Christian vs liberal conceptions of human rights
Authors: Mazurkiewicz Piotr 
Published: January 2024

The Catholic Church has traditionally raised four objections to the doctrine of human rights in its liberal version: the lack of reference to God as the source of human rights, individualism, the absence of a list of human duties accompanying individual rights, and the doctrine’s vulnerability to proliferation and creative interpretation of those rights. The paper mainly focuses on the first two concerns. From the point of view of secular liberalism, the idea of God appears as an unnecessary by-product of the process of human evolution. From the point of view of Christianity, creation in the image and likeness of God is the source of man’s inalienable dignity, and serves, at the same time, to safeguard his rights from reinterpretation by the state, should the state consider itself the source of such rights. Christianity presents man as an inherently social being, with two communities, i.e., the family and the nation, that are recognized as natural. Liberal individualism views people as a collection of elementary particles that collide with one another but never connect. The difference is fundamental when it comes to attitudes towards obligations prior to individual decisions, but also when it comes to a person’s emotional backing. The human being, therefore, seeks to create either family-type ties, or merely ones based on a voluntary contract. It is a paradox that the more atomized a society is, the more necessary a strong state becomes to guarantee individual rights and a sense of security in times of crisis. As a result, a system called statist individualism comes to existence. Religion not only reveals the ultimate meaning of human life and the reasons for which it is worthwhile to be human, but it has also been a source of public morality. The liberal concept of neutrality and the privatization of religion reopen the question of the axiological foundations of the state. On the one hand, why, in the end, should people obey state laws when the state itself convinces them that they are morally neutral? On the other hand, this raises the question of the preferred model of education. From the point of view of the state and society, can a culturally and axiologically neutral education, in which children are taught about what is allowed and what is forbidden by law, but not about what is morally right and wrong, be sufficient? One answer suggests that a liberal state conceived in this way is unstable, and able to exist only for a while. The alternative would be a liberal state that is imperfect, culturally charged, and open to the presence of the Church as a public and publicly meaningful authority.

Benedict XVI, in a discussion on Marcello Pera’s interpretation of the doctrine on human rights, says: “It was only thanks to your book that it became clear to me how much the encyclical Pacem in terris had set a new direction in thinking. I was aware of the strong influence of the encyclical on Italian politics: it gave a decisive impulse to the opening of Christian Democracy to leftist views. However, I did not realize to what great an extent it signified a new premise also to the basis of the party's thinking”. Pera himself believes that the Church, by making the doctrine of human rights part of the Church Magisterium, proclaimed “by virtue of the Gospel committed to her” (Gaudium et spes, 41) has fallen into a “liberal trap”.