“As values have become relative and rights more important than duties, the goal of serving the common good is often lost.” (Cardinal Turkson)
On Wednesday, June 27, I delivered the feature address at Our Lady of Fatima, Curepe, on the theme Rights and Responsibilities. The Church has always sought to educate the faithful/the world about these issues e.g. Pope Leo XIII’s encyclical: Rerum Novarum (1891) focused on the Rights and Duties of Capital and Labour.
Blessed John Paul II said: “Every generation needs to know that freedom consists not in doing what we like but in having the right to do what we ought.” Students need to learn about rights and responsibilities e.g. Thora Best, principal of Rose Hill RC Primary School, POS, like many principals, promotes three pillars of discipline at her school:
1) Aim high 2) Do unto others as you would have them do onto you, and 3) Do the right thing because it is the right thing to do.
Cardinal Scherer, Pope Benedict XVI’s special envoy, led the Holy See Delegation atRio+20 (UN Conference on Sustainable Development). Inter alia, he said: “Now is the opportune time to address the many threats to the human family and its earthly home posed by the persisting injustice of hunger, poverty and underdevelopment which continue to plague our societies…The right to water, the right to food, the right to health and the right to education are intrinsically linked to the right to life and to the right to development … it is people who are charged with stewardship over nature”. We have “a duty towards future generations who will inherit the consequences of our decisions.”
Section VI, Para152 to 159 of The Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church focuses on Human Rights. Para 153 states: “…the roots of human rights are to be found in the dignity that belongs to each human being…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, and 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”.
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In his encyclical, Peace on Earth (1963), Pope John XXIII stated that the foundation of all rights is linked to the fact that humankind is created in God’s image and “endowed with intelligence and free will. As such he has rights and duties, which together flow as a direct consequence of his nature.”
See also: Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948); Pope John XXIII’s Charter of Rights in his encyclical, Peace on Earth; Blessed John Paul II’s list of rights in his encyclical, The Hundredth Year; his Message on the World Day of Peace 1999: Respect for human rights: The secret of true peace; and his address at the UN in 1979; and T&T’s Constitution.
All rights are indivisible so we have to protect them together. “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….The first right …is the right to life, from conception to its natural death” (Compendium, Para 154).
Human rights apply to every stage of human life and to every political, economic, social and cultural situation. However, “inextricably connected to the topic of rights is the issue of the duties falling to men and women…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”.
Sadly, the language of human rights today is cloaked in secularism e.g. some women who try to justify abortion say: “It’s my body; I can do with it as I wish.” This kind of thinking is linked to individualism and moral relativism so rampant today.
“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.” (Compendium, para 157).
