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Further light is shed on the subject if one considers that the
highest norm of human life is the divine law-eternal, objective and
universal-whereby God orders, directs and governs the entire universe
and all the ways of the human community by a plan conceived in wisdom
and love. Man has been made by God to participate in this law, with
the result that, under the gentle disposition of divine Providence,
he can come to perceive ever more fully the truth that is unchanging.
Wherefore every man has the duty, and therefore the right, to seek
the truth in matters religious in order that he may with prudence form
for himself right and true judgments of conscience, under use of all
suitable means.
Truth, however, is to be sought after in a manner proper to the
dignity of the human person and his social nature. The inquiry is to
be free, carried on with the aid of teaching or instruction,
communication and dialogue, in the course of which men explain to one
another the truth they have discovered, or think they have discovered,
in order thus to assist one another in the quest for truth.
Moreover, as the truth is discovered, it is by a personal assent that
men are to adhere to it.
On his part, man perceives and acknowledges the imperatives of the
divine law through the mediation of conscience. In all his activity a
man is bound to follow his conscience in order that he may come to
God, the end and purpose of life. It follows that he is not to be
forced to act in manner contrary to his conscience. Nor, on the other
hand, is he to be restrained from acting in accordance with his
conscience, especially in matters religious. The reason is that the
exercise of religion, of its very nature, consists before all else in
those internal, voluntary and free acts whereby man sets the course of
his life directly toward God. No merely human power can either
command or prohibit acts of this kind.[3] The social nature of
man, however, itself requires that he should give external expression
to his internal acts of religion: that he should share with others in
matters religious; that he should profess his religion in community.
Injury therefore is done to the human person and to the very order
established by God for human life, if the free exercise of religion is
denied in society, provided just public order is observed.
There is a further consideration. The religious acts whereby men, in
private and in public and out of a sense of personal conviction, direct
their lives to God transcend by their very nature the order of
terrestrial and temporal affairs. Government therefore ought indeed to
take account of the religious life of the citizenry and show it favor,
since the function of government is to make provision for the common
welfare. However, it would clearly transgress the limits set to its
power, were it to presume to command or inhibit acts that are
religious.
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