Consistency & human rights
Hehir, J. Bryan
Church/world watch Consistency human rights J. Bryan Hehir There ARE several prisms through which the Polish crisis can be examined. It can be viewed as a proof-text of the declining fortunes of...
...There have been deaths attributed to the Polish government...
...In Poland two sets of rights are at stake: the freedom of association and religious freedom...
...To accuse a government of human rights violations is, to say it has directly attacked the dignity - in religious terms, the sa-credness - of the person...
...The Polish church is a model of courageous clarity on human rights...
...These rights are represented, in a sense, by the institution of Solidarity and the church...
...Where other fundamental rights are violated, the significance of the right of religious liberty becomes clear...
...The interrelationship of these moral claims becomes evident when one of them is denied...
...The truth of Friedrich's observation is illustrated today East and West as the church finds itself in opposition to governments of the right and left...
...The social implications of the right, embodied in the phrase "the freedom of the church" is vividly manifested in Poland today...
...but higher by the hundreds are the deaths (Continued on page 126) Church/world watch (Continued from page 106) attributed to the government in El Salvador...
...The claims of every state are relativized by the transcendent destiny of the person...
...It is precisely when government policy fails to employ the humanistic criterion of human rights in a humane way that others in the society should be clearsighted and clear-spoken about consistency in a human rights policy...
...Or it can be seen as a test case of the political cohesion of the NATO alliance after three decades...
...What is neither justifiable or even understandable is the refusal of the administration to employ a similar human rights evaluation concerning El Salvador...
...It can be viewed as a proof-text of the declining fortunes of the Communist bloc...
...policy...
...peasant leaders are tortured and "disappear" daily in El Salvador...
...Many years ago Carl Friedrich in his classic work on constitutional government wrote that the church would, sooner or later, always have to oppose a totalitarian or authoritarian state because of what the Christian faith asserts about the transcendence of the human person...
...The Polish government's attempt to prohibit free trade unions requires, by a kind of tragic logic, that it also foreclose freedom of the press, muzzle freedom of speech and, ultimately, violate freedom of conscience...
...Rights are the moral claims by which human dignity is protected...
...it affirms each person's right to seek religious truth free from coercion...
...At i the same time the administration has found El Salvador's human rights record worthy of massively increased military assistance...
...It is precisely this consistency in the face of diverse situations which contrasts so sharply with U.S...
...Protection of human dignity and promotion of human rights, in the vie w of the Council, are not only significant political and moral tasks, they are also religious tasks, part of the ministry of the church...
...Freedom of association is the foundation of the more specific right of working people to organize in free trade unions...
...At the United Nations in 1979 John Paul II said: "It follows that the fundamental criterion for comparing social, economic, and political systems is not, and cannot be, the criterion of hegemony and imperialism...
...J. BRYAN HEHIR...
...The Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World described the church in the political order as "the sign and safeguard of the transcendent dimension of the human person...
...The Reagan administration has no difficulty describing human rights violations in Poland and defining its response to them...
...The Polish tragedy includes more elements than human rights, but none more profound...
...Precisely when other institutions such as unions, parties, and cultural organizations are suppressed, the ability of the church to speak and act, to stand with persons and groups against state power, becomes a crucial social fact in any society...
...In Catholic social thought as well as in secular political thought the humanistic criterion by which governments are assessed is their respect for human rights...
...The intrinsic significance of the right is, of course, a permanently valid truth...
...In Poland and Brazil, in Chile and Czechoslovakia, the power of the Council's statement is shaping the life and witness of the church...
...The power of a human rights critique of state policy lies in the logic of the human rights argument...
...The administration has, with justification, denied Poland economic aid because of its human rights record...
...the American * church should be equally vocal and visible...
...The Polish church's defense of workers and unions against a Communist system is paralleled by the Brazilian church's defense of workers in a system reminiscent of fascist corporatism...
...The harassment of intellectuals, the pressure on workers to sign declarations contrary to their convictions, and the intimidation of students all witness to the systemic human rights crisis caused by martial law in Poland...
...human rights policy at the moment...
...Labor leaders are imprisoned by the hundred in Poland...
...This starting point opens the door to an examination of the internal crisis in Poland, the church's relationship to it, and the role of human rights in U.S...
...The violations of human rights exist in Poland and the response has been justified...
...The dignity of the person is protected and promoted by a spectrum of interlocking moral claims reaching from the right to life and bodily integrity through political rights aimed at participation in society to the provision of economic goods which ensure social welfare...
...Friedrich's observation about the political significance of a religious view of the person was given a new depth and meaning in the teaching of Vatican II...
...it can be and it must be the humanistic criterion, namely the measure in which each system is really capable of reducing, restraining, and eliminating as far as possible the various forms of exploitation of man and of ensuring for him through work, not only the just distribution of the indispensable material goods but also a participation in keeping with his dignity in the whole process of production and in the social life that grows up around that process...
...An alternative perspective is to analyze the Polish question as a human rights issue...
Vol. 109 • February 1982 • No. 4
