taken seriously as long as it supported such restrictions on religious freedom. The Church's basic premise before Vatican II was that Catholicism was the only true religion and, since “error has no rights”, no other religion was entitled to religious freedom. If all religions were treated equally, that would imply they were all of equal value, a position labelled “indifferentism”. If the council was to defend religious freedom, it had to do so in a way that did not imply that all religions were of equal value. The text presented to the Council did this by basing religious freedom on the person's duty to obey his/her conscience. From this, it followed that the law must not coerce a person to act against his/her conscience. The criticism from the conservatives about a declaration of religious freedom was unrelenting: “this represented a reversal of the Church's previous teaching... it fostered indifferentism... it was Modernism... it would cause the ruin of the Catholic Church,” said Archbishop Lefebvre. Support for religious freedom was strongest among the bishops from countries where it was the normal state of affairs, such as the English-speaking world and most Western European countries. The American bishops, who had not played a particularly important role at the Council up to this point, made religious freedom “their” cause. Religious freedom was also defended by bishops who lived under communist regimes where the Church suffered persecution. In the mind of supporters, the Church's double standard was simply untenable: Catholics could no longer demand freedom for themselves while denying it to others. Given the ferocity of the opposition, many wondered whether the chapter would ever manage to receive the requisite two-thirds majority. “On the Jews and non-Christians” Pope John had wanted the Church to take a stand against all forms of anti-Semitism. A first statement “On the Jews” had been prepared for the first session, then dropped for political reasons: Arab Christians claimed their governments would interpret it as tilting towards Israel in the Arab-Jewish Middle East conflict, and Christians would suffer for this. A statement on the Jews now returned as part of a broader schema “On the Jews and non-Christians”. The objective was to reject any theological basis for antisemitism, in particular the centuries-old claim that the Jews were cursed by God because they had refused to accept the Gospel and had killed Christ. Many bishops supported the declaration. As with religious