I am one who believes they do not. Here is how I approach it:
Quanta Cura is a document by Pope Bl. Pius IX solemnly condemning the errors of the Liberals (or Libertines) of his day who desired to have God completely purged from public life, and make the supreme law the will of the masses, subject to nothing else (not even God)--in other words, pure positivism--of course, he rightly and prophetically predicted that doing so cause a loss of true justice and morality in society and violence and the desire for material gain and pleasure would replace truth as the governing principle.
As you already noted, the relevant errors condemned are as follows (my numbering and emphasis):
For you well know, venerable brethren, that at this time men are found not a few who, applying to civil society the impious and absurd principle of "naturalism," as they call it, dare to teach that "
[1]the best constitution of public society and (also) civil progress altogether require that human society be conducted and governed without regard being had to religion any more than if it did not exist; or, at least, without any distinction being made between the true religion and false ones." And, against the doctrine of Scripture, of the Church, and of the Holy Fathers, they do not hesitate to assert that "
[2]that is the best condition of civil society, in which no duty is recognized, as attached to the civil power, of restraining by enacted penalties, offenders against the Catholic religion, except so far as public peace may require." From which totally false idea of social government they do not fear to foster that erroneous opinion, most fatal in its effects on the Catholic Church and the salvation of souls, called by Our Predecessor, Gregory XVI, an "insanity,"2 viz., that "
[3]liberty of conscience and worship is each man's personal right, which ought to be legally proclaimed and asserted in every rightly constituted society; and that a right resides in the citizens to an absolute liberty, which should be restrained by no authority whether ecclesiastical or civil, whereby they may be able openly and publicly to manifest and declare any of their ideas whatever, either by word of mouth, by the press, or in any other way." ---
Therefore, by our Apostolic authority, we reprobate, proscribe, and condemn all the singular and evil opinions and doctrines severally mentioned in this letter, and will and command that they be thoroughly held by all children of the Catholic Church as reprobated, proscribed and condemned.
The first thing to note is that these errors are quotations from particular works and therefore are being condemned in the sense in which they were originally given. #1 is that notion that society is better off without paying heed to the true religion. However, Dignitatis Humanae asserts the opposite of that error:
Religious freedom, in turn, which men demand as necessary to fulfill their duty to worship God, has to do with immunity from coercion in civil society. Therefore it leaves untouched traditional Catholic doctrine on the moral duty of men and societies toward the true religion and toward the one Church of Christ.
It also bears pointing out here that DH says nothing one way or the other about Catholicism being the established religion of the state other than if that is the case, then authentic rights of everyone must be respected.
#2 also refers to the positivist and materialist notion of public peace, one far removed from the Catholic understanding of the common good. It also refers to an absolute (see also Cardinal Newman's analysis of #3 below)--the BEST form of society. In fact, the BEST form of civil society is one where everyone is Catholic and faithfully so. In fact, in such situations, maintaining the common good may require the state to place more strict limits on false religious activity, such as foreign missionaries, who while not harming public peace conceived of in a materialist fashion, do harm the common good and the unity of society. The Liberals wanted Catholic countries to essentially repudiate Catholicism from their public life. Similarly, concordats by Paul VI after Vatican II with certain Latin Americans countries contain provisions for similar restrictions. Further more, The Catechism, citing Quanta Cura itself in the footnotes, explains the nature of the just limits on false religious activity briefly mentioned in Dignitatis Humanae:
2109 The right to religious liberty can of itself be neither unlimited nor limited only by a "public order" conceived in a positivist or naturalist manner.39 The "due limits" which are inherent in it must be determined for each social situation by political prudence, according to the requirements of the common good, and ratified by the civil authority in accordance with "legal principles which are in conformity with the objective moral order."40
As we see here, the limits depend on the circumstances. The Catholic notions of the "common good" and the "objective moral order" are key here (for example, in 1985, John Paul II urged the Italian government to forbid the blasphemous movie "Hail Mary" from being shown, even though it was not harming "public peace.") The more diverse a society, lesser limits (ie mutual toleration) tend to aid toward the common good, where the more Catholic a society is, the greater the limits on false religious activity need to be imposed lest the common good be reduced, rather than advanced. Furthermore, the state has a duty to defend the authentic freedoms of the Church. If her mission is hampered unduly by false religious activity or anything else for that matter, even if that activity does not harm the peace in a materialist fashion, the state must intervene. DH teaches this as well:
13. Among the things that concern the good of the Church and indeed the welfare of society here on earth-things therefore that are always and everywhere to be kept secure and defended against all injury-this certainly is preeminent, namely, that the Church should enjoy that full measure of freedom which her care for the salvation of men requires.(31) This is a sacred freedom, because the only-begotten Son endowed with it the Church which He purchased with His blood. Indeed it is so much the property of the Church that to act against it is to act against the will of God. The freedom of the Church is the fundamental principle in what concerns the relations between the Church and governments and the whole civil order.
#3 is another absolute. I'll let Cardinal Newman, a contemporary of the condemnation explain it (in the context of defending it against a British fellow who objected to it):
The condemned proposition speaks as follows:—
"Liberty of conscience and worship, is the inherent right of all men. 2. It ought to be proclaimed in every rightly constituted society. 3. It is a right to all sorts of liberty (omnimodam libertatem) such, that it ought not to be restrained by any authority, ecclesiastical or civil, as far as public speaking, printing, or any other public manifestation of opinions is concerned."
Now, is there any government on earth that could stand the strain of such a doctrine as this? It starts by taking for granted that there are certain Rights of man; Mr. Gladstone so considers, I believe; but other deep thinkers of the day are quite of another opinion; {274} however, if the doctrine of the proposition is true, then the right of conscience, of which it speaks, being inherent in man, is of universal force—that is, all over the world—also, says the proposition, it is a right which must be recognised by all rightly constituted governments. Lastly, what is the right of conscience thus inherent in our nature, thus necessary for all states? The proposition tells us. It is the liberty of every one to give public utterance, in every possible shape, by every possible channel, without any let or hindrance from God or man, to all his notions whatsoever [Note 2].
Which of the two in this matter is peremptory and sweeping in his utterance, the author of this thesis himself, or the Pope who has condemned what the other has uttered? Which of the two is it who would force upon the world a universal? All that the Pope has done is to deny a universal, and what a universal! a universal liberty to all men to say out whatever doctrines they may hold by preaching, or by the press, uncurbed by church or civil power. Does not this bear out what I said in the foregoing section of the sense in which Pope Gregory denied a "liberty of conscience"? It is a liberty of self-will. What if a man's conscience embraces the duty of regicide? or infanticide? or free love? You may say that in England the good sense of the nation would stifle and extinguish such atrocities. True, but the proposition says that it is the very right of every one, by nature, in {275} every well constituted society. If so, why have we gagged the Press in Ireland on the ground of its being seditious? Why is not India brought within the British constitution? It seems a light epithet for the Pope to use, when he calls such a doctrine of conscience deliramentum: of all conceivable absurdities it is the wildest and most stupid. Has Mr. Gladstone really no better complaint to make against the Pope's condemnations than this?
Perhaps he will say, Why should the Pope take the trouble to condemn what is so wild [Note 3]? But he does: and to say that he condemns something which he does not condemn, and then to inveigh against him on the ground of that something else, is neither just nor logical.
I think that is something that we can all agree with quite easily, and as we have already seen, this is not what the DH is promoting at all.
Religious freedom in the context of Dignitatis Humanae refers to the traditional Catholic doctrine that the act of faith must be free, and not coerced. Here are some examples of this magisterial teaching pre-Vatican II: Pius XII,
Mystici Corporis, para. 104; Leo XIII,
Immortale Dei, para. 36; Bl. Gregory X,
Protection of the Jews, para. 3.
The freedom declared by DH exists so that man's duty to place His faith in God by His own free choice can be fulfilled. This famous quote of Pope John Paul II says this well: "Freedom consists not in doing what we like, but in having the right to do what we ought." Thus, the right to religious freedom is a right before the state, not a right before God.
Second, we have to define what acts of religion are in the context of DH. DH defines them as such:
....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.
This is what some scholastics called "natural religion" since God can at least be known by natural means (ie, without access to revelation). This excludes idolatry, polytheism, atheism, etc. It is also Catholic teaching that good law is rooted in reason, especially human law. For this reason, the Counter-Reformation Jesuit Francisco Suarez (considered the greatest scholastic theologian besides St. Thomas) taught this commenting on St. Thomas:
St. Thomas, however, rightly distinguishes two kinds of religious practices: there are those which go against reason and against God insofar as he can be recognized through nature and through the natural powers of the soul, e.g., the worship of idols, etc. Others are contrary to the Christian religion and to its commands not because they are evil in themselves or contrary to reason as, for example, the practices of Jews and even many of the customs of Mohammedans and such unbelievers who believe in one true God.
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As regards the other religious practices of unbelievers which go contrary to Christian beliefs but not counter to natural reason, there is no doubt but that the unbelievers, even though they are subjects, may not be forced to abandon them. Rather the Church has to tolerate them.
St. Gregory addressed himself clearly to this problem regarding Jews, and he forbade anyone to deprive them of their synagogues or to prevent them from observing their religious practices therein. (Lib. I Epistol. 34) Elsewhere he reaffirmed that no one should prevent Jews from participating in their religious observances. (Lib. II. Ep. 15) The reason is that such observances do not in themselves violate the natural law, and therefore, the temporal power of even a Christian ruler does not confer a right to forbid them. Such action would be based on the fact that what is being done goes contrary to the Christian Faith, but that is not enough to compel those who are not subject to the spiritual authority of the Church. This opinion is also supported by the fact that such a ban would involve, to some extent, forcing people to accept the Faith; and that is never permitted.
Tract. de Fide Disp. 18 Sect. III
I believe that generally the Council Fathers adopted similar reasoning when promulgating Dignitatis Humanae (obviously the reasons for voting for it may not be the same for all).
Man must be free to fulfill his duties to God (in other words, forced atheism of Communism is an evil) and man must make the act of faith freely. While the fact that banning outright all false religious activity can lead to forcing others to accept the faith is a practical judgment, DH is intended to be just that kind of judgment. From the official relatio (an official interpretive document used at a Council):
Our decree, since it is pastoral, tries to treat the present matter especially from the practical point of view and, after the manner of John XXIII, will carefully strive to remove the whole question from that world of abstractions which was so dear to the nineteenth century. The question is put therefore regarding real man in his real dealings with other men, in contemporary human and civil societies.
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But I beseech you, Venerable Fathers, not to force the text to speak outside of its historical and doctrinal context, not, in other words, to make the fish swim out of water.
Let our document be studied as it stands. It is not a dogmatic treatise, but a pastoral decree directed to men of our time.
In fact, Pope Benedict XVI said the same thing in 2005:
Basic decisions, therefore, continue to be well-grounded, whereas the way they are applied to new contexts can change. Thus, for example, if religious freedom were to be considered an expression of the human inability to discover the truth and thus become a canonization of relativism, then this social and historical necessity is raised inappropriately to the metaphysical level and thus stripped of its true meaning. Consequently, it cannot be accepted by those who believe that the human person is capable of knowing the truth about God and, on the basis of the inner dignity of the truth, is bound to this knowledge.It is quite different, on the other hand, to perceive religious freedom as a need that derives from human coexistence, or indeed, as an intrinsic consequence of the truth that cannot be externally imposed but that the person must adopt only through the process of conviction.
Of course, this is a traditional concept as Leo XIII explained in Au Milieu Des Sollicitudes:
In descending from the domain of abstractions to that of facts, we must beware of denying the principles: they remain fixed. However, becoming incarnated in facts, they are clothed with a contingent character, determined by the center in which their application is produced.
It also bears pointing out that religious freedom is not the right to err, nor can be said to contradict the saying "error has no rights." The Catechism says the same:
2108 The right to religious liberty is neither a moral license to adhere to error, nor a supposed right to error,37 but rather a natural right of the human person to civil liberty, i.e., immunity, within just limits, from external constraint in religious matters by political authorities.
However, while no error has the right to exist or be advanced, that does not mean every manner of eradicating it is acceptable. The primary means to be used are preaching, persuasion, and the example of good and holy living (cf. Pope Paul III, Sublimus Dei). However, the state can and should impede religious error when the common good requires; likewise, all men and societies have the duty to God to embrace and advance the true religion. Dignitatis Humanae works from the same principles, even if its decisions applying those principles to perceived facts were misjudged (I will refrain from making that judgment here).
