Of Human Dignities

INTRODUCTION Dignitatis Humanae: "Of Human Dignity." The Second Vatican Council's 1965 declaration on religious liberty must have seemed a triumph--an exclamation mark signaling the success of a decades-long project, begun during the Second World War, to restore human rights to the center of Catholic social teaching. (1) In wartime addresses, Pope Pius XII had called for recognition of human rights, based in human dignity, as the foundation for a stable peace. (2) In (1963), Pope John XXIII had made universal human rights, including religious liberty, part of the Magisterium. (3) The project had had effects outside the Church as well. In 1948, largely as a result of Catholic influence, the United Nations had adopted a Universal Declaration of Human Rights with human dignity at its core. (4) That declaration contained a ringing endorsement of religious liberty: "Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion; this right includes freedom to change his religion or belief, and freedom, either alone or in community with others and in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship and observance." (5) How different things looks now. True, numerous treaties protect human rights; international organizations monitor their enforcement. (6) Conventional wisdom holds that human rights, including religious liberty, are universal. (7) Yet, as Allen Hertzke writes, "[d]espite considerable progress since the passage of the Universal Declaration, only a minority of people on earth enjoys the kind of religious freedom called for in international covenants." (8) According to a recent Pew Survey, "some 7o percent of the world's 6.8 billion people live in countries with high restrictions on religion." (9) One cannot know, of course, what the situation would be like without them. But there is little evidence that either the Universal Declaration or Dignitatis Humanae have done much to secure, as a practical matter, the universal vision of religious freedom they contemplate. (10) Notwithstanding a surface consensus, fifty years after Dignitatis Humanae, nothing like universal agreement exists on what human dignity means and what it entails for religious liberty. (11) A variety of competing understandings exist. There are objective understandings that ground dignity in external factors beyond individual choice. The Catholic Church advocates one such understanding; the Russian Orthodox Church and the Organization of Islamic Cooperation advocate others. (12) Objective understandings conflict with a subjective conception of human dignity, based on the will of the individual, which most secular human rights advocates prefer. The rival conceptions of dignity clash, particularly in the context of "new rights" like same-sex marriage. (13) In that context, groups and countries that advocate objective conceptions of dignity join forces to resist supporters of the subjective understanding. A conflict also exists between individualist and corporate understandings. (14) The former conceive dignity mostly in terms of individual persons. Notwithstanding disagreement on the objective/subjective question, both the Catholic and the secular understandings of human dignity are principally individualist. Corporate understandings, by contrast, emphasize group dignity and rights. On corporate understandings, religious communities--in particular, traditional religious communities--can assert claims to religious liberty against outsiders who threaten communal integrity. Although important differences exist between them, the Russian Orthodox Church and the Organization of Islamic Cooperation both endorse understandings of religious liberty with strong corporate elements. The conflict between individualist and corporate understandings plays out particularly in controversies over proselytism and the right to convert. On these issues, the Catholic Church and secular human rights advocates find themselves on the same side, arguing together against voices from other traditions. …