Wkład Karola Wojtyły w przygotowanie soborowej Deklaracji o wolności religijnej "Dignitatis humanae"
The Contribution of Karol Wojtyła to Preparation of "Dignitatis humanae" - the Second Vatican Council’s Declaration on Religious Freedom

Summary/Abstract: In the view of George Weigel, “archbishop Karol Wojtyła had put a great effort into the question of religious freedom”. The article is an attempt to describe and evaluate the influence of the Council Father from Cracow on preparation and the final form of this document. The contribution of Karol Wojtyła in development of the declaration is presented on the background of its preparation during the debates of the Second Vatican Council. The Cracow archbishop had devoted six of the Council’s statements: two presented in Auditorium of Saint Peter’s Basilica and four in writing forwarded to the Council’s secretariat. Wojtyła had warned against freedom not based upon the foundation of the human person’s responsibility. The Council’s declaration should have been perceived “as deeply personalistic in the Christian sense, but not derived from liberalism or indifferentism”. The religious freedom is the natural right of a person, because in it is always rooted “the freedom of the human person”. The right of the religious freedom may be limited only by the moral law, but never by the positive law. This law cannot impose anything what it is in discord with the natural law. A person cannot be forced to a religion against his or her conscience, the less yet cannot be deprived of it.

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