John Courtney Murray |
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The first book
of John Courtney Murray was We Hold These Truths: Catholic Reflections
on the American Proposition. When it was published in 1960,
Time magazine ran a feature article and also put Murray's
picture on the cover as "unquestionably the intellectual bellwether
of this new Catholic and American frontier" of building the
city. Contrary to the expectation of some liberals, the life of
this Jesuit priest declares: religion is freedom. Indeed, Dr. Murray
was awarded the Thomas Jefferson Award for Conspicuous Service in
the Cause of Religious Liberty in 1965. On this occasion, this relevant
reverend who is acknowledged as the chief architect of the historic
Vatican Declaration on Religious Freedom, said the purpose of human
living together is that we may be released from slaveries and emerge
into the freedom that is the human birthright.
After the famous Day of Wrath—November 19, 1964—when the
Vatican Council postponed deciding on religious freedom, Murray
declared: "The failure is the more lamentable because religious
freedom is not the most important issue before the Council, nor
the most difficult, except insofar as it raises the issue of development
of doctrine, which is the issue underlying all issues at
the Council." When the Declaration on Religious Freedom was
finally affirmed at Vatican Council II, John Courtney Murray wrote
in America that: "Its achievement was to bring the Church,
at long last, abreast of the consciousness of civilized mankind,
which had already accepted religious freedom as a principle and
as a legal institution."
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