THE CASE FOR FREEDOM

This is a remarkably well integrated collection of essays on ""human rights in the Church"" by various Catholic scholars in the fields of history, canon and civil law, and theology. The key contribution is the first, which provides a succinct listing of ""the rights and freedoms of persons in the Christian community"" -- a sort of ecclesiastical Bill of Rights. The remaining eight papers are essentially commentaries upon these rights and freedoms, and they explore the Biblical bases of Christian rights, their manifestation and atrophy in the course of history, the ways in which the Church may foster rather than frustrate human freedom, and secular analogies and precedents for a Christian declaration of freedom. As a preliminary resolution, the book often raises questions of greater scope than those which it answers, particularly concerning the ""practical"" applications of what is suggested. But that, somehow, only adds to the stimulus of the collection.