There is one thing that every societal government must recognize in order for it to be able and qualified to accomplish its purpose: human dignity. Everything the government issues forth relies on the truth of human dignity and without this understanding, the government fails to enforce justice and maintain peace. To recognize human dignity is to understand that society is not a machine with every person being merely a cog in the system, but instead, society is a community where individual persons should be recognized as such, and thus, deserve to have their human rights protected by the regime.
However, if human rights are defined by the theological understanding of human dignity, does any governmental regime have the power to protect them?
First, we need to understand what is meant by human right. Human rights apply to every human being from the moment of conception by virtue of his humanity and have existed since before being recognized by any type of civil institution. Rights such as the right to life, the right to preserve your life, the right to marry without interference from the state and have a family…human rights demand the respect that the state owes the people through recognizing all human beings as equal in their humanity.
The pressing question remains, if the founding fathers understood the importance of human dignity being recognized by government, why did they not take into account slavery when writing about life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness? They had not merely forgotten to take slaves into account, rather they recognized that slavery would be abolished and the right to liberty would be extended to slaves in time. If the human dignity of slaves was not recognized, then they would not have expected slaves to be freed. Even when slavery was persistent in the United States, the humanity of those who served as slaves was not forgotten.
As cruel and inhumane as slavery is, there is a much more intrinsically evil abuse going on today as a result of another human right being legally violated.
Pope St. John Paul II wrote in his encyclical Evangelium Vitae, “The process which once led to discovering the idea of ‘human rights’—rights inherent in every person and prior to any Constitution and State legislation—is today marked by a surprising contradiction. Precisely in an age when the inviolable rights of the person are solemnly proclaimed and the value of life is publicly affirmed, the very right to life is being denied or trampled upon, especially at the more significant moments of existence: the moment of birth and the moment of death” (18).
The right to life, that right which all others necessitate and that which is arguably the most important of human rights, is being ignored by those who vowed to protect such rights. It is human rights like these, recognized through human dignity, that define justice; who is to say that murder is wrong if they cannot define what murder is because the definition of a human being is dependent on opinion or convenience?
That is why government does not have the power to define human dignity—only God has the right to do that. However, if a government exists to execute justice, maintain peace, and keep order in a society, then it has to rely on the truth of human dignity and human rights if it is to succeed in its purpose. Otherwise, it has no right to govern. The government does not have the power to grant human rights, but it does have the responsibility to protect the rights of citizens when its goal is to serve the common good.
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