Toward a Humanitarian Diplomacy/Basic Rights/Church and Politics:
Drinan, Robert F
A moral revolution TOWARD A HUMANITARIAN DIPLOMACY A PRIMER FOR POLICY Edited by Tom J. Farer New York University Press, $16, 229 pp. BASIC RIGHTS SUBSISTENCE, AFFLUENCE AND U.S. FOREIGN...
...The glories and the shortcomings of that period are analyzed in the five essays that make up Toward a Humanitarian Diplomacy...
...Using the Christian sources on the just war-all dubiously applicable in the atomic era-Father McDonagh concludes that "if one accepts the criteria of a just war as applying to a just revolution, the conditions for a just revolution were fulfilled, as far as they are ever likely to be, by the early 1970s in Rhodesia...
...Mr...
...But the U.S...
...Liberation theology also enters into Father McDonagh's reasoning and in his analysis of the church's role in Rhodesia...
...Even .though its implementation cannot be foreseen in the near future, we should be grateful that Professor Shue has written the classical statement affirming that the rich nations are required by justice and by international law to share their abundance with those millions who are chronically malnourished...
...The manuscript was finished in November 1979 and hence does not cover the dramatic events surrounding the triumph of Robert Mugabe and the recognition of Zimbabwe on April 18, 1980...
...But he is cautious almost to a fault in seeking to apply the two major Christian traditions of the just war and pacifism to the war in Zimbabwe...
...These three volumes show consequently that when the Reagan administration downgrades human rights it is going against the strong tide of one of the most accepted moral ideas of this generation...
...It is his tenaciously argued thesis that the economic rights of the one billion absolutely poor people in the world "belong among the rights with the highest priority...
...Rutgers Professor Farer, its editor and the Vice President of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights based in Costa Rica, sums up the message of the book in this way: "Placed beside the highest hopes of the human rights movement, Jimmy Carter is a modest figure...
...Hence he would urge the present emphasis in U.S...
...CHURCH AND POLITICS FROM THEOLOGY TO A CASE HISTORY OF ZIMBABWE Enda McDonagh University of Notre Dame Press, $12.95, 177 pp...
...With unrelenting logic Shue recommends that American law be broadened to require the termination of aid not merely to those governments that engage in shocking and outrageous conduct but to those countries indifferent to the rights of their citizens to food, shelter, and health care...
...policy on preventing and punishing torture and illegal detention should be shared by efforts to vindicate subsistence rights...
...These volumes thus reassure us that the universal contemporary faith in the majesty of human rights is an idea which, if it is going into eclipse at the moment, will emerge again to be the moral beacon of modern man...
...A comprehensive treatment of recent U.S...
...Similarly Carter's "withdrawal of support for the Somoza dynasty plainly encouraged the Nicaraguan people's decision to stand up...
...FOREIGN POLICY Henry Shue Princeton University Press, $17.50, 231 pp...
...It is a remarkable convergence...
...Robert F. Drinan THESE important volumes, written before the Reagan administration announced the de-emphasis, if not the demise, of human rights as a crucial element of U. S. foreign policy, remind us of the spiritual treasures which we may have lost - perhaps permanently...
...The exercise of evangelisation involves the work of liberation...
...relationship to Iran analyzed by Marvin Zonis and America's tolerance of repression in Korea chronicled by Donald L. Ranard point up strongly the failure of the Carter administration to insist on the implementation of human rights when presented with an alleged clash with national security...
...That agreement never meant very much to the United States until the Congress and President Carter made the period of 1974 to 1980 the golden age for human rights in American history...
...Pope John Paul II in Brazil mentioned human rights more than any other concept...
...It is a thesis that is legally supportable and challenging...
...Farer also feels that "Carter's championing of human rights emboldened the Shah's opponents as it restrained the Shah's inclination towards an annihilating repression...
...Jorre reveals, however, the strength of the Carter administration's accent on human rights as does an essay by Sandy Vogelgesang outlining in fascinating detail the origins and objectives of a human rights policy which assumes and asserts that the advancement of our interests need not collide with the pursuit of our ideals...
...Because of this restraint Father McDonagh has constructed a balanced justification for a personal belief that the European priests who gave encouragement to the rebels in Rhodesia did not violate Christian tradition or teaching...
...relations with South Africa by John de St...
...Each of these volumes portrays a part of the memorable moral revolution that began in 1945 when all of the signatories of the United Nations Charter made a "pledge" to "promote" human rights...
...Authored by an Irish priest who was a missionary in Africa and Rhodesia for many years, it seeks to apply the theology of a just war to the emergence of Zimbabwe...
...These three studies demonstrate the centrality of human rights today...
...They illustrate the fact that the religious and secular worlds in contemporary society share an ideology of human rights that unifies them and mutually reinforces their conviction and their courage in insisting upon respect for human rights...
...The complexity of the problem of enforcing human rights is highlighted in Professor Shue's powerful study Basic Rights...
...He writes eloquently about the origins of liberation theology in Latin America, applies it to the enslavement of the blacks in Rhodesia and states that "the absence of basic liberation contradicts the thrust of evangelisation...
...In the history books yet to be written, however, he might come to seem much greater . . ." Farer credits the Carter administration with "bringing about real electoral change in the Dominican Republic and the promise of democratic government in Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia and, perhaps, eventually in Brazil...
...The work of Amnesty International brings together religionists and secularists...
...Church and Politics was published in Ireland with a less pretentious and more descriptive title "The Demands of Simple Justice...
Vol. 108 • June 1981 • No. 11
