To turn from questions of war and peace to questions of human
rights is not to make a leap as great as it might seem, for the two large
issues of peace and human rights are inextricably intertwined. The
document that made this indisputably clear in our time is, again, John
XXIII's Pacem in Terris.
Several decades ago the term human rights did not have the currency it now
has. It was certainly not a lively part of the Christian vocabulary, the
concept to which it refers being subsumed in Roman Catholic parlance under
the general rubric of natural rights of men and women. John XXIII made the
breakthrough when in his encyclical he brought the modern development of
human rights into conjunction with traditional Catholic thought. Calling
the Universal Declaration of Human Rights that was proclaimed by the U.N
General Assembly in 1948 an act of the greatest importance, he numbered it
among the signs of the times that we must discern in our efforts to
achieve greater justice. For these reasons, Pacem
in Terris has been
called the first declaration on human rights made by papal authority.
Whatever the merit of that description, the term human rights is now a
significant part of the Catholic, the Christian vocabulary. It occurs in
the documents of Vatican II, in message of Paul VI, as we have recently
observed, in major addresses of John Paul II. And it is closely tied to
the demand of justice.
The relation between peace and justice is stated in general term in Gaudium et Spes:
"Peace is not merely the absence of war. Nor it can be reduced
solely to the maintenance of a balance of power between enemies. Nor it is
brought about by dictatorship. Instead it is rightly and appropriately
called an enterprise of justice.
Fully aware, however, the
criticisms launched against the Church by those who accuse it of fostering
injustice by counseling patience to the wretched and the deprived, the
Councils Fathers urged action in this world. They referred to the birth of
a new humanism, one is which man is defined primarily in terms of his
responsibility for his brothers and for history. They called upon
Christians to give witness to a faith that proves itself by activating him
toward justice and love, especially regarding the needy. Faith must not
weaken but rather stimulate our concern for cultivating this world.
Many of the major post-conciliar documents echoed and strengthened
these sentiments with increasing specificity. Pope Paul VI noted that
today the principal fact that we must all recognize is that the special
question has become world wide. And in 1971, the College Bishop meeting in
Rome declared:
Action on behalf of justice and participation in the transformation
of the world fully appear to us as a constitutional dimension of the
preaching of the Gospel, or, in other words, of the Church's mission for
the redemption of the human race and its liberation from every oppressive
situation.
For the Catholic Church, it is apparent, the issue of human rights
has opened out to the world scene in which it is a transnational actor -
but only an actor. From Pope John XXXIII to John Paul II, the Church has
increasingly acknowledge its limitations as well as its responsibilities
as it operates in the social order. On the international scene, the
economic and the political problems seem almost as intractable as those
posed by the weapons of modern warfare. It is clear than many
transnational actors must work together to deal with these problems and
the possibility that the Catholic community can work ever more closely
with other Christian communities, and the Christian communities with other
faith communities of the Book is encouraging. But I do not wish to end on
that optimistic note, tentative as it is. I would rather call attention to
the way that John Paul II drew together issues of peace and human rights
when he spoke at the United Nations on October 2, 1979, and to the way in
which his approach to human rights transcended an approach that pits
political and civil rights against economic and social rights.
Referring to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the Pope
asserted that it has struck a real blow against the many roots of war,
since the spirit of war, in its basic primordial meaning, spring up and
grows to maturity where the inalienable rights of man are violated.
These right exist in both the material and spiritual order, and any
threat to human rights, whether in the field of material realities or in
that of spiritual realities, is equally dangerous for peace, since in
every instance it concerns man in his entirety. This does deny, however,
the preeminence of spiritual values, since they define the proper sense of
earth material goods and the way to use them.
There exist is the modern world two main threats, John
Paul said. The first is linked to the uneven distribution of goods within
and between countries, to the disparity between the very rich and the very
poor, to the deprivation of the of those material goods without which is
it impossible to develop as full human persons. The second threat is
directed at the field of the spirit, for “man can indeed be wounded in
his inner relationship with truth, in his conscience, in his most personal
belief, in his view of the world, in his religious faith, and in the
sphere of what are known as civil liberties." Everyone, in every
nation under any political system should be free to enjoy these rights.
John Paul II spoke as the head of the Catholic Church to the assembly of the world's nation. He was the personification of the Church as a transnational actor. But his statements, like all that are necessarily elevated to a high level of generality, must be applied to a variety of differing local, national and regional situations, tey must be interpreted and implemented by people with different degrees of authority, different disciplines, different cultures, different talents and, it must be acknowledged, with different degrees of agreement with his presentation. Within the Church, this will mean a flow of intentional activity, not only from the top down or the center out, but between the many actors and agencies within the Church . It will also increasingly mean cooperative efforts between the Church during the last two decades show that is has moved into the economic and political realities of our time with increasing humility and determination.