Recently, the European Court of Human Rights held that where conditions of employment forbid discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, and an employee following her/his religious beliefs discriminates, she/he may lawfully be dismissed.
Some ask whether human rights have become a secularist instrument to replace Christian belief as to what is good for society- Fr Robert Soler
In another case, an individual wore a small cross on her clothing as a sign of religious faith: dismissal here was held to be unlawful, unless there are ‘overriding reasons’, such as hygiene in a hospital.
Conflict of rights is very complex, but clearly the right of expression of one’s religious beliefs at present does not carry much weight with the courts, and has to give way to other rights, such as that of non-discrimination.
Some Catholics ask themselves whether human rights are part of the Church’s social teaching, and also whether human rights have not, in practice, become a secularist instrument to replace Christian belief as to what is good for society.
The concept of human rights traces its origin back to the French Revolution and the Enlightenment, but the reality is much older.
In Europe shaped by Christianity, the 10 Commandments were a powerful vehicle to affirm human rights, such as the right to life being asserted by the fifth commandment, the right to property by the seventh.
Besides, before the term ‘human rights’ was invented, the Catholic Church had been affirming the substance of some of those rights. The Dominican missionaries in Central America, led by Bartolomè De las Casas, championed the rights of the Indio people against the profiteering colonisers.
De las Casas appealed to Pope Paul III. In 1537, Paul III decreed unequivocally in Sublimis Deus that the gospel message was addressed to all peoples without exception, since all were human and could be baptised. In no case should the Indio people be enslaved. Even those who were not Christians could possess property and acquire more.
Subsequently, the Jesuits in the reducciones of Paraguay had an analogous struggle to defend the freedom and dignity of the Indio people. Thus, Paul III, the Dominicans and the Jesuits all prophetically stood up for justice and human rights.
When the French Revolution and the Enlightenment professed human rights, the Catholic Church was understandably defensive, for two reasons: (a) human rights seemed part of a secular project to remove religion from public life, and (b) human rights were unquestionably contradicted by grave violations perpetrated by the revolutionaries themselves – for instance, though not solely, in the case of the mass genocide of Catholics in the Vendée region in 1793.
The eminent French Catholic Jacques Maritain wrote about the rights of man in 1942 and was involved in drafting the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights. This led to the decisive inclusion of human rights in Pope John XXIII’s Pacem in Terris, which paved the way for Vatican II.
Subsequent popes considered human rights as reflecting the dignity of human beings as sons and daughters of God, and so as being an integral part of the Church’s teaching. Human rights, ultimately, are rooted in human dignity and in God the Creator.
The Church sees the movement towards the identification and proclamation of human rights as “one of the most significant attempts to respond effectively to the inescapable demands of human dignity” (Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church, 2004, par. 152).
Two things need to be added: (a) many matters are claimed as ‘rights’, but not all correspond to the dignity of the human being and the respect for others (for example, the ‘right’ of a pregnant woman to abortion); (b) human rights are not to be interpreted individualistically, for every right involves a corresponding responsibility/duty to respect the rights of others, including the common good (such as the right to free expression of thought when it is likely to cause outrage by religious believers).
Some evidently want Christian values eliminated from society. The best way forward, however, is not polemics but reasoned argument, and – where there is conflict of rights – dialogue on the weight to be given to each human right.
Fr Soler is a member of the Society of Jesus.