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The Ministry
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• Fifty
Years and Three Stages: United Nations Universal Declaration of Human
Rights Introduction It is an honor and a privilege to be here to begin a larger project that will extend over the next several years and engage St. John's University in understanding human rights, both the world and historical view, and the potential contributions a Catholic institution of higher education can make to our understanding of this important concept. I will shape the context of the human rights question in the following ways. First, to look at what will be commemorated in 1998, the emergence and impact of the human rights theme on international affairs over the last 50 years. Second, I will speak of the current context of human rights in the Catholic tradition, looking at the questions of human rights as it emerges and evolves within the context of Catholic teaching. Third, I will look specifically to the question of human rights within the context of higher education. 1948-1998:
Fifty Years and Three Stages:
The theme of human rights is a rather recent theme in political analysis. I would argue that there are three stages of development to the human rights question as we look at its emergence for the 1990s . STAGE ONE: a new framework for understanding the lives of states, nations, and individuals in international affairs The first stage is the founding of the United Nations to about 1970. There has always been philosophical language and literature on the question of human rights, as well as concern which predated the founding of the United Nations. In the democratic revolutions of the 18th century and the social contract theorists of the 16th through 18th centuries, we can discern the foundations of the conceptual design of the contemporary theory of human rights. Professor Louis Henkin often refers to the Declaration as the United Nations Bill of Rights, playing off the United States Bill of Rights. Henkin argues that the founding of the United Nations leading to the Universal Declaration on Human Rights in 1948, followed by the implementing documents of the United Nations: the Covenant on Political and Civil Rights, and the Covenant on Social and Economic Rights, established a significantly new framework for understanding the roles of states and nations and the rights of individuals in international affairs. Prior
to 1948, there was no political or legal argument which said that states
or While this breakthrough in the late 1940s was very significant, there was very little action on the part of those agencies that could make a difference on human rights in the world. What was needed was the incorporation of human rights within the foreign policy of nation states. The United States could boast intense involvement in the creation of the human rights fabric in the United Nations, especially through the efforts of Eleanor Roosevelt. However, one would search in vain for any systematic concern for human rights in the United States' foreign policy during this time. For example, if you examine John F. Kennedy's Inaugural Address, human rights is not evident as a theme. This will change in the United States in the 1970s. STAGE TWO: the United States integrates the theme of human rights in foreign policy Some might immediately think of Jimmy Carter when we think of human rights policy in the United States, and he is a significant figure. The beginning of a major shift in the development of human rights, however, comes prior to his time. It is found in the beginning of the 1970s. It came from Congress and the efforts of a junior Congressman from Minnesota at that time, Don Frazier. Congress was frustrated by two things in the beginning of the 1970s. One was a sense of impotence about Congress' ability to affect Vietnam and the second was a reaction to the allegation that the United States was directly involved in the overthrow of the government in Chile. Congress seemed frustrated as well, at its inability to influence the actions and strategies of the Secretary of State, at that time, Henry Kissinger. Rep. Don Frazier set out to put human rights on the map from a relatively obscure committee of the Congress, the Subcommittee on Human Rights and International Organization of the House Foreign Affairs Committee. This effort is considered a major accomplishment by the initiative of a single individual. Frazier held a series of hearings in the fall of 1973. The persons who testified were not the usual foreign policy types. Cardinal Dearden, who at the time was the Archbishop of Detroit and former president of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops, was invited. The committee engaged him in extensive discussion of how to think of morality in the midst of political affairs. The outcome of the Frazier hearings was three dimensional. First it led to the establishment of an Office on Human Rights in the United States State Department. Second, it mandated what are now called human rights reports. Every embassy in the world's diplomatic system must submit a report about the human rights of the government where it resides. Third, it established legislation which tied promotion and protection of human rights to United States' foreign military and economic assistance. While this legislation had been resisted during the Kissinger years, the shift in implementation and impact came during the administration of President Carter. President Carter supported the notion that foreign policy, and every aspect of it, should be considered in light of human rights. This major shift did not necessarily mean that we always came down on the same side of the question. Often times, the Congress, Carter and a plethora of groups that grew up in the private sector on the question of human rights were in conflict. However, the effects were profound. Given the size and power of the United States, just to raise the question of human rights made a difference in several international situations and institutions. Additionally, new non-governmental organizations, such as Human Rights Watch, developed. Older organizations such as, Amnesty International and the International Commission of Jurists grew. A final effect of the 1970 shift that is important and which will be developed when we speak of higher education, is that this movement spawned very significant literature on human rights. Prior to the 1970s little attention was paid to the question of human rights, either politically or academically. In the last 20 years more attention has been focused academically, if not politically, on the human rights questions. STAGE THREE: a change in the structure of power and a search for principles of order for international affairs The third stage in the course of the human rights movement is the shift from the cold war and the post cold war world, to where we are today. The cold war was a constant constraint on the protection and promotion of human rights. There were the deep philosophical divisions between East and West about what constituted human rights. The West would usually press the political civil argument that human rights are freedom of association, freedom of conscience and freedom of religion. The East, communist and socialist states would say that human rights are the fulfillment of social and economic rights. The cold war created a situation of institutional paralysis within the United Nations in terms of their ability to do anything about what they said about human rights. Finally, human rights were at the heart of the strategic conflict of the cold war. From the United States' position, the foremost problem was always the inclination to say that if a government was against communism, they were on our side. We did not distance ourselves from allies on human rights grounds. The cold war weighed against any significant involvement on human rights, even though there was much greater attention to them after 1970. As the post cold war period evolves, and as we approach this 50 year anniversary of the Declaration, we look at the human rights theme in international affairs in a time of profound and significant change. If one tries to write the history of international relations, clearly you find at certain moments what the cold war historian, John Lewis Gatos from Ohio University, has called fault lines. They are key moments which cut across the map of international politics. The period from 1989 until today stands as one of those faults. This is a time when profound and deep changes in international relations occur. In the 1990s, we are trying to deal with a double change in international politics and understand the shape of the world in light of this double change. The first change is the shift from the cold war to the post cold war period. That is really a change in the structure of power in the world. The second change, very relevant to human rights questions, is a search for the principles of order for international affairs, the transition from the Westphalian system to the post Westphalian system. The first change involves the change in the structure of power. For 50 years the structure of power in the world was bi-polar. Power was divided between the United States and the Soviet Union and everybody else fell in between in some way or another. That structure of power collapsed overnight. The wall went down in 1989, and the Soviet Union collapsed soon after, over a weekend while we watched on TV. In the course of three years, the bi-polar structure of power that had shaped almost two generations, collapsed in front of us. The structure of power today is an issue of much debate. Some argue the only super-power in the world is the United States. Others argue that today, power is pluralistic. The analysis is expanded to include not just military power, but economic power as well. The structure of power is much more complicated than it was in the cold war. The second change and perhaps deeper change we are living through is a change in the principles of order of international affairs. This is more directly relevant to the human rights question. The principles of order that have governed world politics are much older than the cold war but they are rooted in what is often called "The Westphalian System". The treaty of Westphalia of 1648 yielded two basic concepts for the organization of politics. The first concept is the idea of the sovereign state as the basic unit of world politics. The second concept of Westphalia is non-intervention to keep peace among sovereign states. In the 1990s, both the sovereignty of states and the principle of non-intervention are under serious critique and review. Prior to 1948, there was no foundation, politically or legally, to an argument that states had responsibility for what happened in other states. That was because the sovereign states had such a significant, almost untouchable role, in world politics. The sovereign state today is not as sovereign as it used to be. Economic interdependence, human rights claims and environmental issues are modern operational terms which tend to erode the sovereignty of states. In addition, the principle of non-intervention today is under review. In the past, because the world was a world of sovereign states, the way you kept the peace in a world was to keep them out of each others' business. Non-intervention was the rule of thumb. That principally meant military non-intervention. Nobody talked about using military force as a way to respond to human rights violations. The foreign policy issues of the 1990s are places like Rwanda, Somalia, Bosnia and Haiti. The issue is the willingness to use military force to adjudicate human rights violations, if they reach a significant degree of severity. This is a major shift in international policy and a shift that could be fraught with lots of problems. The non-intervention principle always stood on fragile moral ground as we sought international peace while sacrificing a nation's internal justice. While non-intervention was always on fragile moral ground, there was a point behind the non-intervention principle. Intervention, using military force as a way to respond to human rights violations, can create old-style imperialism. We are in a very complicated moment!
In the face of this complexity, where does the Catholic Church fit into the understanding of the human rights questions? One would have to start with an acknowledgment that there has been a conflicted history about human rights questions in the Catholic Church. If you look at the historical underpinnings philosophically, it is framed by the difference between a natural law approach to understanding the natural order of society and a natural rights approach. The natural law approach is classical in its foundation. It is rooted in Greek philosophy, Roman law, Medieval philosophy and is seen in the philosophy of the contemporary papacy. Natural law sees the person as an individual with multiple duties. The emphasis is on what you owe to others, not what you expect from others. The natural rights language arises out of the arguments of the 16th through 18th centuries developed by the social contract theorists. For these theorists, a person is seen in terms of an individual possessed of moral claims over and against the state and other individuals. These are two somewhat different views of reality. They differ in three important ways. They differ in the concept of the person, the view of society and the concept of the state. In the natural rights argument, we view a highly individualistic impression of the person. The person is seen as the autonomous person, possessed of rights which are to protect his or her autonomy. The perception of society is contractual in nature. One has those obligations that one freely contracts to have. The state is always the potential adversary to the rights of the person and therefore the thrust of the contract is always a very limited state. The natural law approach starts with the concept that the person is radically social. We are social by nature, not by choice, and we enter life with multiple ties, bonds and obligations. This creates a concept of society that is much less contractual in nature and more organic in nature. Society, therefore is a fabric of responsibilities. While not arguing that the state should be totalitarian, the natural law offers a much larger concept of the role of the state. Faced with the human rights revolution from the 16th to 18th century, Catholicism struggled more with the differences in these two theories than accepted them. The neuralgic point was the question of the right to religious liberty. Catholicism had an enormous difficulty coming to terms with endorsing the right to religious liberty. Catholicism felt that the claim to the right to religious liberty was a claim premised on the notion there was no such thing as objective religious truth. The Church could not accept the notion that there is no truth that persons are obliged to seek out. The differences in these theories are the background of the Church's struggle from the 16th century through the middle of the 20th century. The shift in Catholic teaching Beginning with the Pontificate of Pius XII, at the time of World War II, there was a shift in Catholic teaching corresponding to what happened with the founding of the United Nations. This shift commenced with Pope Pius XII and has continued until the present in the teachings of Pope John Paul II. Pius XII's first move in this direction was partly the result of the experience of totalitarianism. When faced with totalitarian governments at this time, the papacy sought the most effective way possible to place restraints on the modern state. From 1940 through 1945, Pope Pius XII, in a series of major addresses each Christmas, began to articulate a much more human rights oriented concept of things. He did so within the framework of the natural law philosophy. The document of Pope John XXIII, "Pacem in Terris," is really the foundational text of Catholic teaching on human rights. This encyclical of 1963 sought purposely to bridge the framework between natural law and natural rights. Popes bridge frameworks without footnotes, so Pope John did not even acknowledge that the Church had struggled for 200 years with the natural law tradition on human rights. He just sort of married it and kept right on going. "Peace on Earth" is a document of extraordinary importance in Catholicism. It tries to blend the two concepts, maintaining a natural law framework and integrating a much more fulsome concept of rights. It led then, I submit, to not simply teaching on human rights, but a whole approach to the ministry of human rights. The ministry of human rights in the Church The work of Pope John XXIII, led to another major contribution, "The Document on Human Liberty." This contribution is primarily the product of the American Jesuit, John Courtney Murray. Murray had been arguing for some time that Catholicism simply had to reexamine questions like democracy and the right to religious liberty. Today, these concepts are found in the teachings of John Paul II. Pope John Paul II is the strongest articulator of a framework of human rights that we have had in the Catholic tradition since its inception. What comes through is not only a teaching on human rights, but a ministry of human rights, a ministry that promotes an active engagement in very conflicted situations in the name of the dignity of the person. We also need to acknowledge the role of human rights at the national level of the Church, what was going on beneath the Papacy. The Church in the nations of Latin America led the way. John XXIII's encyclical was published in 1963. Precisely at that time, the coup in Brazil brought to power a very strong military government. It also was the beginning of military coups across Latin America for the next 10 years. These military governments closed down political parties. They closed down the presidencies. They closed down universities. The only potential competitor to the power of the state was the Church. Historically, the Church usually went along with the State. But the decisive impact of the Second Vatican Council was precisely evident in the Brazilian church when in the years following Vatican II, the Brazilian church became a sort of shadow government in Brazil based on human rights. The teaching of "Pacem in Terris" became incorporated in the style of the local church. It then moved across to Chile by 1973 and to Central America in the 1980s. This is the beginning of the story of the human rights ministry. What is equally interesting is South Korea, where the Catholic Church is a minority, in fact where Christians are a minority. Yet, it is the Christian churches and very powerfully the Cardinal of Seoul, who have been the heart and soul of the argument about human rights and democracy in the struggle in South Korea over the last 20 years. Additionally, what happened in these years in Central Europe is well known. In Latin America, Korea, and Central Europe, many of the local churches became involved in deep powerful conflicts over human rights. Martyrs became the ordinary course of events. The local churches implored the Church in the United States, saying: "It isn't just our government we're up against. We're up against our government and your government." The Church in the United States was asked to articulate teachings on human rights and apply them to the issues of these turbulent times. From about 1973, forward, the Church was drawn into a pattern of congressional and state department activity based on the human rights legislation mentioned earlier. At the national level, the Church called upon the framework of teaching that runs from Pope Pius XII to John Paul II and put it into practice. Around the globe, the results of the Church's reflections and ministry of human rights were mixed. The church in Brazil and the church in Chile are very proud achievements. The church in Argentina was a very different church on the same kinds of questions and did not respond in the same way at all. The church in Haiti was, literally, openly chided by the Pope for not responding to the human rights questions. So it is a shift in the Church's role, to the ministry of human rights, but the response around the world is not always consistent. The
University and Human Rights:
Let me relate all this history and thinking to this important celebration at St. John's University of the 50th Anniversary of the Human Rights Declaration in 1998. I think we can approach this in steps. The first step is a discussion of why a Catholic university should take up a question like human rights. I think this is part of a wider discussion about the meaning and identity of being a Catholic university that has gone on in the Church universally, but particularly the Church in the United States over the last five or six years. This is a complicated question that gets worked out in each college and university in a different way to some degree but there are some themes that run through it. The debate has been for the past three or four years highly juridical, focused on the bishop's control of teaching and appointments, among other things. We have moved beyond that to what I would describe as a more functional approach. While the juridical questions are there, the really substantive questions are: "what does it really mean to be a university in the United States?" and secondly, "what does it mean to be a university that has as its background and tradition a Catholic framework?" At an institutional level, St. John's seeks to be a university, speaking in an American context, that can maintain some sense of the ongoing discussion of the Catholic vision of life. At this functional level it seems to me the university ought to do things that universities do, that any university does. Secondly, a cultivation of the Catholic vision ought to be a piece of the wider substantive debate in the Catholic university.. It does not mean that everyone does it, it does not mean that it is all the university does, but it means that there is a critical mass of discussion that keeps alive precisely the kind of story I've just gone through and seeks to relate it to the world of its times. The notion of the critical mass is as a part of the larger scope of the university. Finally, that critical mass of discussion needs to find expression in what people teach, what people think and write and what programs the university carries out. If you take that approach, and that approach seems reasonable, what does the question of human rights in the university mean as one looks forward in light of where we've been in the story I've traced? I would argue there are three areas in which a Catholic university could make a significant contribution to the ongoing story of human rights. This contribution could affect the role of human rights in the world, the question of the church and human rights, and finally the way in which a university doing what a university does, can respond to this challenge of human rights. The three areas can be framed in the context of a challenge: the intellectualchallenge, the institutional challenge, and the challenge of the internal/external relationship of human rights. THE INTELLECTUAL CHALLENGE: Contributions to the New Debate on the Philosophical Foundation of Human Rights I've traced a story very roughly and very broadly in which the philosophical foundations of human rights come out of different traditions in the west, the natural law/natural rights traditions. I've also noted the fact that during the cold war significant differences existed about how one thought about human rights. There is new debate on the philosophical foundation of human rights as this 50th Anniversary of the United Nations Universal Declaration on Human Rights approaches. Today, it is argued that it is impossible to establish a single framework of human rights to which all nations should be held. This is known as the Asian challenge to human rights. It is not a question of east/west in the sense of communist/capitalist. These arguments are embodied in Singapore's argument that the United Nations' Declaration was a western document, so therefore it does not speak to Singapore. Singapore has a growth rate that anybody would envy. It is improving the lives of its citizens, so why should they worry about political and civil rights questions? That is not simply a policy argument, it is partly a philosophical question. The philosophical question is not yet finished in any sense. In addition to the philosophical question, there are policy implications. We need to move from the commitment to human rights to policy questions. That is where one would contribute in a University in the United States. These contributions would be in foreign policy, domestic policy, social questions and political questions, that affect the United States. A good example is one that United States Senator Daniel P. Moynihan of New York is always pressing. There is a range of social questions today that are precisely the product of a post industrial society. These are significant kinds of questions that were unknown in the period before the post industrial society. These questions affecting individuals, families and the fabric of social institutions are very fertile areas to think about. Then, we must apply that thinking to the shape of human rights questions in domestic and foreign policy. THE INSTITUTIONAL CHALLENGE: Maximizing the Impact of the Catholic Church as a Social Institution in Our Society The institutional challenge does have a specifically Catholic orientation, as I argue it. I think one needs to think about the Church as a social institution in the country today, not for the sake of the Church but for the sake of the society. Under the auspices of Catholicism is the largest non-profit health care system in the country, in Catholic Charities, the largest social service agency short of the federal and state governments, and a very extensive school system. At a time of declining public resources, and staggeringly rising public needs, the role of non governmental institutions that are concerned with caring for the sick and educating the young and sustaining families, is a very important public resource to think about. We live with these things in the Catholic community, but we don't think about them strategically enough. We don't think of them across lines. We don't think about the range of both social responsibilities and social problems. The difficulty we have is that Catholic teaching runs up against governmental policy at times. I think there's an enormous field to think through the institutional presence of Catholicism. This range of social institutions could make an enormous difference if we were able to maximize their impact. I think there is far too little thought given to our ability to impact the structure of society and policy issues. THE INTERNAL/EXTERNAL CHALLENGE: Human rights in the Catholic Church Finally, the university could deal with the internal/external question. I have dealt with human rights as an expression of Catholic teaching. The question that often arises is "what about human rights within the Catholic Church?" How do we as a Church deal with the various kinds of questions around concepts of freedom of expression and of thought, of the rights of women in society and in our church and many others? This delicate issue of human rights within the church is at the heart of the logic of the argument. John Courtney Murray grasped this when he guided the document on religious liberty through Vatican II. Murray always said that this document was aimed at the role of rights in civil society. The document was not talking about rights within the church. Murray's point was a tactical one. He has been quoted as saying "if I opened that question up, we never would have gotten the document through Vatican II," but as soon as the Council was over, Murray said "there is a second argument that has to open up" The second argument is how you think through the right of religious liberty and human rights inside the Catholic Church. The thinking on it is not expansive and so the challenge to the university, especially the Catholic university is to think, publish, teach and act on the question which among other things could be well put in terms of the internal/external question. Conclusion The
Church has stimulated thinking and focused the teaching on human rights.
The United Nations' document and anniversary gives us the opportunity
to look back into history and also to explore human rights as a ministry
for the present and the future.
The
right of every person to life is correlative with the duty to preserve
it;
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J.
Bryan Hehir received his doctorate in Applied Theology from Harvard
University. He is Professor of the Practice in Religion and Society,
Harvard Divinity School and a member of the Executive Committee and
Faculty Associate, Harvard Center for International Affairs. From 1973
to 1992, Fr. Hehir served in Washington at the U.S. Catholic Conference
of Bishops and at Georgetown University. At the Bishops' Conference,
he was director of the Office of International Affairs (1973-83), Secretary
of the Department of Social Development and World Peace (1984-88) and
Counselor for Social Policy (1988-92). At Georgetown he served as the
Joseph P. Kennedy Professor of Christian Ethics in the School of Foreign
Service and at the Kennedy Institute of Ethics. In 1991-92 he served
as Associate Vice President for Church and University issues. The following
are excerpts from the Vincentian Chair of Social Justice Address delivered
during Founder's Week at St. John's University, January of 1996. In
1999 he was chosen as the first Roman Catholic to head the Harvard Divinity
School.
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