Spokesman Denies Reported Effort to Water Down Religious Liberty Text

A spokesman for the Vatican secretariat for Promoting Christian Unity, reporting that the ecumenical council’s document on religious liberty is “all ready for promulgation,” threw cold water on reports that a group of conservative council Fathers had made last minute efforts to water it down.

“If such an effort had been made, it would have been reported to us,” he said. The unity secretariat is the conciliar commission in charge of drafting and revising the council’s document on religious liberty. “No word has come to us from the [Vatican] secretariat of state, or the Holy Father or anyone,” the spokesman said.

Referring to a report that some council Fathers had asked Pope Paul VI himself to insert an explanatory note in the document to the effect that the Catholic religion alone has a full right to religious freedom, the spokesman commented:

“The most that can be said is that if they approached the Pope he turned them down.”

He recalled that when a similar approach was made to the Pope over the question of the collegiality of bishops in the council’s Constitution on the Church, an explanatory note was simply sent to the competent commission, which revised it and issued it in the name of the commission. “No meetings have been scheduled for this purpose. We corrected the final proofs Tuesday (Nov. 30) and sent them to the printer.”