Human Rights and other matters

I would like to have responded earlier to some of the fascinating and important discussions on human rights that have appeared in MOJ over the past several days. But, this is the first opportunity I have had to put together a few words.

An important issue that permeates the discussion of human rights is the question: what is their source? For those who subscribe to an underlying religious belief, this question might be rephrased: who is their source? The answer is: God is the source. The State or other human mechanism is not.

Of course for some secular views, if the rights bearer/claimer is the source—or at least the foundation of their definition, then human rights become whatever that subject says they are. There would be no need to consider the perspectives of anyone or anything beyond the defining self. This situation presents a problem when the rights of one self-definer conflict with those of another. The solution for resolving the conflict becomes quite limited.

So the next step is to consider whether someone or something beyond the self is the definer of human rights. For the Christian and many other religious believers, it is, as I have suggested earlier, God who is their author and who gives each of his beloved creation the ability to claim and exercise rights in a proper fashion and to respond affirmatively to the responsibilities toward others in the exercise of these rights.

For the person who does not subscribe to either of these two views, the task of explaining the source because more complex. Is the source metaphysical? Or, is it tangible and human? Or, is it something else, not to exclude such a possibility? But if the source is of some human origin, what mechanism is there for reconciling, in the most just way possible, any conflict between or among people when the exercise of their rights conflict? Obviously, the answer would seem to be a human source. But, this circumstance can be affected by some of the same concerns that plague the first category I identified earlier regarding self-definition by the claimant. One might then say that judicial or legal mechanisms are then the proper and only source for reconciling these conflicts. But that would make these mechanisms too much like the self-defining author who claims and defines the rights. And, since these mechanisms are a function of the State, the State indirectly becomes the author of these rights. And this is a conclusion that conflicts with the Catholic perspective on the nature and source of human rights.    RJA sj