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3. The Church and Human Rights
- The Catholic University of America Press
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3. THE CHURCH AND HUMAN RIGHTS To the surprise of many—and the dismay of some—the Catholic Church has not only kept pace with the rest of society in its espousal of rights language, it has led the way in introducing such language into social dialogue and has stood out as a defender of human rights on the international scene.1 Even in the midst of mounting misgivings about rights talk, especially among cultural and political conservatives, the Catholic Church has assumed a leading role in promoting human rights and adopts rights language in her teaching. The documents of the Second Vatican Council, notably Dignitatis Humanae and Gaudium et Spes, abound with references to human rights.2 The Code of Canon Law speaks of “the fundamental rights of human beings” (CIC §) and gives special treatment to “the obligation and rights of all the faithful” (CIC –) in the life of the Church. And the Catechism of the Catholic Church, promulgated in , is likewise replete with rights language.3 In fact, official Church documents are so suffused with rights language that it can safely be said that rights constitute an integral part of Catholic social thought. Many wonder how the Church’s enthusiasm for human rights in the . This is true in a general sense and also specifically as regards the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Mary Ann Glendon has written that “the Church has emerged as, intellectually and institutionally, the single most influential champion of the whole, interconnected, body of principles in the Universal Declaration” (“Rights Babel: The Universal Rights Idea at the Dawn of the Third Millennium,” Gregorianum / []: ). . In the Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World, Gaudium et Spes (hereafter GS), for example, the promotion of rights is put forward as an expression or derivative of the Church’s evangelizing mission. “In virtue of the Gospel entrusted to it, the Church proclaims the rights of man” (). . The CCC speaks of rights in a variety of contexts in the following numbers: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , latter half of the twentieth century can be reconciled with its earlier diffidence toward human rights theories, especially those bound up with Liberalism . Does this rapprochement with human rights represent a shift in Church teaching, a development of doctrine, or simply a rephrasing of perennial Church teaching in matters of theological anthropology and ethics? If, as I contend throughout this study, justice and rights are so tightly intertwined that to speak of justice is necessarily to speak of rights, then the Church has affirmed the rights of man since her founding, albeit using different terminology.4 Nonetheless, rather than look at the Church’s theoretical and practical commitment to justice, here we will limit our survey to the Church’s relationship with rights per se. As we have seen, some assert that the Church’s recent adoption of human rights language represents a departure from traditional Catholic ethics. It will be helpful, therefore, to see whether this is so from a historical perspective. Though today the Catholic Church finds itself on the front line in the promotion of human rights, at the beginning of the modern rights movement the Church’s position stood at odds with the thesis on which the movement was based as well as with some of its expressions. It is vital to distinguish from the outset between rights as a concept and sociopolitical reality on the one hand, and rights as a historical movement on the other.5 Whereas the moral and political concept of rights had been present in some way in Catholic moral thought since the beginning of Christianity, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , . . Thus Edouard Hamel asserts that “in the history of the Church, praxis has often preceded theory. The defense and promotion of the rights of man were often lived under different names. We can think, for example, of care for the sick, children, the poor, and the elderly. Was there not, in fact, constant attention to the rights of the little ones, the poor, and the oppressed ?” (“Fondement théologique des droits de l’homme,” Seminarium []: ; author ’s translation). . “Although rights as a concept and as a socio-political reality existed prior to seventeenth and eighteenth century natural rights, rights as a historic movement was inaugurated with the natural rights schools and the accompanying socio-political revolutions” (Mary Elsbernd, “Rights Statements: A Hermeneutical Key to Continuing Development in Magisterial Teaching ,” in Ephemerides Theologiae Lovanienses, t. [Leuven, ], n; emphasis in original). [3.140...
