Catholic Social Thought and Human Rights

• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/ajes.12088
• Published date: 01 January 2015
• Author: Zachary R. Calo
• Date: 01 January 2015

Catholic Social Thought and Human Rights

By ZACHARY R. CALO*

ABSTRACT. As the dominant moral vocabulary of modernity, the lan-

guage of human rights establishes significant points of contact

between the religious and the secular. Yet, the human rights move-

ment increasingly finds itself in a contested relationship with religious

ideas and communities. Even as it draws on the inherited moral

resources of religion, the human rights movement, at least in its

dominant institutional and intellectual expressions, presents itself as a

totalizing moral theory that challenges countervailing theological

accounts of human rights. This article considers the distinctive account

of human rights that has emerged within Catholic social teaching.

Particular attention is given to the process by which Catholic thinking

about human rights has embraced political liberalism while also

bounding liberalism within a particularistic theologically-informed

account of the human person.

***

The Roman Catholic Church is one of the leading proponents of

human rights in the world today. Traveling the globe and speaking on

behalf of the poor and defenseless against the abuse of power by

states and terrorist groups, popes enunciate a moral vision that is

intended to hold accountable all human institutions. For example,

in a public speech in Albania in September 2014, Pope Francis

denounced any group that would take “actions against human dignity

and against the fundamental rights of every man and woman, above

all to the right to life and the right of everyone to religious freedom”

(Guardian 2014).

This was not an unusual speech for the Pope. In fact, it is in line

with speeches and encyclicals that have given human rights an

increasingly important place in Catholic thought over the past century.

The concern for human rights is central to Catholic social teaching,

*Research Scholar in Law and Religion, Valparaiso University School of Law. E-mail:

zachary.calo@valpo.edu

American Journal of Economics and Sociology, Vol. 74, No. 1 (January, 2015).

DOI: 10.1111/ajes.12088

© 2015 American Journal of Economics and Sociology, Inc.

and it plays an important role in the actions taken by the Church. For

Catholics, statements about human rights are not just words, but

words to live by. This was not always the case.

One of the most significant of the 20th century revolutions was the

Roman Catholic Church’s transformation from entrenched defender of

the ancien régime into a leading advocate for international human

rights (Bokenkotter 1998). As Witte (1996: 10) explains, in the period

between the French Revolution and the Second Vatican Council, the

Catholic Church transformed itself “from a passive accomplice in

authoritarian regimes to a powerful advocate of democratic and

human rights reform.” It accomplished this transition primarily

through a critical embrace of modern politics. In the century between

the Syllabus of Errors and Dignitatis Humanae, the Church altered its

basic disposition towards liberalism and human rights.

This article surveys the transformation in Catholic social thought

and its implications for the Church’s relationship to the human rights

movement. The emergence of Catholicism as a global advocate for

human rights occurred only after the creation of a Catholic liberalism

that synchronized Catholic theology with certain precepts of liberal-

ism. In this respect, the emergence of a Catholic human rights move-

ment is intimately linked to the dissolution of the regnant

conservatism that long dominated Catholic social thought, particularly

in its papal formulation. Only by accepting certain presuppositions of

liberal theory, and incorporating the language of rights into Catholic

social thought, was the Church able to develop a vision and vocabu-

lary for engaging modernity.

While the Church opened itself to modern political ideas, the

process did not entail the granting of an unqualified imprimatur to the

whole of liberalism. The development of a Catholic liberalism rather

involved the cultivation of a distinctive understanding of rights theory

that incorporated aspects of liberalism while advancing a fundamental

reconceptualization of its meaning and foundations. The Church

embraced the concern for universal well-being in human rights analy-

sis, but it eschewed the socially divisive approach implicit in theories

that emphasize the “natural rights” of individuals. The Church opened

itself to the modern world while also emerging as one if its most

insistent critics. Thus the Catholic Church, in spite of its successful

94 The American Journal of Economics and Sociology