By Archbishop Rino Fisichella, recently posted on the Homiletic & Pastoral Review site:
(This lecture was delivered earlier at the Pontifical College Josephinum in Columbus, Ohio.)
Human Rights
When, therefore, I see the right and capacity to enact everything given to any authority whatsoever—whether it be called people or king, democracy or aristocracy, whether exercised in a monarchy or a republic—I say: the seed of tyranny lies there, and I seek to live under different laws. 1
Alexis de Tocqueville’s statement, although made many years ago, is, without a doubt, especially relevant today. The historical period we are living in today seems to recognize a sort of unbounded extension of individual rights, which can only alarm those who have the good of all society at heart. It would appear that the contents of the 1948 United Nations’ “Universal Declaration of Human Rights” now forms part of the cultural patrimony of the world. As Pope Benedict XVI has stated, in his discourse to the United Nations on April 18th, 2008, that this document highlights: “The result of a convergence of religious and cultural traditions, all motivated by the desire to place the human person in the heart of institutions, laws and actions in society, and to consider the human person essential for the world of culture, religion and science”.
Whatever judgment one would arrive at, that document remains as an event that has altered the history of nations and, therefore, represents a point of no return. Such a document, after all, by its very nature, requires that it be injected with the spirit proper to every generation that reads it, interpreting it always in a new way, and in light of the changes that history brings. The passing of the decades, therefore, does not occur in vain, but allows us to analyze the path taken thus far, realizing how much still needs to be accomplished in order to fulfill the wishes of those who inspired the document. It is important to ask ourselves how much of the Declaration has been fulfilled in these last decades. What should we say about recent incidences of genocide and religious conflicts; or about the defense of life, from conception until natural death; or about the dignity of the family? Should we not consider the growing gap between the planet’s few wealthy people—holding immense financial resources—and the millions of men, women, and children, living in absolute poverty? Are we still capable of concern for those nations that are in a permanent state of underdevelopment? Are we still sensitive to, and worried about, the use of torture, the arbitrariness of capital punishment, and the unfolding drama of millions of refugees seeking assistance? What is left to say of the tremendous international silence concerning massacres, inflicted without any reason, upon Christians in different parts of the world?
If we move the analysis onto a cultural plane, we cannot deny that something extraordinary is happening in various societies. Revolutionary technologies, especially in the area of health care, are provoking new ethical questions, which often do not find adequate answers. Discoveries relating to the human genome, cloning, genetically modified organisms, the donating and trafficking of human organs, the questionable experiments with human cells, as well as pushing the very limits of behaviour in one’s personal life—to name just a few examples—highlight, on the one hand, the recourse to novel individual rights; and, on the other hand, a real emptiness of values and ethics, raising the ante tremendously. These kinds of problems cannot be addressed politically if, at first, they are not confronted with due care and intelligence culturally: to be able examine the anthropological concept at the root of this situation with a culture so affected by such a simplistic, fashionable relativism.
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