Duty, or Right? The nature of Rights in a free society.

Here in the western hemisphere, we love our rights.  We are fond of asserting them, we demand that they be recognized, and we are always seeking to guarantee more of them.  There just is something about the idea of being granted, on the sole basis of being human and living in this particular society, that resonates with us in our hearts.  We know that we have certain rights - and we are justly angered when they are tread upon.  But what exactly is the foundation of a societal right, and what place does it have in society?  Thankfully for us, Pope Saint John Paul II has some thoughts on the matter.  And for him, one of the key rights upon which hinges a functioning society is the guarantee of following and forming one’s conscience.

The precept that the right to life is the most basic right, from which all other rights stem is a well documented precept of the Catholic faith, and we will not ponder it further at this time.  Instead, I wish to draw attention to the conscience as a concept within the thought of JPII and its unique place as the source of human subjectivity.  The theory is simple: we encounter God through out bodies and our wills, and if all of creation is God’s vestigia (that is, His footprints through which He reveals Himself to us).  Our conscience causes us to seek for God in everything that we do, and it also informs us when we have encountered God, Who is the source of our true happiness.  In this, our talents, our interests, and any legitimate source of happiness that we in our subjectivity encounter, is literally our conscience leading us to God.  It is, to quote Dominum et Vivificantem, “the main characteristic of the personal subject (paragraph 43).”

The conscience both causes us to recognize God and also demands that we seek Him.  It is not simply the cause of our subjectivity; it also imposes upon us a duty.  But we cannot fulfill a duty that we are prohibited from fulfilling in the first place.  This is the basis of guaranteeing freedom of conscience in a society, though not a guarantee so free as to admit every kind of action as licensed under “conscience”.  He writes, “Although each individual has a right to be respected in his own journey in search of the truth, there exists a prior moral obligation, and a grave one at that, to seek the truth and to adhere to it once it is known.   As Cardinal John Henry Newman, that outstanding defender of the rights of conscience, forcefully put it: ‘Conscience has rights because it has duties’ (paragraph 34).”

What JPII says about the conscience holds true for every subsequent right within a society.  In other words, something has a right, because it has a duty.  This is a strange position for the American mind.  And yet, it is true.  We are not, as post-enlightenment and the social contractors would have us believe, isolated islands.  Rights are not those things which put a limit on other people’s ability to abuse the unnatural society we have built together; they are rather those things which guarantee our ability to act in fulfilling the natural duties that align with our nature.  Thus, the “right” to freedom of speech is really bearing witness to the duty in American society of speaking up when something is wrong - and involving ourselves in the election process.  The “right” to employment is really a testimony to every person’s duty to work for themselves and their family.  And finally, the “right” to freedom of religion is nothing more than a declaration of each person’s duty to seek the truth and live according to it.