How was the Catholic perspective of human rights developed?

The lasting commitment of the Catholic Church of supporting human rights – acted in a fundamental understanding of what it means to be human – has gained a renewed urgency amid recent global conflicts such as war between Russia and Ukraine, the war in Gaza and humanitarian crisis such as the political struggle on migration in the United States.

In his first weeks as a pontiff, Pope Leo XIV, who chose his name in honor of his predecessor Pope Leo XIII, Ha emphasized The call of Christ to peace and respect for the dignity of all people. The papal biographer George Weigel said That Leo XIV has the opportunity to continue the vision of Leo XIII of the Church as a “great promoter and institutional defender of basic human rights” in society.

CNA – an English agency of Ewtn News – spoke with V. Bradley Lewis, dean of the Faculty of Philosophy of the Catholic University of America in Washington DC (United States), about what the Church teaches about human rights and how those teachings have been developed in recent centuries.

Historical roots

Lewis told CNA that, contrary to a common idea, the concept of human rights within Catholic teaching is not a recent addition, but has roots that date back to the constant teaching of the Church about human dignity, and later in the development of canon law and the thought of theologians such as Saint Thomas Aquinas, although the specific terminology of “human rights” has been developed relatively.

“There is an important sense in which it was not something new in modern times, and in which it has always been part of the Catholic tradition,” Lewis said.

The Catholic Church has always affirmed the inherent dignity of every human person as a creation in the image of God (See the Catechism of the Catholic Church, n. 1700). All people have an inherent value as compounds of a mortal body and an immortal soul, and all people are called to have a relationship with God, their creator.

“Every human person, created in the image of God, has the natural right to be recognized as a free and responsible being. Every man must give each respect to the one who has the right. The right to the exercise of freedom is an inseparable demand for the dignity of the human person, especially in moral and religious matters. This right must be recognized and protected civilly within the limits of the common good and public order” (Catechism of the Catholic Church, n. 1738).

Ley natural

All rights, from the Catholic perspective, are based on natural law, which, according to Lewis, provides the essential context to properly understand human rights from a Catholic perspective.

There is a right to life because, according to natural moral law, life is a good that must be protected, wrote Lewis in a 2019 article for the National Catholic Register, an informative partner of ACI Press. True human rights, then, derive from natural law and contribute to human flowering and reasonable forms of coexistence, he explained.

A problematic way of seeing rights, he continued, is like purely individual possessions or forms of “individual sovereignty” affirmed against others; In contrast, the Catholic way of understanding rights sees them as a framework to understand and regulate relationships between people within a community.

Various types of rights

“Clearly there are certain human rights that are absolutely necessary: ​​such as the right to life, not to be intentionally murdered as an innocent person; rights to religious freedom; rights to family life; things like that. And then there are many other rights that we have that are simply legal rights, which can be limited in various ways,” said Lewis.

“And then there are some ‘rights’ that are totally invented, and that means that they could be eliminated depending on what we want,” he continued, specifically mentioning in his article the social statements about the existence of “rights to abortion, the so -called right to die, homosexual and transgender rights.”

Pope Leo XIII – literal and spiritual predecessor of Leo XIV – emphasized the rights of workers and the right to private property in their writings like Pope From 1878 to 1903. Of the revolutionarythe fundamental document of Leo XIII in the Catholic social doctrine that addressed the challenges of the industrial revolution, emphasizes the need for reforms to protect the dignity of the working class maintaining a relationship with capital and the existence of private property.

Recent developments

In 1948, after World War II, the United Nations adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (Dudh), partly influenced by the thought of the Catholic philosopher Jacques Maritain, whose work emphasizing the importance of human rights as part of human dignity indirectly influenced the speech around the statement, although he did not participate directly in his writing.

The teaching of the Church developed even more throughout the twentieth century; The encyclical letter Peace on earth From San Juan XXIII in 1963 it includes an extensive catalog of human rights, including the right to life, the right to respect and a good name, and the right to education, as well as the right to “body integrity, to the necessary means for a decent standard of living, which are, mainly, food, dress, housing, rest, medical assistance and, finally, indispensable services”.

“In human society, to a certain natural right of each man (corresponds) in others the duty to recognize and respect it. Because any fundamental right of man derives his mandatory moral force of natural law, which confers and imposes it the correlative duty. Therefore, who, when claiming their rights, completely forget their duties or do not give them the proper importance, they resemble those who demolish with one hand that with one hand with one hand. San Juan XXIII wrote in Peace on earth.

The statement Human dignity of the Second Vatican Council in 1965 further affirmed the importance of religious freedom, saying that this right “is really based on the very dignity of the human person, as is known by the revealed word of God and for the same natural reason.”

The relative delay of these last writings could lead some people to believe that the Catholic Church “discovered” human rights in the mid -twentieth century, which is not correct, Lewis said. Rather, the underlying concepts of what we now call human rights have been present among Catholic thinkers for centuries, although they will not be explicitly appointed or discussed in the same way focused; For example, within medieval canon law – which became a highly developed legal system – discussions on rights can be found.

“Rights really enter our tradition, really in the western tradition, through law. I think wherever you have a highly developed legal system and a system of legal reasoning, you find attention to rights. There was more of that in the legal tradition that, for example, among theologians,” Lewis continued.

Lewis said that the development of the idea of ​​human rights was partly an response to the emergence of modern states and governments.

He pointed out that the modern state has an unprecedented capacity to exercise concentrated power, due in large part to technology. This power can allow both incredible good and terrible oppression, and given this modern power, human rights are essential protections against possible state abuse and oppression.

“I do not know anyone who wants to live in a modern state without the protection provided by human rights. We no longer live in medieval villages or in ancient Greek states. We live in these incredibly powerful modern states. (The power of the government) must be limited,” said Lewis.

Translated and adapted by the ACI Press team. Originally published in CNA.