No CrossRef data available.
Article contents
Human Rights and Pluralism in Catholic Social Thought
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 January 2024
Abstract
The essay argues that a Catholic tradition of natural law and its conception of human rights depend on the continuing life of institutions that stand apart from and sustain standards of justice independent from the modern state and its corresponding economy. Christians contribute to a defense of human rights precisely as members of their Churches, through their social and institutional presence across the globe. Catholic social thought deals with matters of human rights from within a tradition of natural law that assumes a common human end, a common good. This ecclesiological tradition of the human good is precisely what Catholics have to offer in a context of pluralism. The Church has a task of sustaining institutions where its practical rationality about human goods offers a practical alternative in a world where the self-interest of states and purely economic interests win the day.
- Type
- Original Articles
- Information
- Copyright
- © The author 2008. Journal compilation © The Dominican Council/Blackwell Publishing Ltd. 2008
References
1 Cahill, Lisa Sowle, “Realigning Catholic Priorities: Bioethics and the Common Good.”America 191.6 (September 13, 2004): 13.Google ScholarPubMed
2 Jepson, Paul and Canney, Susan, “Values-led Conservation.”Global Ecology and Biogeography 12.4 (July 2003): 271–4CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
3 Niebuhr, Reinhold, Christian Realism and Political Problems (New York: Scribner, 1953)Google Scholar. Morgenthau, Hans J., Politics Among the Nations: The Struggle for Power and Peace (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1960Google Scholar).
4 Murray, John Courtney S.J., Religious Liberty: Catholic Struggles with Pluralism. Ed. Hooper, J. Leon S.J., (Louisville: Westminster/John Knox Press, 1993), 49–127Google Scholar.
5 Pope Pius XI, Quadragesimo anno, nos. 59–64, in O'Brien, David J. and Shannon, Thomas A., Eds., Catholic Social Thought: The Documentary Heritage (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1992), 42–79Google Scholar.
6 Cavanaugh, William T., Theopolitical Imagination (London: T & T Clark, 2002), 53–95Google Scholar.
7 Hill, Edmund J. O.P., The Three-Personed God: The Trinity as a Mystery of Salvation (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 1982), 284–306Google Scholar.
8 Murray, John Courtney S.J., We Hold These Truths: Catholic Reflections on the American Proposition (New York: Sheed and Ward, 1960), 45–78Google Scholar. This claim about Murray would have to be argued in detail. He holds that the Catholic natural law tradition does not require suppositions based on Christian revelation; however, he does recognize, as a matter of historical fact and theological understanding, that the Catholic tradition (both practical and intellectual) is distinctive insofar as it embodies natural law thinking and commitments. The Catholic tradition carries/embodies an understanding of human life ordered by God. Charles E. Curran, in American Catholic Social Ethics, argues that Murray's understanding of social/civic unity is too dependent on metaphysical, ontological, and epistemology unity (225–6). The argument with Curran is whether or not disunity in a basic understanding of the human being can produce substantive unity. In this matter, it seems to me that the burden of proof is on Curran rather Murray. Murray recognizes that the anthropology of modern politics and political theory cannot sustain social life.
9 Cahill, “Realigning,” 13.
10 Cahill, “Realigning,” 13.
11 Hollenbach, David S.J., The Common Good and Christian Ethics (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 49CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
12 Ruston, Roger, Human Rights and the Image of God (London: SCM Press, 2004), 232–4Google Scholar.
13 Hittinger, Russell, The First Grace: Rediscovering the Natural Law in a Post-Christian World. (Wilmington: ISI Books, 2003)Google Scholar.
14 Kraynak, Robert P., Christian Faith and Modern Democracy (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2001), 159.Google Scholar
15 Kraynak, 153.
16 This argument is harder to make in relation to Kantian proposals such as Herman's, Barbara The Practice of Moral Judgment (Harvard University Press, 1993)Google Scholar. But I think that the criticism still stands. Rawlsian political theories are, at first glance, determined to counter vulgar self-interest, but the underlying rationale of the theories is utilitarian and politically realist. The Rawlsian question is: What political and economic structure will best benefit me when I don't know the particulars about my advantages and disadvantages in competition with others? Ironically, this kind of politically realist question is at the bottom of Kantian proposals insofar as they are purely procedural proposals which attempt to establish a ground for moral goods epistemologically rather than anthropologically, metaphysically, or ontologically.
17 Niebuhr, Reinhold, An Interpretation of Christian Ethics (New York: The Seabury Press, 1979)Google Scholar; Moral Man and Immoral Society (New York: Scribner's Sons, 1932)Google Scholar.
18 Cahill, “Realigning,” 13.
19 Kelly, James R., “A Catholic Votes for John Kerry,”America (September 27, 2004): 13, 16–17Google Scholar; Mark Roche, “Voting Our Conscience, Not Our Religion.”The New York Times, October 11, 2004, A23.
20 Human Rights Watch, New York, NY. “Human Rights Watch,” October 9, 2004/November 18, 2005 <http://www.hrw.org>.
21 Vallely, Paul, “The Fifth Crusade: George Bush and the Christianisation of the War in Iraq,”Borderlands: A Journal of Theology and Education, no. 4 (Summer 2005), 7–11Google Scholar.
22 Lucas, Jennifer A. and McCarthy, David Matzko, “War Is Its Own Justification: What Americans Think about War,”Political Theology, vol. 2, no. 2 (April 2005), 165–192CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
23 Grisez, Germian, Boyle, Joseph, and Finnis, John, “Practical Principles, Moral Truth, and Ultimate Ends”, American Journal of Jurisprudence 32, 1987: 99–151CrossRefGoogle Scholar. I also draw on: Grisez, , The Way of the Lord Jesus, 3.Vols, 1983, 1993, 1997Google Scholar; Finnis, John, Boyle, Joseph, and Grisez, Germain, Nuclear Deterrence: Morality and Realism, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1987.Google Scholar
24 For a critical perspective on natural law as autonomous and independent, see Fergus Kerr in After Aquinas (Oxford: Blackwell, 2002), 104–7Google Scholar.
25 Porter, Jean, Nature as Reason: A Thomistic Theory of the Natural Law (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans Publishing, 2005), 348Google Scholar.
26 Hittinger, The First Grace, xi–xlv.
27 Stout, Jeffrey, The Flight From Authority: Religion, Morality, and the Quest for Autonomy (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1981)Google Scholar.
28 Cavanaugh, William T., Theopolitical Imagination (London: T & T Clark, 2002), 25, 31Google Scholar.
29 Cavanaugh, William T., “‘A Fire Strong Enough to Consume the House’: The Wars of Religion and the Rise of the State,”Modern Theology 11. 4 (October 1995): 397–420CrossRefGoogle Scholar; “Killing for the Telephone Company: Why the Nation-State is Not the Keeper of the Common Good,”Modern Theology 20.2 (April 2004): 243–74CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
30 Taylor, Charles, “A Catholic Modernity?A Catholic Modernity? Charles Taylor's Marianist Award Lecture. Ed. Heft, James L.. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999. 13–38CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
31 The purposes of this article limit my ability to engage arguments within Catholic theology about natural law, with those who want to detach natural law from its theological sources. For the outline of such an argument see McCarthy, David M., “Shifting Settings From Subculture to Pluralism: Catholic Moral Theology in an Evangelical Key,”Communio 31.1 (Spring 2004): 85–110Google Scholar.
32 O'Brien and Shannon, Catholic Social Thought, 129–62.
33 O'Brien and Shannon, 129.
34 Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica vol. 2, I-II QQ 1–114. Fathers of the English Dominican Province, Trans. (New York: Benziger Bros., 1948), I-II 90.2.
35 Aquinas I-II 91.2.
36 Gilson, Etienne, The Christian Philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas. Shook, L.K. C.S.B., Trans. (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1956), 266Google Scholar.
37 Aquinas I-II 93.3.
38 Aquinas I-II 93.3.ob2 cited in Pacem in terris, no. 51, O'Brien and Shannon, 139.
39 Porter, Jean, “A tradition of civility: the natural law as a tradition of moral inquiry.”Scottish Journal of Theology 56.1 (2003): 44CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
40 Porter, “A tradition of civility,” 32–7.
41 Porter, Nature as Reason, 7–24.
42 Porter, “A tradition of civility,” 46.
43 Cahill, , “Toward Global Ethics.”Theological Studies 63.2 (June 2002): 324–44CrossRefGoogle Scholar.