Journal of Christian legal Thought fall 2011 Catholic Social Thought, Political Liberalism and the Idea of Human Rights By Zachary R. Calo, Valparaiso University School of Law I. The Morality of Human Rights own assumptions, methods, and anthropology. The Human rights is the dominant moral category plurality that resides within the liberal human rights of modernity. As both a theoretical concept and tradition, particularly that located on the boundary the basis of legal norms, human rights shapes the of secularism and religion, is a necessary backdrop way we think and talk about personhood, social to engaging emerging debates about such significant justice, and political obligation. Yet, it is also the topics as religious pluralism and religious law. It case that there is no one account of human rights, also must shape our reflections on foundational but rather competing traditions of human rights questions about the limits and possibilities of human that strive for primacy. Human rights, in short, is a rights law.1 deeply contested category through which different This paper does not engage these broader moral visions aim to shape institutions and policies. contested issues but rather considers the background In spite of the label, human rights claims are not question of how religious traditions, in this case the universal either methodologically or substantively. social thought of the Catholic church, has engaged Rather, under the umbrella of human rights is the idea of human rights and the liberal tradition located a constant struggle between the universal more generally. In particular, this case study aims and the particular. How this tension unfolds, and to illuminate the process by which Catholicism whether it does so in a constructive or disruptive developed a native human rights tradition and manner, is one of the foundational questions that how, in turn, this tradition is distinguished from must be engaged in coming years. its regnant secular counterpart. By so doing, this In the past, the tension between universality paper aims to texture and ultimately complicate and particularity was considered most commonly our understanding of the idea and history of human in the context of cultural relativism, with particular rights, thereby bringing attention to the plural moral attention given to the ways in which human rights and political traditions that reside under the rubric was a western construct that could not adequately of human rights. This is a story that can and should account for different forms of communal values. be retold from the perspective of other traditions, This issue remains important, though this paper and it is a story that is now unfolding within strands advances the claim that the most significant point of Islamic thought. The story outlined in this paper of tension is not between human rights values is thus one that is largely historical, and concerned and non-human rights values, but rather a tension with intellectual history at that, but equally one within the idea of human rights. More specifically, with profound implications for thinking about how the primary fault line concerns the role of religion religious traditions, in both theory and practice, can and religious traditions as they relate to human relate to the broader human rights movement. Only rights. This tension has long been pregnant within by assessing the theological particularity of religious the modern human rights movement, though traditions can we begin to engage the idea of human it has received greater attention in recent years. rights in its prospective universality. Increased sociological awareness of the continued relevance of religion, a questioning of the secular, II. The Catholic Human Rights Revolution and certainly the engagement between Islam and One of the most significant revolutions of the the West, has generated new interest in the role of twentieth-century was the transformation of the religion within political ideas and movements. This 1 sensitivity, in turn, has opened space for exploring See, for instance, Rowan Williams, “Civil and Religious Law in England: A Religious Perspective,” Ecclesiastical Law Journal religious accounts of human rights, just as it has 10:3 (2008): 262-282. See, generally, Rex Adhar and Nicholas provoked an awareness of the ways in which there is Aroney, eds., Shari’a in the West (New York: Oxford University a secular tradition of human rights that rests on its Press, 2010). — 1 — Journal of Christian legal Thought fall 2011 Roman Catholic church from entrenched defender after the creation of an authentic Catholic liberalism of the anciène regime into one of the world’s embodied in the adaptation of Catholic moral leading advocates of social and political justice, theology to certain precepts of liberal political democratic governance, and human rights.2 In the theory. The development of a Catholic human period between the French Revolution and the rights movement is therefore intimately related to Second Vatican Council, John Witte observes, the the dissolution of the regnant conservatism that Catholic church was transformed “from a passive long dominated Catholic intellectual life. Only accomplice in authoritarian regimes to a powerful by accepting certain presuppositions of liberal advocate of democratic and human rights reform.”3 theory, and incorporating the language of rights David Hollenbach is even bolder in his assessment: into Catholic social thought, was the church able “During the last half century and a half, the Roman to develop the vision and vocabulary for engaging Catholic church has moved from strong opposition modernity. Only by appropriating the dominant to the rights championed by liberal thinkers of the political paradigm of the age did the church gain eighteenth and nineteenth centuries to the position the capacity to participate in the broader human of one of the leading institutional advocates for rights movement and to think constructively about human rights on the world stage today.”4 Once its role in the formation of a just social and political among the most steadfast opponents of political order. liberalism, the Catholic church is now among the While the Catholic church has certainly staunchest and most important participants in the become more accepting of modern political push for global acceptance of democratic liberalism.5 institutions and ideas, this process has not entailed In Eastern Europe and Latin America, Africa and the granting of an unqualified imprimatur to the the Philippines, the Catholic church has emerged whole of liberalism. The development of a Catholic as a vital institutional advocate for progressive liberalism has rather involved the emergence of a social change, promoting a broad vision of political, distinctive understanding of rights theory that has economic, and cultural rights. At the root of the both incorporated the insights of liberalism while church’s emergence as a global political actor is nevertheless remaining at tension with it in several two centuries of thought about the relationship of fundamental respects. The emergence of modern Catholicism and modernity, and in particular, liberal Catholic social thought since the late nineteenth political ideas. century has thus involved the church both opening This paper traces developments in Catholic social itself to the modern world while also remaining thought from the French Revolution, through the one if its most insistent critics. Catholic liberalism Second Vatican Council, into the papacy of John and secular liberalism possess markedly different Paul II. Catholic thought on social questions has, of histories, and while the gap separating their course, been diverse in its methods and conclusions. respective narratives lessened during the course Given the vastness of this history, the account of the twentieth-century, they remain distinct developed herein focuses largely on official church traditions established on distinct foundations. As pronouncements. Addressing Catholic social thought such, the Catholic church, in spite of its successful from a top-down perspective necessarily means that reconciliation with much of modernity, remains a certain complexity is bypassed. At the same time, something of an outsider within the liberal body papal statements have been of paramount import in politic. Ultimately, certain fundamental tensions establishing the parameters of the broader Catholic exist between the Catholic church’s conception discussion. In exploring this history, the argument of the meaning and end of human rights, and developed is that the Catholic church’s emergence that which guides dominant elements of the as a global advocate for human rights occurred only international human rights movement. Because of the distinctive politico-ethical 2 See Thomas Bokenkotter, Church and Revolution: Catholics in the Struggle for Democracy and Social Justice (New York: Image, 1998). visions advanced by Catholic liberalism and secular 3 John Witte, Jr. “Law, Religion and Human Rights,” Columbia liberalism, the church has the opportunity to make a Human Rights Law Review (Fall 1996): 10. unique contribution to human rights. The church’s 4 David Hollenbach, “A communitarian reconstruction of hu- foundational theory of rights, emphasis on the limits man rights: contributions from Catholic tradition,” in Catholi- cism and Liberalism: Contributions to American Public Philosophy, and responsibilities of freedom, and insistence on the ed. R. Bruce Douglass and David Hollenbach