"The prejudice formulated in the First Amendment is but the most striking aspect of the more fundamental prejudice that was the living root of our constitutional system—the prejudice in favor of the method of freedom in society and therefore the prejudice in favor of a government of limited powers, whose limitations are determined by the consent of the people."
John Courtney Murray entered the Society of Jesus in 1920.
He was ordained a priest in 1933 and received his doctorate in theology from
the Gregorian University in Rome in 1937. Afterwards, he assumed the Jesuit
theologate at Woodstock, Maryland, where he was a professor of theology until
his death. Additionally, Murray edited the magazine America and the journal
Theological Studies.
While Murray's academic specialties were the theology of grace
and the Trinity, his major contributions were in public theology, especially
concerning church, state, and society. His prevailing theme was the compatibility
of American constitutionalism and Roman Catholicism. Indeed, according to Murray,
freedom's catalyst in the West was the church's claim of independence from the
state. The principle of limited government follows closely upon the recognition
of this claim; consequently, large areas of human activity and experience are
given the legal and moral space in which to flourish apart from the state. As
he states, “The dualism of mankind's two hierarchically ordered forms of social
life had been Christianity's cardinal contribution to the Western political
tradition.”
The specifically American contribution, then, was to establish
this principle by means of a written constitution. In his words, ““The American
thesis is that government is not juridically omnicompetent. Its powers are limited,
and one of the principles of limitation is the distinction between state and
church, in their purposes, methods, and manner of organization.” Further, this
thesis “asserts the theory of a free people under limited government, a theory
that is recognizably part of the Christian political tradition, and altogether
defensible in the manner of its realization under American circumstances.”
Murray's public theology troubled his ecclesiastical superiors,
who restricted his freedom to write and lecture throughout the 1950s. His ideas
gained a measure of vindication, however, upon his invitation to the Second
Vatican Council, where he made crucial contributions to its statement on religious
liberty, Dignitatis Humanae.
Sources: We Hold These Truths: Catholic Reflections
on the American Proposition by John Courtney Murray, S.J. (Sheed and Ward,
1960), and “Religious Freedom: John Courtney Murray, S.J., and Vatican II” in
Faith and Reason (Summer 1987).
