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In the Heart of the Church |
Declaration
On Human Rights:
"Exalts the Liberty and Membership of the Human Family"
Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone
Paul VI Hall, Vatican
December 10, 2008
The following is the address given by Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone,
Pope Benedict XVI's secretary of state, at a concert held in Paul VI
Hall to commemorate the 60th anniversary of the Universal
Declaration of Human Rights.
Eminences, Excellencies,
Ambassadors,
Most Appreciated Guests, Ladies and Gentlemen,
I am happy to address you in this solemn celebration of the 60th
anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, adopted by
the United Nations. It is a significant moment to which the Holy
Father Benedict XVI will join himself personally to underline, yet
again, the importance that the Holy See assigns to the recognition
and tutelage of the fundamental rights of the human person. Still
alive in us is the echo of his word addressed to the U.N. General
Assembly last April 18, which indicated the Declaration as "the
result of a convergence of religious and cultural traditions, all
motivated by the common desire to put the human person at the heart
of institutions, laws and interventions of society, and to consider
the human person essential for the world of culture, of religion and
of science."
I would also like to express my heartfelt gratitude to Cardinal
Renato Raffaele Martino and to the Pontifical Council for Justice
and Peace for the organization of this significant event.
1. At the moment it was adopted, the Universal Declaration expressed
the primacy of liberty against oppression, of the unity of the human
family in regard to ideological and political divisions, as well as
to differences of race, sex, language and religion. The intention
was to defend the person from the idolatry of the state, which
totalitarianisms had in fact divinized, proposing an ulterior way to
build the "city of men," basing it on the conviction that
"recognition of the inherent dignity of all the members of the human
family, and of their equal and inalienable rights, constitutes the
foundation of liberty, of justice and of peace" (Preamble, Universal
Declaration).
In fact, the Universal Declaration attests to a renewal of the hope
to make of the human person the sign of a future capable of freeing
itself from the weight of the past, as though wishing to purify the
memory of the human family. Some 60 years or so ago, in fact, the
victims of barbarism, the horrors of war, the acts of genocide were
all contradictions to be overcome in order to seek in international
relationships and in the internal life of states that necessary
balance capable of projecting humanity toward a future worthy of
man.
2. In proposing an ensemble of the person's rights and faculties,
the Declaration exalts the liberty and membership of the human
family, reconciling the idea of justice with the affirmations of the
primacy of life, the idea of sociality, the appreciation of the
democratic methods understood as an ensemble of rules, institutions
and structures able to express and convey values.
We are not just faced with a proclamation, but rather with a new
consideration and placement of human dignity by the international
community and the various political communities that animate it, up
to now little inclined to admit the person as protagonist. An
approach that is still valid and not replaceable because it calls
the person to live his rights with an attitude of sharing the
other's rights, and of looking at others not in terms of opposition
or limit, but in recognizing their "essential equality" and
determined to live in a "spirit of fraternity" (cf. Universal
Declaration, article 1).
3. The Church, which for her part considers with great respect all
that is true, good and beautiful that is found in the community of
mankind (cf. "Gaudium et Spes," 42), has seen in the Declaration a
"sign of the times," regarding it as "an important step in the path
to the juridical-political organization of the world community"
(encyclical "Pacem in Terris," 75), an act able to synthesize the
meaning of human liberty by reconciling present-day needs with
immutable principles, capable of offering guidelines founded
anthropologically and juridically so as to respond to the most
profound human needs.
The idea itself of fundamental rights has a profound root in the
Christian tradition since the initial proclamation of the Good News,
which enriches the precepts of the Decalogue with the invitation to
be sympathetic to every person (cf. Matthew 25:35-36), without any
distinction: "There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave
nor free, there is neither male or female; for you are all one in
Christ Jesus" (Galatians 3:28).
In the doctrine of the Church, then, the tutelage of the human
person evokes subsidiarity as ruling principle of the social order
and that, beginning with the person, guarantees individual rights
and liberty as well as those rights connected with the community
dimension, including the liberty to associate, to give life to
social formations, to intermediary entities, up to the reality of
the state and, therefore, to the international community with its
institutions.
4. The Supreme Pontiffs have expressed on many occasions the
Church's appreciation for the great values of the Universal
Declaration of Human Rights of Dec. 10, 1948. I would like at least
to recall here the teachings of Paul VI, John Paul II and Benedict
XVI on the occasion of their interventions before the U.N. General
Assembly. On Oct. 4, 1965, Paul VI expressed himself thus before the
representatives of nations: "For you who proclaimed the fundamental
rights and duties of man, his dignity, his liberty and, first of
all, religious liberty."
John Paul II spoke twice before the U.N. Assembly. The first time,
on Oct. 3, 1979, in connection with the Universal Declaration of
Human Rights, he affirmed: "This document is a milestone on the long
and difficult road of humankind. We must measure humanity's progress
not only with the progress of science and technology, of which all
the singularity of man stands out in confronting nature, but
contemporaneously and even more so with the primacy of spiritual
values and with the progress of the moral life."
In the second intervention, on Oct. 5, 1995, John Paul II described
the Declaration as "one of the highest expressions of human
conscience of our time" and underlined forcefully how "there are
indeed universal human rights, rooted in the nature of the person,
rights which reflect the objective and inviolable demands of a
universal moral law. These are not abstract points; rather, these
rights tell us something important about the actual life of every
individual and of every social group. They also remind us that we do
not live in an irrational or meaningless world. On the contrary,
there is a moral logic which is built into human life and which
makes possible dialogue between individuals and peoples. If we want
a century of violent coercion to be succeeded by a century of
persuasion, we must find a way to discuss the human future
intelligibly. The universal moral law written on the human heart is
precisely that kind of 'grammar' which is needed if the world is to
engage this discussion of its future."
Benedict XVI, speaking in his turn to the United Nations Assembly on
April 18, 2008, and recalling explicitly the event that we celebrate
today, namely the 60th anniversary of the Declaration, said: "It is
evident, though, that the rights recognized and expounded in the
Declaration apply to everyone by virtue of the common origin of the
person, who remains the high-point of God’s creative design for the
world and for history. They are based on the natural law inscribed
on human hearts and present in different cultures and civilizations.
Removing human rights from this context would mean restricting their
range and yielding to a relativistic conception, according to which
the meaning and interpretation of rights could vary and their
universality would be denied in the name of different cultural,
political, social and even religious outlooks."
5. Today, in face of a worrying global picture that is above all the
reflection of economic structures that do not respond to man's
value, basic rights seem to depend on anonymous, uncontrolled
mechanisms and on a vision that is enclosed in the pragmatism of the
moment, forgetting that the code of the future of the human family
is solidarity.
We are asked, then, if it is the economic structures and their
recent changes that are the cause of the denial of rights, or if it
is not, rather, the abandonment of the vision of the person that
from subject has become ever more an object of economic conduct,
often reduced to claiming the only rights linked to his function of
consumer and not of person.
6. In face of the global dimension that characterizes our era, the
universality of the person, as the Holy Father reminded at the U.N.
is the criteria that furnishes to human rights the characteristic of
being universal, and thus to avoid partial applications or relative
visions. This means that every political community "called to
realize the contents of the Universal Declaration by analyzing
objectively its own situation, but being clear that that act is not
deprived of force because it was adopted and elaborated in a
different social, political or juridical content from that in which
we operate today: thus it brings all its permanent efficacy of
"innateness" to the history of every human person.
The lack of tutelage of human rights that is often evidenced in the
attitude of so many institutions and functions of the authority is
the fruit of the disintegration of the unity of the person about
whom thought is given to proclaim different rights, of constructing
ample spaces of liberty that, however, remain deprived of every
anthropological foundation.
Sixty years having passed now since that Dec. 10, 1948, it does not
seem possible any more to guarantee rights if their indivisibility
is neglected and if the conviction is not abandoned that the
tutelage of civil and political rights passes through a "not doing"
of the institutional apparatus, while the commitment to those that
are economic, social and cultural is to be considered only
pragmatic.
7. The Church feels that particular attention should be given to a
return to religious liberty, which article 18 of the Universal
Declaration made explicit in meaning and limits, foreseeing likewise
the rights and situations that are connected to such liberty. The
object of that right is not the intrinsic content of a determined
religious faith, but immunity from every coercion, virtually a zone
of security able to guarantee the inviolability of a human space in
which the individual believer and the community in which he
expresses his own faith are free to act, without external pressures
from individuals, social groups or any other authority.
It is an altogether evident fact that the religious event has a
direct influence on the unfolding of the internal life of states and
of the international community. This notwithstanding, perceived ever
more are indications and tendencies that seem to want to exclude
religion and rights from the possibility to contribute to the
construction of the social order, also in full respect of the
pluralism that marks contemporary society.
Religious freedom risks being confused only with freedom of worship
or in any case interpreted as an element belonging to the private
sphere and increasingly replaced by an imprecise "right to
tolerance." And all this while ignoring that religious liberty as
fundamental right marks the overcoming of religious tolerance, which
was solidly anchored to a relative vision of truth and to
individualism without limits.
Similarly, the international perspective itself allows the tendency
to emerge of relegating the religious event to the dimension of
culture and to associate it with traditional practices and knowledge
which are not strangers to a syncretistic vision, forgetting that
religion, and the liberties and rights connected with it, are an
experience of life, an indication of the most profound aspirations
that the person wishes to reach through his action.
8. An aspect on which it is necessary for us to turn our attention
is that of the exact nature of the rights that the Declaration
derives from the dignity that is common to every human being, an
aspect to which it is necessary that claims, thoughts, proposals can
converge to give them an order, without making the demand for rights
spread in every direction. To defend fundamental rights means, in
fact, not to confuse them with simple and often limiting contingent
needs. To be able to go back to the original position of the
Declaration including the new situations is possible and could be a
path to follow to give renewed vigor to man's cause.
Moreover, once recognized and finally fixed in an eventual
convention, human rights are always in need of being defended. They
are in need of fidelity on our part, because they can be lost from
view, reinterpreted in a restrictive way or actually denied. The
pedagogy to which we owe their formulation is the same with which
they need to be preserved. The Holy Father often reminds us that
humanity's moral progress always needs to be undertaken again. Not
being a material fact, it cannot happen by accumulation. This is
also true for human rights, which every day need to be confirmed,
re-founded in our consciousness and relived.
9. To respect and reinvigorate the fundamental rights will be a
concrete way to oppose the various and diffused forms of abandonment
of the foundations of moral order in social relations, from
interpersonal dimensions to that of international relations. In
fact, it is ever more difficult to foresee an effective and
universal tutelage of rights, without a connection to that natural
law that fecundates the same rights and is the antithesis of that
degradation that in so many of our societies is interested in
questioning the ethics of life and of procreation, of marriage and
family life, as well as of education and the formation of the young
generations, introducing only an individualistic vision on which to
arbitrarily construct new rights that are not more precise in
content and juridical logic.
Rights, therefore, cannot be containers that, according to the
historical, cultural and political moments, are full of different
meanings and elements. In fact, it is the absence of values to which
to link the rights that is the principal cause of their inefficacy
and their violation. The natural law, instead, allows all to find a
common root, also in face of positions that, although having a
different ethical foundation, are not prepared to yield in face of
the abandonment of that truth that is common to the human species.
Only a weak vision of human rights can hold that the human being is
the result of his rights, not recognizing that the rights remain an
instrument created by man to give full realization to his innate
dignity.
10. The Declaration of 1948 is a point of arrival. It must also
always be a new point of departure; it still maintains all its
potential that is not consumed, rather, it requires a greater
sharing so as to be translated into concrete acts. In fact, the
Universal Declaration is called not only to defend liberty and its
rules, but also to impede that they degenerate into the negation of
the primacy of the human being.
Among the human rights, in the rigor of terms, there is no
hierarchy. They are all together one, they are as only one right:
the right to be able to become man or, as Paul VI wrote, to be able
to become more man. The Church, along with political and juridical
wisdom, has always held the principle of the indivisibility of human
rights: each one of them reflects all the others and refers to them
as complementary and irreplaceable elements of itself. Its
insistence on the importance of the right to life and the right to
religious liberty does not derive, therefore, from the desire to
insert some division among man's rights, a hierarchy. The insistence
is born, rather, from the need to make explicit the fact that the
rights themselves are not founded by themselves, but are expressions
of the face of the human person and of his dignity.
To have received life as a gift and to be able to thank the Author
of life are the first two human rights. This does not mean to put
the other rights on an inferior level, rather, with this all human
rights are indivisibly raised to be expressions of a dignity
received out of love and not produced by human techniques. The
discourse can also be upside down. We see that when there is a
failure to recognize the right to life and to religious liberty,
respect for other rights also vacillates.
All the rights of mankind are upheld together, "simul stabunt, simul
cadent," but even in their violation, unfortunately, they are upheld
together. The principle of indivisibility is true whether in good or
in evil. The Church affirms that the reasons of those who struggle
for the right to life and to religious liberty should be enlarged in
order to also understand all the other rights and affirms that those
who are sensitive to any other right cannot be indifferent to that
of life or the right to religious liberty. They cannot divide
between their human rights, choose ideologically the one preferred,
or attribute to one or the other political connotations.
In the addresses pronounced at the United Nations that I have
briefly recalled, Paul VI, John Paul II and Benedict XVI specified
that the ultimate and fundamental reason why the Church has human
rights at its heart is of the ethical-religious order and refers to
its own mission. Thus the Church expresses to the international
community in a way that is yet more multi-form her contribution to
the promotion and respect of human rights.
As Benedict XVI confirmed last Sunday, "For the populations worn out
by poverty and hunger, for the ranks of refugees, for all those who
suffer grave and systematic violation of their rights, the Church
places herself as watchman on the high mountain of faith and
proclaims: 'Behold your God! Behold, the Lord comes with might'"
(Isaiah, 40:11).
For the believer, and for all those who put their faith in human
dignity, the full tutelage of rights cannot but coincide with a
model of life and of social order in which the expectation is
realized of that new heaven and new earth in which justice finds a
stable dwelling (cf. 2 Peter 3:13). This is our common hope.
[Translation by ZENIT]
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