CATHOLIC SOCIAL TEACHING: Rights and Responsibilities

 “To claim one’s rights and ignore one’s duties, or only half fulfill them, is like building a house with one hand and tearing it down with the other.”

—St. John XXIII, Pacem in Terris, #30 (Peace on Earth)

What comes to mind when “rights” are mentioned? Perhaps we think of human rights and those basic items necessary to live—food, water, shelter. Or the right to a fair wage, to equal treatment in the workplace and under the law. Perhaps those famous words of the U.S. Declaration of Independence come to mind: “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, adopted by the United Nations, declares “Whereas recognition of the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world.” In the Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church, St. John Paul II called the declaration “a true milestone on the path of humanity’s moral progress.” And it is. But Catholic social teaching cautions us that “human rights are to be defended not only individually but as a whole: protecting them only partially would imply a kind of failure to recognize them.”

Clearly, we are called to live—and act—in community, remembering that we are one global human family. We would do well to remember that these rights flow from our human dignity, that they are inherent in who we are as people created in God’s image—the “Imago Dei”—and should not be violated, regardless of social or political structures.

With this challenge in mind, we must ask ourselves: how do we exercise our responsibility to protect not just our own rights, but those of others?