Ruth Institute Blog

Great article by Fr. James V. Schall, S.J., friend of the Ruth Institute,  much beloved and deeply learned professor of government at Georgetown University, and the author of many books on politics, theology and culture.

“In the act of procreation of a new creature is its indispensable bond with spousal union, by which the husband becomes a father through the conjugal union with his wife, and the wife becomes a mother through the conjugal union with her husband. The Creator’s plan is engraved in the physical and spiritual nature of the man and of the woman, and as such has universal value. The act in which the spouses become parents through the reciprocal and total gift of themselves makes them cooperators with the creator to bringing into the world a new human being called to eternal life. An act so rich that it transcends even the life of the parents cannot be replaced by a mere technological intervention, depleted of human value and at the mercy of the determinism of technological and instrumental procedures.” — John Paul II, Address to Pontifical Academy for Life, February 21, 2004.

I.

Benedict XVI, in Caritas in Veritate, addressed the troubled meaning of the word “right.” Perhaps no word in modern philosophy has caused more trouble than this, at first sight, noble word. Many a philosopher and pope has tried valiantly to save this word from the meaning that it had when it first appeared in modern thought, generally with Hobbes. The word, literally, has no meaning. Or perhaps, better, it means whatever we want it to mean. It contains no inner criterion by which it must mean this or that. In the state of nature, people had an absolute freedom to do whatever they wanted. This freedom was called a “right.” The state arose both to protect this empty “right” and to prevent it from justifying people killing each other off by doing whatever they wanted “by right.”

The pope points out that the word “right” does not stand by itself, but is always correlated to “duty.” If we maintain that we have a “right” to this or that, it must be someone’s “duty” to observe it or allow it or provide it. The danger of the word “right” is that it evaporates the world of notions like generosity and gift, of things beyond the correlation of right and duty. The highest acts among us are neither right or duties, but sacrifices and graces. In a world of “rights,” no one can do anything for anyone because everything is already owed. In such a world, the words “thank you” have no place. No more anti-Christian thought can be found.

If I think that I have a “right” to something, whatever it is, then someone else, or the state, has a “duty” to provide it for me. I am a “victim” if everyone else is not giving me my “rights.” And if someone gives me what I have a “right” to, no room remains for generosity, since what is given is already “owed” to me. If I do not “have” something, it must be because someone else is denying my “rights.” Such a world is filled with complaints, not services. Thus, in a rights world, when I receive a gift of what I want, it is already mine “by right.” No room is left for gratitude.

Within this context, no more pernicious notion can be found than that of a “right to have a baby,” a phrase we must think carefully about since, at first sight, it seems that we do have such a “right. But a “right” of this sort strikes at the very foundation of civilization. No one has a “right” to have a baby. The origin of any baby is not wholly in one person, or in two, but it includes what transcends them both. A man and a woman has a “right” to marry if each is free to do so. Each also has a prior “duty” to respect what marriage is.

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