This resource-rich volume demands close reading. At first blush, it would appear that the volume includes seven discrete components: a new English translation of Dignitatis Humanae (DH) side by side with the original Latin text (part 1); an interpretative essay by David L. Schindler (part 2); a history of the drafting of the conciliar document by Nicholas J. Healy (part 3); the five conciliar schemas side by side in English and Latin (part 4); a comparison between the third schema and the final text of DH in both English and Latin (part 5); and two appendices, namely, the conciliar interventions of Karol Wojtyła and Alfred Ancel.
Indeed, each of these components has value in itself. Through a series of footnotes, the new translation of DH collates subtle differences in the ways in which translators have rendered into English key passages from the Latin text. The English translations of the drafts of DH are available here for the first time. Part 5 provides a helpful markup of the third schema and the final text of DH to illustrate the ways in which the document was updated. Likewise, this volume provides an opportunity for readers unfamiliar with Wojtyła's and Ancel's interventions to study them in Latin and English.
A more comprehensive view of the volume is necessary to understand the idiosyncratic inclusion of part 5 and the two appendices. The authors include a comparison of the third schema and final text to highlight the contributions of Wojtyła and Ancel. Hence, of the many conciliar interventions, the authors include Wojtyła's and Ancel's interventions as appendices because they argued in favor of incorporating a positive definition of freedom: for Wojtyla, for example, to stress “the importance for freedom of the objective truth itself” (427) and, for Ancel, to make clear that “the obligation to seek the truth is itself the ontological foundation of religious freedom” (461). Healy's redaction history of DH brings their contribution to the fore.
Schindler's interpretative essay is the centerpiece of the volume, spanning 170 pages, inclusive of footnotes (39–209). In many respects, the other parts of the volume contextualize and buttress Schindler's reading of DH. Here, Schindler takes issue with the juridical reading of DH, “that the civil right to religious freedom is primarily negative, and that this right is tied to a human dignity conceived in abstraction from the person's relation to truth” (105). Instead, Schindler argues that DH “bears a unity of meaning” that affirms “an intrinsic relation between freedom and truth, and of this positive relation as the internal context for the negative meaning of the right to religious freedom” (93). Schindler's complex argument requires close and careful reading within the context of the entire volume. Ultimately, the reader will be rewarded by moving between the various parts of the entire volume in order to gain a full sense and appreciation of the whole.
This volume is beyond the scope of the typical undergraduate classroom. It would be suitable for specialized courses at the graduate level, especially as a model of scholarship that engages primary sources in advancing a particular interpretation of a conciliar text. The work makes a valuable contribution to the ongoing debate with regard to the contemporary meaning and significance of DH for scholars in fields related to Vatican II studies, religious freedom, and church-state relations.
