Since religious liberty is a demand of the natural law, the limiting principle on religious freedom must also belong to the natural law

Those Intolerable Catholics

 In Locke’s Time and Ours

by R. J. Snell

Often touted as a landmark text in the history of religious freedom, John Locke’s Letter Concerning Toleration (1689) is remarkable in wisely limiting the power of “the magistrate … to do or meddle with nothing but barely in order to securing the civil peace and properties of his subjects,” and thus of granting “an absolute and universal right to toleration” concerning matters of “speculative opinions and divine worship.” In other words, the state has no power to compel belief or unbelief in any particular doctrine.

Still, the text is more complicated and limited in its vision of tolerance than the received tradition may suggest. For instance, with respect to “practical principles” of social action, there is also a claim to toleration “but yet only so far as they do not tend to the disturbance of the state”; that is, so long as these religious claims do not disturb or curtail the public interest. Fair enough, for certainly we do not suppose that religious freedom extends to harming others or interfering with the just exercise of law.

But when it comes to Catholics, Locke’s generosity shrivels, convinced as he is that Catholics refuse to be “subjects of any prince but the pope,” thus blurring the lines between speculation, worship, and “doctrines absolutely destructive to the society wherein they live.”

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