"Called to Eternal Life": Babies and Rights | Fr. James V. Schall,
S.J. | Ignatius Insight | September 10, 2009 | Ignatius Insight
"In the act of procreation of a new creature is its
indispensable bond with spousal union, by which the husband becomes a father
through the conjugal union with his wife, and the wife becomes a mother through
the conjugal union with her husband. The Creator's plan is engraved in the
physical and spiritual nature of the man and of the woman, and as such has
universal value. The act in which the spouses become parents through the
reciprocal and total gift of themselves makes them cooperators with the creator
to bringing into the world a new human being called to eternal life. An act so rich that it transcends even the life of
the parents cannot be replaced by a mere technological intervention, depleted
of human value and at the mercy of the determinism of technological and
instrumental procedures." -- John Paul II, Address to Pontifical Academy for
Life, February 21, 2004.
I.
Benedict XVI, in Caritas in Veritate, addressed the troubled meaning of the word "right."
Perhaps no word in modern philosophy has caused more trouble than this, at
first sight, noble word. Many a philosopher and pope has tried valiantly to
save this word from the meaning that it had when it first appeared in modern
thought, generally with Hobbes. The word, literally, has no meaning. Or
perhaps, better, it means whatever we want it to mean. It contains no inner
criterion by which it must mean this or that. In the state of nature, people
had an absolute freedom to do whatever they wanted. This freedom was called a
"right." The state arose both to protect this empty "right" and to prevent it
from justifying people killing each other off by doing whatever they wanted "by
right."
The pope points out that the word "right" does not stand by
itself, but is always correlated to "duty." If we maintain that we have a
"right" to this or that, it must be someone's "duty" to observe it or allow it
or provide it. The danger of the word "right" is that it evaporates the world
of notions like generosity and gift, of things beyond the correlation of right
and duty. The highest acts among us are neither right or duties, but sacrifices
and graces. In a world of "rights," no one can do anything for anyone because
everything is already owed. In such a world, the words "thank you" have no
place. No more anti-Christian thought can be found.
If I think that I have a "right" to something, whatever it
is, then someone else, or the state, has a "duty" to provide it for me. I am a
"victim" if everyone else is not giving me my "rights." And if someone gives me
what I have a "right" to, no room remains for generosity, since what is given
is already "owed" to me. If I do not "have" something, it must be because someone
else is denying my "rights." Such a world is filled with complaints, not
services. Thus, in a rights world, when I receive a gift of what I want, it is
already mine "by right." No room is left for gratitude.
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