Catholic Rights Talk
Talk about rights is common both in American political discourse and in Catholic Social Thought. Certainly rights place a central role in the American Constitutional order. For many it is the Bill of Rights, which its protections of the rights of speech, religious exercise, due process, and so on, that is the defining characteristic of our government, to the point that other considerations (e.g. federalism) are also expressed in terms of rights (e.g. states’ rights). Likewise, rights have played a fundamental role in our moral discourse from the time of the Declaration of Independence down to the present day (for a full treatment of the place of rights in American political and moral discussion, I would highly recommend Rights Talk by Harvard professor and current U.S. Ambassador to the Holy See, Mary Ann Glendon).
The Church’s embrace of rights talk is more recent but has become no less widespread. Pick up a Church document or statement relating to Catholic Social Thought and you are likely to encounter a whole bevy of rights: the right to property, the right to associate, the right to health care, decent housing, and a just wage.
Yet despite the common vocabulary, I would argue that the concept of rights use in Catholic Social Thought is quite different from the concept of rights current in much of American political thinking. In America, rights are generally thought of as being trumps against the common good. Whether the right in question is negative (in which case it grants the individual immunity from government action regardless of societal consequences) or positive (in which case it grants an entitlement to a certain benefit as a matter of right), the key distinguishing feature of a right is that it allows the needs, decisions, or wants of an individual to trump those of society as a whole.
The notion of rights found in Catholic Social Thought, on the other hand, is quite different. There rights are seen as being limited and defined by the common good, rather than set in opposition to it. The most famous example of this is the right of private property. The Church has long affirmed the right of private property, while simultaneously affirming that “Political authority has the right and duty to regulate the legitimate exercise of the right to ownership for the sake of the common good.” CCC 2406. Similarly, while the Church has long proclaimed a right to association, it nonetheless holds that “the law should intervene to prevent certain associations, as when men join together for purposes which are evidently bad, unlawful, or dangerous to the State.” RN 52. And while the Church in Dignitatis Humanae affirmed the right of religious freedom, it always took care to say that the right was limited by “the just demands of public order.” DH 4.
Now from the perspective of the American conception of rights, such statement are incomprehensible. What, after all, is the purpose of a right if it is limited by the demands of the common good? The answer, I think, lies in the different role that rights play in Catholic Social Thought. Rights, in Catholic Social Teaching, serve as a means of orienting our thinking about questions of social policy. To say, in Catholic Social Thought, that something is a right is to say that it is a constitutive element of the Common Good (which Gaudium et Spes defined as “the sum of those conditions of social life which allow social groups and their individual members relatively thorough and ready access to their own fulfillment“). So, for example, when the Church declares that there is a right to basic health care, what She is saying is that access to basic health care is one of the conditions of social life which allows access to human flourishing and fulfillment, and that achieving this right should be a central goal of social policy. At the same time, however, this right is not seen as an absolute, and may have to give way to other, equally pressing elements of the Common Good.
Thoughts?
I guess what I have difficulty understanding in this discussion are the times in which the right (say, to health care) would have to yield to another element of the common good. The right to health care isn’t a right to any procedure, some because they are contrary to superior rights (abortion), others because they don’t contribute to the common good or human flourishing (plastic surgery). I’m concerned that the exception you articulate provides a convenient way for people to assert the right to health care doesn’t matter if it makes taxes too high.
In CST, a right is indeed something accord with the common good, with human dignity, aligned with the law of God.
The American conception of “rights” is instead based individual automony and the social contract. Instead of society, the starting point is a collection of automous agents. The outcomes may overlap (religious freedom for example), but the premises are very different.
Blackadder,
Where do you get the conception that “In America, rights are generally thought of as being trumps against the common good?”
Isn’t the traditional understanding that rights exist to protect minority factions from tyrannical majorities that would take basic freedoms taken away? And in this sense, do not these rights serve perhaps the most basic component of the common good?
I’m sure there is something of a distinction between the way the two terms are used, but I think in this post you may be conflating the will of the majority with the common good.
Good analysis.
I’ve always thought rights language is a blunt instrument, too often used by people unaware of its equivocations. Some Catholics are so eager to speak in the common political dialect of rights that they don’t consider how necessary it is to broaden the debate beyond what can be talked about in terms of rights.
For instance, there’s a weak rejoinder to in debates about adoptions or single parenthood that talks about the right of a child to grow up with both a mother and a father. While that is a “right” to an extent, there are a lot of other reasons that need to be discussed.
Rights language often presupposes individual autonomy, so talk about the right to life in the abortion debate can’t often vanquish talk about the right of a woman to “control her body.” It’s assertion vs. counterassertion.
Rather than focus upon these adversarial rights, broadening the terms of the abortion debate to include consideration of motherhood and fatherhood, hospitality, and care for the weak is a good idea.
MM–
I’m not sure that rights talk in America is necessarily based on the social contract idea. It is more likely that it is based on a historical fear of political power and authority, and comes out of an experience where centralized political authority is not trusted. Even if that power thinks of itself as acting in the “common good”, that is not necessarily so (often, the “common good” is a rationalization for what is in the powerfull political class’ interest), and therefore there are limits to what the state should be able to do to advance the “common good”. The common good is seen to require limiting state power, because a limited government can only cause limited harm. If the power of the state is the power of the ruling class, it only stands that the power of the ruling class should be limited so they can only do limited damage.
I think CST appears to place a trust in political power and authority. This is a trust that, unfortunately, I do not share. It does not appear to fear centralized state power, and therefore does not seem to deal with the above concerns.
Blackadder,
Am I that wrong? : )
I found an absolutely excellent and compelling lecture that is somewhat related to this topic but is a must listen, please listen if you get a chance. I’m thinking of transcribing it because it’s so great.
Poli, if by chance you read this, you should give a listen too!