fact that it is the source of legal rights. ”

“ It would be no light task for the state to preserve religious peace and freedom of conscience, even were it not made more difficult by the misuse of legitimate authority and by the artificial disturbance of the minds of believers. I rejoice that I agree with you on the fundamental principle that in a well-ordered community every person and every creed should enjoy that measure of liberty which is compatible both with the freedom of the remainder, and also with the independence and safety of the country. ”

“ Man's Right to Freedom in Worship.—The Latter-day Saints proclaim their unqualified allegiance to the principles of religious liberty and religious toleration. Freedom to worship Almighty God as the conscience may dictate, they claim as one of the inherent and inalienable rights of humanity. The inspired framers of our charter of national independence proclaimed to the world, as a self-evident truth, that the common birthright of humanity gives to every man a claim to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. ”

“ — Among the Natural Rights of the Colonists are these First. a Right to Life; Secondly to Liberty; thirdly to Property; together with the Right to support and defend them in the best manner they can - Those are evident Branches of, rather than deductions from the Duty of Self Preservation, commonly called the first Law of Nature -
All Men have a Right to remain in a State of Nature as long as they please: And in case of intollerable Oppression, Civil or Religious, to leave the Society they belong to, and enter into another. ”

“ Let the collective conscience of the country become Catholic, and it at once, without changing the fundamental principle of our organic law, obtains an infallible and supreme interpretation of that law which raises it to the standard of ideal perfection. It becomes a perfect Christian republic, [pg 626] passing under the control of a higher law in all that is comprised within the sphere of ethical obligation, but retaining political, civil, and individual liberty in all other respects, guarded by more powerful sanctions than it ever before possessed. ”

“ Every one would be fully protected in the enjoyment of all religious and social rights, and no state, no government, no community, no person would have the privilege of infringing on the rights of another one Christian community would not rise up and persecute another. ”

“ The second token of ruin is the prevalence of the error that the State may treat various religions on a footing of equality—the error that liberty of worship is in fact a personal right of every man, and that the citizen is entitled to make a free profession of his belief, orally or by the press, without fear of either civil or ecclesiastical power. ”

“ But always and everywhere does the church assert, and, as far as she can, maintain the full and perfect liberty of religion, the entire freedom and independence of the spiritual order, to be itself and to act according to its own laws—that is, religious liberty in her sense, and, if the words mean any thing, religious liberty in its only true and legitimate sense. ”

“ We have before asserted, but it is well to repeat it, that the Catholic Church professes and practises the most absolute respect for acquired rights, for conventions concluded [741] and accepted. Thus, for the sake of peace, certain governments have felt themselves obliged to recognize the right of dissenters to live in the state, retaining their beliefs and their religious forms. Liberty of conscience has been proclaimed, the public exercise of all the worships authorized. It is, doubtless, a misfortune that religious unity in society should be broken. ”

“ In short, I think our Constitution commands the positive protection by government of religious freedom-not only for a minority, however small-not only for the majority, however large-but for each of us. ”

“ Any system which saps the foundation of religious liberty, which forces itself between man and his Maker, cannot guarantee to us one of the main objects of all free governments—security in the pursuit of happiness. ”

“ The great condition of religious liberty is that it be maintained free from sustenance, as also from other interferences, by the state. For when it comes to rest upon that secular foundation, it vanishes with the resting. ”

“ In lands less favored Catholic rights may be violated by prince or mob with impunity, but we would be unworthy of our country and of its founders were we to shrink for a moment from the performance of our trust as the custodians of the fundamental ordinance which guarantees full and absolute religious liberty to all citizens of the republic. ”

“ This land is the birthright of Protestants, wherein those of every religious faith, Catholics, and all others, have equal rights and privileges; but to maintain our liberties, we must educate into the minds of all, personal liberty, and accountability, and leave the conscience untrammeled so far as regards popes, priests, bishops, or ministers, controlling man's future destiny. ”

“ That religion, or the duty which we owe to our Creator, and the manner of discharging it, can be directed only by reason and conviction, not by force or violence; and therefore all men have an equal, natural, and unalienable right to the free exercise of religion, according to the dictates of conscience, and that no particular religious sect or society ought to be favored or established, by law, in preference to others. ”