The Catholic View of Rights and Systemic Injustice

In earlier columns, I presented the Catholic view of justice and racism. As protests, rioting, and controversy continue in the wake of the killing of George Floyd, this column will pick up where those columns and one on logic left off.

The Logic of Social Justice

I contend that everyone who is trying to make the world a better place, whether a world without racism or a world without rioting, uses the same three-step logic:

•  Because the world should be x, and
•  because the world is not x,
• therefore, change the world from what it is to what it should be.
• Step One is doctrine, which is a set of beliefs and values. Everyone has doctrine or “ideology”; even pragmatism is a doctrine.
• Step Two is social analysis, which is an analysis or description of what the current situation of the world is.
• Step Three is a social strategy, which is the plan of action for changing the world.

So the logic of making the world a better place is:

• Because doctrine, 
• and because of social analysis,
• therefore social strategy.

In the Catholic Faith, the doctrine is, of course, Catholic Doctrine—the authoritative clarifications of God’s Revelation and definitions of Catholic Faith which God allows to be made only by the Magisterium (those bishops in union with the pope).

There has been no dearth of social analysis and social strategy regarding the state of racism in our country. While accurate social analysis and just strategies are needed, it is Catholic Doctrine that has the most to offer for understanding the problems of injustice and their solutions.

The Essence of Rights

“No justice, no peace,” says some signs. Well, no rights, no justice. Justice is based on rights. In fact, the English word justice comes from the Latin word ius, which means “right.” Someone is treated justly or fairly when his or her rights are respected by others. Someone acts justly or fairly when he or she respects others’ rights. “It is the Church’s role to remind men of goodwill of [their] rights and to distinguish [rights] from unwarranted or false claims” (Catechism of the Catholic Church, 1930).

St. Thomas Aquinas and the philosophers and theologians following his lead have given much thought to rights and justice. This column will try to present this Thomistic tradition which is essential to understanding Catholic Social Doctrine. As Archbishop Giampaolo Crepaldi has written, “It can be said that the framework or structure of the discourse of the Church’s social doctrine was pieced together by using [St. Thomas’] thought.”

A right is what is owed to someone, due to someone, deserved by someone. Someone has a right to something when another owes him or her that thing. The opposite of a right is a gift. A gift is that which is not owed or deserved. No one has a right to a gift.

Where do rights come from? How do I know if someone has a right or if I myself have a right? Rights are created by actions; actions cause rights. There are two kinds of rights created by two kinds of actions.

Contract Rights

The first kind of right is a commutative right, more commonly known as a contract right. The action creating this right is the first half of an exchange or trade between two parties. For example, in a carpool of you and me, your action of driving me creates your right to be driven by me in exchange for the ride you gave me. Your action of driving me creates a debt—I now owe you a ride.

The action creating a contract right must be based on mutual consent. In our carpool, you and I must both agree that we will exchange driving each other. If you offer me a ride with “no strings attached,” then you do not have a right to get a ride from me later. The agreement must be made by two parties who are equally competent to consent. Being under-aged, under coercion, deceived, desperate, insane, developmentally disabled, drugged, or hypnotized are examples of conditions which prevent someone from being competent to consent.

A contract right is a right to receive something of equal value in exchange for the action that created the right. You do not have a right to be driven 1,000 miles by me if you only drove me 10 miles. In sum, a contract right is a right created by an act which is the first half of an exchange, properly agreed to, in a one-on-one relationship.

Human Rights

There is a second kind of right. It is also caused by an action. This time the action is one done by God Himself. The act is God creating each human being in His image and likeness. Those rights which are established by God’s act of creating human beings in His image and likeness and therefore held by every single human being are human rights (also known as inalienable rights or natural rights).

Note the hugely important difference between contract rights and human rights. Whereas human actions create contract rights, God’s actions create human rights. We deserve contract rights when we meet the conditions for their creation. There is nothing we can do to deserve human rights because we did nothing to deserve being created by God. (The “right to life” is actually the right to be born, not the right to be conceived; it is the right to stay living once life has begun at conception, not the right to become alive; existence itself is not a right, but a gift.)

A human right is a right to what is required by human nature to have a fulfilled, dignified life. Without a human right, we human beings are closer to having a merely animal existence. Human rights are the concrete expression of human dignity, the human dignity every person has because every person is a son or daughter of God.

To disbelieve in an objective human nature shared by every person is to deny the foundation for believing in human rights. If there is no objective human nature to which all need to conform, then there are no human rights. Human nature can be known by using Reason alone (without Faith), and so atheists can agree that human rights are real.

Some of the human rights identified by the Magisterium are the rights to:

• be born;
• worship, publicly profess of one’s religion, and change one’s religion;
• free initiative in business;
• private property;
• assembly and association;
• active participation in public affairs, including voting;
• equal protection under the law;
• freedom from arbitrary arrest, detention, or exile;
• fair and public trial by an impartial judge or jury;
• presumption of innocence with all the guarantees necessary for one’s legal defense until guilt is proven;
• freedom from arbitrary interference with one’s privacy, home, or correspondence;
• freedom from cruel, human, or degrading punishment, including torture;
• freedom from physical attack and abuse;
• freedom from slavery; 
• freedom of movement and residence within one’s own country;
• immigration for a just reason;
• one’s good reputation;
• search for truth;
• truthful information about public events;
• freedom of speech and of the press;
• pursue and enjoy art;
• nationality and culture;
• set up a family grounded on a marriage freely contracted, monogamous, indissoluble, and heterosexual;
• to determine the education of one’s children;
• basic education;
• higher education in accordance with one’s natural talents;
• food, clothing, shelter, and health care;
• share in scientific advancement and its benefits;
• employment with a wage sufficient to give a worker’s family a decent standard of living;
• working conditions that are safe and moral;
• equal pay for equal work;
• join a labor union;
• rest and leisure, a reasonable limitation of working hours, and periodic holidays with pay;
• welfare in cases where one cannot provide for oneself through no fault of one’s own.

No individual human right is absolute. Each human right must be balanced with the others, the common good, and others’ rights. Each human rightfully makes sense only in harmony with Reason. For example, the right to worship does not give someone the right to commit human sacrifice. To be Catholic about human rights is to be true to the word catholic, which means “according to the whole,” and therefore not be reductionistic. Human rights are fully understood in the context of all Catholic Doctrine. 

Human rights are so sacrosanct that even the most evil, wicked, sociopathic people still have human rights. We must respect the human rights of those who trample on others’ human rights even though we do not respect the evils they have committed. Since human action does not create a human right, human action cannot take it away.

Systemic Racism?

Just as racism (properly understood) is a sin, systemic racism is a sin. Here are questions I have been revisiting in order to conclude whether or not our country is systemically racist (revisiting because I have been asking them for over fifty years since I started resisting racism).

Is current American society the same as the truly systemically racist societies of Nazi Germany, the Antebellum South, the Jim Crow Era, and Apartheid South Africa? (Societies that, of course, deserve condemnation by every Catholic.)

Can our society be systemically racist after fifty years of developments that did not occur in the previously mentioned systemically racist societies: affirmative action in education and business; trillions of dollars of welfare payments and government programs for people of color; voting districts are drawn to ensure majorities of people of color; many people of color elected and appointed to the legislative, executive, and judicial branches of government on the municipal, county, state, and federal levels; many people of color who have become extremely wealthy celebrities and sports heroes with fan bases that include multitudes of white people; the success of so many people of color in business management and in professions such as medicine, accounting, and law; and much of education, the news media, and the entertainment industry controlled for several decades by those espousing Progressive identity politics?

Can there be “white privilege” when so many white people have to work hard and prudently manage their budgets, suffer the consequences when they do not and are as a group behind Asian-Americans in median income and educational attainment?

Are there not individual bad cops and some racist police departments while the great majority of police officers are professional, and without whose presence crime soars in all neighborhoods?

Do not police unions need to be reformed instead of police being “defunded”?

Should I not be just as outraged by the rioting since the murder of George Floyd (which has killed, brutally beaten, and financially devastated its victims) and by the millions of babies of color killed by the many white staff members of Planned Parenthood since 1973, as I am outraged by the murder of George Floyd?

Is not the greatest physical threat to a black person another black person?

Is not the attack on “whiteness” a form of racism?

Did not the very notions of justice and rights originate in Western culture?

Was not Karl Marx a white racist?

Can a Catholic support an organization, movement, or policy which obstructs the entire range of human rights for everyone?

To paraphrase Alexander Solzhenitsyn, the line separating good and evil passes not between groups of people, but through every human heart. Any attempt to build more just systems without everyone’s growth in personal virtue is doomed to failure. Justice sought without prudence, temperance, and fortitude—and better yet faith, hope, and love—becomes dehumanizing. Any attempt to build more just systems that do not take into account Original Sin, personal sin and the human need for redemption is doomed to failure.

Very helpful for understanding any kind of systemic injustice are the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith’s Instruction on Certain Aspects of the “Theology of Liberation” (1984) and  Instruction on Christian Freedom and Liberation (1986).