Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-lnqnp Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-24T22:08:29.952Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Catholic Human Rights Theory: Four Challenges to an Intellectual Tradition*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 February 2016

Extract

My own beliefs about human rights have always been grounded on very concrete icons and images. Around my neck, for example, I wear a pendant made by a political prisoner in Chile. I have been privileged to meet, through Amnesty International or church connections, prisoners of conscience such as Mr. Babu, the former vice-president of Tanzania, who testify to the efficacy of human rights advocacy from a center in the first world. In Zambia and Peru, I have seen little children, whose subsistence rights have been denied, being treated for malnutrition by staff from missionary clinics. These human images and icons have led me to concrete commitments which include active membership in two international human rights organizations: Amnesty International and the Roman Catholic church as a transnational human rights network of advocacy (I am referring not only to the Vatican's participation in the United Nations and its world-wide orchestration of refugee services through Catholic Relief Services but also to more local human rights networks such as, for example, the Vicariate of Solidarity in Santiago, Chile, or, in our country, the church-sponsored sanctuary movement for refugees from El Salvador and Guatamala).

Type
Special Section—Religion and American Public Life
Copyright
Copyright © Center for the Study of Law and Religion at Emory University 1984

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

*

This essay was originally delivered as part of series at Immaculate Conception Seminary, Long Island, New York. It was subsequently presented at a faculty seminar of the Project on Religion and American Public Life at the University of Chicago.

References

1. Cf. Human Rights and American Foreign Policy (Kommers, D., Loescher, G. eds. 1979)Google Scholar.

2. Fagen, P., Bibliography on Human Rights 17 (1980)Google Scholar.

3. Smith, B., Churches and Human Rights in Latin America, Recent Trends on the Subcontinent, in Churches and Politics in Latin America 155193 (1980)Google Scholar.

4. Stackhouse, M., Creeds, Society and Human Rights (1984)Google Scholar.

5. Hollenbach, D., Claims in Conflict: Retrieving and Renewing the Catholic Human Rights Tradition (1979)Google Scholar and Hehir, J., Human Rights and U.S. Foreign Policy: A Perspective from Theological Ethics, in The Moral Imperatives of Human Rights: A World Survey 125 (1980)Google Scholar.

6. Baum, , The Catholic Foundation of Human Rights, in 18 The Ecumenist No.1 at 8 (1979)Google Scholar.

7. Bentham, , Anarchical Fallacies, in Olafson, F., Society, Law and Morality 347 (1961)Google Scholar and Cranston, M., What are Human Rights? (1973)Google Scholar.

8. Hart, , Are There Any Human Rights? in Olafson, F., Society, Law and Morality 173 (1961)Google Scholar.

9. Hollenbach, supra note 5, at 15.

10. Id. at 20.

11. Id. at 26.

12. Id. at 34.

13. Id. at 41.

14. Id. at 68.

15. Rerum Novarum, in Seven Great Encyclicals 4 (1963)Google Scholar.

16. Hollenbach, supra note 5, at 55.

17. Id. at 61.

18. Id. at 65.

19. Id. at 115.

20. Id. at 89

21. Id. at 204.

22. Id. at 49.

23. Id. at 68.

24. Id. at 90.

25. Hehir, supra note 5, at 5.

26. Maritain, J., The Rights of Man and Natural Law 65 (Anson, D. trans. 1951)Google Scholar.

27. Gewirth, A., Human Rights: Essays on Justification and Applications (1982)Google Scholar.

28. Id. at 13.

29. Hehir, supra note 5, at 5.

30. Gewirth, supra note 27, at 28.

31. Id. at 51.

32. Hollenbach, supra note 5, at 91.

33. Baum, supra note 6, at 8.

34. Bellah, , Faith Communities Challenge—and are challenged by—The Changing World Order, in World Faiths and the New World Order 165–66 (1976)Google Scholar.

35. McWilliams, W., The Idea of Fraternity in America 171 (1973)Google Scholar.

36. Stackhouse, supra note 4, at 70-76. I think the McWilliams interpretation of the tension and contradictions between Puritanism and Lockean thought is a superior interpretation to Stackhouse's view of the two traditions in synthesis.

37. Hollenbach, supra note 5, at 97.

38. Id. at 65.

39. Hehir, supra, note 5, at 9.

40. Baum, supra note 6, at 10.

41. Feinberg, J., Social Philosophy 59 (1973)Google Scholar.

42. Dworkin, R., Taking Rights Seriously xi (1970)Google Scholar.

43. Gewirth, supra note 27, at 55.

44. Shue, H., Basic Rights 19 (1980)Google Scholar.

45. Id. at 18.

46. Id. at 71.

47. Id. at 20.

48. Id. at 118.

49. Hollenbach, supra note 5. at 197.

50. Id. at 203.

51. Cf. Pacem in Terris in The Gospel of Peace and Justice 203206 (Gremillion, J. ed. 1976)Google Scholar.

52. Langan, , The Bishops and the Bottom Line, Commonweal, 590 (11 1984)Google Scholar.

53. Shue, supra note 44, at 125.

54. National Conference of Catholic Bishops, First Draft Pastoral Letter on Catholic Social Teaching and the U.S. Economy No. 74 (1984).

55. Id. No. 79.

56. For an argument that immigration is not a basic right, see Walzer, M., Spheres of Justice 3163 (1983)Google Scholar.

57. Supra note 54.

58. See id., No. 103.

59. See id., No. 103.

60. Shue, supra note 44, at 15.

61. Id. at 16.

62. Stackhouse, supra note 4, at 5.

63. Hollenbach, supra note 5, at 55.

64. Id. at 25.

65. Id. at 33.

66. Shue, supra note 44, at 33.

67. Hollenbach, supra note 5, at 160.

68. Id. at 165.

69. Smith, supra note 3, at 183.

70. Cf. Coleman, J., An America Strategic Theology 264–66Google Scholar.

71. Hollenbach, supra note 5, at 67.

72. Stackhouse, supra note 4, at 55.

73. Baum, supra note 6, at 7.

74. Supra, note 54, No. 86.

75. Baum, supra note 6, at 8.

76. Stackhouse, supra note 4, at 106.

77. Shue, supra note 44, at 7.