When I have assigned the document Dignitatis Humanae in courses addressing questions of religious liberty, I have always stressed to my students the importance of reading another document of the Second Vatican Council, Nostra Aetate, together with it. Whether one is Catholic or not, I don’t think it is possible to achieve a rich understanding of the Declaration on Religious Freedom, and the developed teaching of the Catholic Church on religious freedom, without considering what the council fathers proclaim in the Declaration on Non-Christian Religions. In Nostra Aetate, the fathers pay tribute to all that is true and holy in non-Christian faiths, including Hinduism and Buddhism, and especially Judaism and Islam. In so doing, they give recognition to the ways in which religion enriches, ennobles, and fulfills the human person in the spiritual dimension of his being, even where it does not include the defining content of what the fathers, as Catholics, believe to be religion in its fullest and most robust sense—namely, the Incarnation of Jesus Christ. This is to be honored and respected, in the view of the council fathers, because the dignity of the human being requires it. Naturally, the nonrecognition of Christ as the Son of God must count for the fathers as a shortcoming in the non-Christian faiths—just as the proclamation of Christ as the Son of God must count as an error in Christianity from a Jewish or Muslim point of view. But, the fathers teach, this does not mean that Judaism and Islam are simply false and without merit (just as neither Judaism nor Islam teaches that Christianity is simply false and without merit); on the contrary, these traditions enrich the lives of their faithful in their spiritual dimensions, thus contributing vitally to their fulfillment.
(Robert P. George, Conscience and Its Enemies: Confronting the Dogmas of Liberal Secularism, American Ideals and Institutions Series, ed. Robert P. George [Wilmington, DE: ISI Books, 2013], 120-1)
