COMPENDUM OF THE SOCIAL
DOCTRINE OF THE CHURCH
IV. HUMAN RIGHTS
a. The value of human rights
152.
The movement towards
the identification and proclamation
of human rights is one of the most
significant attempts to respond
effectively to the inescapable
demands of human dignity. The
Church sees in these rights the
extraordinary opportunity that our
modern times offer, through the
affirmation of these rights, for
more effectively recognizing human
dignity and universally promoting it
as a characteristic inscribed by God
the Creator in his creature. The
Church's Magisterium has not failed
to note the positive value of the
Universal Declaration of Human
Rights, adopted by the United
Nations on 10 December 1948, which
Pope John Paul II defined as “a true
milestone on the path of humanity's
moral progress”.
153.
In fact, the roots of
human rights are to be found in the
dignity that belongs to each human
being. This dignity, inherent
in human life and equal in every
person, is perceived and understood
first of all by reason. The natural
foundation of rights appears all the
more solid when, in
light of the supernatural, it is
considered that human dignity, after
having been given by God and having
been profoundly wounded by sin, was
taken on and redeemed by Jesus
Christ in his incarnation, death and
resurrection.
The ultimate source of human
rights is not found in the mere will
of human beings, in the
reality of the State, in public
powers, but in man himself and in
God his Creator. These rights
are “universal, inviolable,
inalienable”. Universal
because they are present in all
human beings, without exception of
time, place or subject.
Inviolable insofar as “they are
inherent in the human person and in
human dignity” and because “it would
be vain to proclaim rights, if at
the same time everything were not
done to ensure the duty of
respecting them by all people,
everywhere, and for all people”.
Inalienable insofar as “no one
can legitimately deprive another
person, whoever they may be, of
these rights, since this would do
violence to their nature”.
154.
Human rights are to be
defended not only individually but
also as a whole: protecting them
only partially would imply a kind of
failure to recognize them. They
correspond to the demands of human
dignity and entail, in the first
place, the fulfilment of the
essential needs of the person in the
material and spiritual spheres.
“These rights apply to every stage
of life and to every political,
social, economic and cultural
situation. Together they form a
single whole, directed unambiguously
towards the promotion of every
aspect of the good of both the
person and society ... The integral
promotion of every category of human
rights is the true guarantee of full
respect for each individual right”.
Universality and indivisibility are
distinctive characteristics of human
rights: they are “two guiding
principles which at the same time
demand that human rights be rooted
in each culture and that their
juridical profile be strengthened so
as to ensure that they are fully
observed”.
b. The specification of
rights
155.
The teachings of Pope
John XXIII, the Second
Vatican Council, and Pope
Paul VI have given abundant
indication of the concept of human
rights as articulated by the
Magisterium. Pope John Paul II has
drawn up a list of them in the
Encyclical
Centesimus Annus: “the
right to life, an integral part of
which is the right of the child to
develop in the mother's womb from
the moment of conception; the right
to live in a united family
and in a moral environment conducive
to the growth of the child's
personality; the right to develop
one's intelligence and freedom
in seeking and knowing the truth;
the right to share in the work which
makes wise use of the earth's
material resources, and to derive
from that work the means to support
oneself and one's dependents; and
the right freely to establish
a family, to have and to rear
children through the responsible
exercise of one's sexuality. In a
certain sense, the source and
synthesis of these rights is
religious freedom,
understood as the right to live in
the truth of one's faith and in
conformity with one's transcendent
dignity as a person”.
The first right presented in
this list is the right to life, from
conception to its natural end,
which is the condition for the
exercise of all other rights and, in
particular, implies the illicitness
of every form of procured abortion
and of euthanasia. Emphasis is
given to the paramount value of the
right to religious freedom:
“all men are to be immune from
coercion on the part of individuals
or of social groups and of any human
power, in such wise that no one is
to be forced to act in a manner
contrary to his own beliefs, whether
privately or publicly, whether alone
or in association with others,
within due limits”. The respect of
this right is an indicative sign of
“man's authentic progress in any
regime, in any society, system or
milieu”.
c. Rights and duties
156.
Inextricably connected
to the topic of rights is the issue
of the duties falling to men and
women, which is given
appropriate emphasis in the
interventions of the Magisterium.
The mutual complementarities between
rights and duties — they are
indissolubly linked — are recalled
several times, above all in the
human person who possesses them.
This bond also has a social
dimension: “in human society to one
man's right there corresponds a duty
in all other persons: the duty,
namely, of acknowledging and
respecting the right in question”.
The Magisterium underlines the
contradiction inherent in affirming
rights without acknowledging
corresponding responsibilities.
“Those, therefore, who claim their
own rights, yet altogether forget or
neglect to carry out their
respective duties, are people who
build with one hand and destroy with
the other”.
d. Rights of peoples and
nations
157.
The field of human
rights has expanded to include the
rights of peoples and nations:
in fact, “what is true for the
individual is also true for
peoples”. The Magisterium points out
that international law “rests upon
the principle of equal respect for
States, for each people's right to
self-determination and for their
free cooperation in view of the
higher common good of humanity”.
Peace is founded not only on respect
for human rights but also on respect
for the rights of peoples, in
particular the right to
independence.
The rights of nations are nothing
but “‘human rights' fostered at the
specific level of community life”. A
nation has a “fundamental right to
existence”, to “its own language and
culture, through which a people
expresses and promotes ... its
fundamental spiritual
‘sovereignty”', to “shape its life
according to its own traditions,
excluding, of course, every abuse of
basic human rights and in particular
the oppression of minorities”, to
“build its future by providing an
appropriate education for the
younger generation”. The
international order requires a
balance between particularity and
universality, which all nations
are called to bring about, for their
primary duty is to live in a posture
of peace, respect and solidarity
with other nations.
e. Filling in the gap
between the letter and the spirit
158.
The solemn proclamation
of human rights is contradicted by a
painful reality of violations,
wars and violence of every kind, in
the first place, genocides and mass
deportations, the spreading on a
virtual worldwide dimension of ever
new forms of slavery such as
trafficking in human beings, child
soldiers, the exploitation of
workers, illegal drug trafficking,
prostitution. “Even in countries
with democratic forms of government,
these rights are not always fully
respected”.
Unfortunately, there is a gap
between the “letter” and the
“spirit” of human rights, which
can often be attributed to a merely
formal recognition of these rights.
The Church's social doctrine, in
consideration of the privilege
accorded by the Gospel to the poor,
repeats over and over that “the more
fortunate should renounce
some of their rights so as to place
their goods more generously at the
service of others” and that an
excessive affirmation of equality
“can give rise to an individualism
in which each one claims his own
rights without wishing to be
answerable for the common good”.
159.
The Church, aware that
her essentially religious mission
includes the defence and promotion
of human rights, “holds in high
esteem the dynamic approach of today
which is everywhere fostering these
rights”. The Church profoundly
experiences the need to respect
justice and human rights within her
own ranks.
This pastoral commitment
develops in a twofold direction: in
the proclamation of the Christian
foundations of human rights and in
the denunciation of the violations
of these rights. In any event,
“proclamation is always
more important than denunciation,
and the latter cannot ignore the
former, which gives it true solidity
and the force of higher motivation”.
For greater effectiveness, this
commitment is open to ecumenical
cooperation, to dialogue with other
religions, to all appropriate
contacts with other organizations,
governmental and non-governmental,
at the national and international
levels. The Church trusts above all
in the help of the Lord and his
Spirit who, poured forth into human
hearts, is the surest guarantee for
respecting justice and human rights,
and for contributing to peace. “The
promotion of justice and peace and
the penetration of all spheres of
human society with the light and the
leaven of the Gospel have always
been the object of the Church's
efforts in fulfillment of the Lord's
command”.
