Prelates To Debate Religious Liberty

Press, Volume CIV, Issue 30857, 16 September 1965, Page 17

Prelates To Debate Religious Liberty

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VATICAN CITY, Sept. 15.

The world’s 2000 Roman Catholic prelates will todaydebate a controversial draft decree on religious liberty at the Vatican Ecumenical Council.

Pope Paul will today retire from the scene for the moment. He told the prelates he did not wish to “compromise your freedom of opinion” on the themes they must discuss.

The draft declaration on religious liberty caused bitter clashes between progressive and conservative churchmen late last year. The conservatives, although clearly in a minority, scored a victory by obtaining postponement of a scheduled preliminary vote on the document. About 800 United States and other bishops appeal to the Pope, but he failed to intervene. Re-edited Text

Since then, the text has been re-edited and, according to many prelates, improved.

Julius Cardinal Doepfner, of Munich, has gone on record as saying the “bitterness" produced by last year’s clash has disappeared. The declaration answers requests by “progressive” prelates that the Roman Catholic Church should once and for all remove any grounds for accusations that it worries about religious liberty only when it is in a minority. Some powerful Italian and Spanish churchmen attacked the document last autumn. They included Alfredo Cardinal Ottaviani, secretary of the Holy Office and official “watch-dog” on faith and morals. This arch-Conservative churchman said that to assert that every kind of religion had the liberty of propagating itself “is a very serious matter” which would “evidently result in harm for

those nations in which the Catholic religion is the one generally held by the people.” Progesslve’s Speech Paul-Emile Cardinal Leger, of Montreal, Canada's leading progressive churchman, is expected to speak in today s debate on the revised text. The bishops will be speaking in Latin behind the closed doors of St. Peter's Basilica.