The Church and Human Rights

Alain de Benoist7 years agoNo comment

The theological roots of the ideology of human rights have been described many times. For a long time, however, as Jacques Maritain wrote, ‘the affirmation of rights themselves based on Christian principles appeared revolutionary with regard to the Christian tradition’.

The reason for that is well-known. It rests, from the historical point of view, in the aggressive rationalist character of the modern formulation of these rights, in the climate of anti-clericalism that has surrounded their proclamation, as well as in the anti-religious persecutions of the Revolution that followed it. Besides, from the doctrinal point of view, the Catholic critique could not admit the elimination of all dimensions of transcendence implied by the integral subjectivisation of rights, an elimination which tends to transfer to man a certain number of divine prerogatives, nor the fact that this subjectivisation opens the way to an unending demand which, not being founded on any standard, leads to relativism.

On 23 April 1791, Pope Pius VI expressly condemned the Declaration of Rights of 1789, accusing the articles which composed it of being ‘contrary to religion and society’. This condemnation was renewed for exactly a century. In 1832, for example, Gregory XVI qualified the theory of human rights as a ‘veritable delirium’, the same opinion being formulated again in the encyclical Quanta Cura of 1864.

Matters begin to evolve from the encyclical Rerum Novarum (1891) of Leo XIII. From this date, under the influence, most notably, of the thought of Father Luigi Taparelli d’Azeglio, whose Essai théorique sur le droit naturel (1855) sought to give (or to give again) a theological content to subjective right, the notion of human rights begins to be introduced into the social thought of the Church.

Immediately after the Second World War, this development was rapidly accelerated. In 1963, in the encyclical Pacem in Terris, Pope John XXIII declared that he saw in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1948 ‘a step in the right direction, an approach toward the establishment of a juridical and political ordering of the world community’ (§ 144). On 7 December 1965, the pastoral constitution Gaudium et Spes, adopted in the context of the Second Vatican Council, affirmed that ‘the Church, therefore, by virtue of the Gospel committed to her, proclaims the rights of man; she acknowledges and greatly esteems the dynamic movements of today by which these rights are everywhere fostered’. Three years later, Paul VI declared in his turn, ‘To speak of human rights is to affirm a common property of humanity’. In 1974, before the General Assembly of the United Nations, he specified, ‘The Holy See gives its full moral support to the ideal contained in the Universal Declaration as to the progressive deepening of the human rights that are expressed therein’. John Paul II, finally, would declare in 1979 that the Universal Declaration of Human Rights ‘is a milestone on the long and difficult path of the human race’.

The traditionalist Catholic milieus have, of course, interpreted this change as a sign, among others, of the ‘rallying’ of the Church to ‘modern ideas’. Even though this point of view contains some truth, the reality is a little more complex. In declaring that it admits human rights, the Church understands above all that it recognises (and causes to be recognised) that part in their genealogy that returns to it. It does not, however, subscribe to the aspects which remain in its eyes contestable in their present formulation. In other words, the approval in principle given henceforth by the Church to the doctrine of human rights refers, first of all, to the Christian version of these rights. As François Vallançaon writes, ‘The Church is no more for human rights than against them. It is favourable to human rights when they are well and rightly interpreted. It is hostile to them when they are badly and wrongly interpreted’.

The above text is an excerpt from Alain de Benoist’s Beyond Human Rights (Arktos, 2011). If you liked this selection, be sure to check out the whole book.

TopicsAlain de Benoist Beyond Human Rights GRECE

the authorAlain de Benoist

Alain de Benoist is the leading thinker of the European ‘New Right’ movement, a school of political thought founded in France in 1968 with the establishment of GRECE (Research and Study Group for European Civilisation). To this day he remains its primary representative, even while rejecting the label ‘New Right’ for himself. An ethnopluralist defender of cultural uniqueness and integrity, he has argued for the right of Europeans to retain their identity in the face of multiculturalism, and he has opposed immigration, while still preferring the preservation of native cultures over the forced assimilation of immigrant groups. He has authored dozens of books and essays on topics such as immigration, religion, philosophy and political theory. In 1978, he received the Grand Prix de l’Essai from the Académie Française for his book Vu de droite [View from the Right]. Editor of the journals Nouvelle Ecole and Krisis, his works have also been published in a variety of journals such as Mankind Quarterly, Telos, The Scorpion, The Occidental Quarterly and Tyr. Over the past forty years he has had a tremendous impact on the philosophical and ideological understanding of the European political situation. Arktos has published his books The Problem of Democracy, Beyond Human Rights, and Carl Schmitt Today, which are part of an ongoing series of his works that will be published by Arktos in English translation. Alain de Benoist continues to write and give lectures and interviews. He lives in Paris.