• About Us
  • About Us
  • Ecclesial Family
  • Leadership
  • History
  • Lay Vocation
  • Membership
• Lay Vocation
  • Call to Holiness
  • Mom's Eye View
  • Dad's Eye View
• Membership
  • Domus
    • Testimonies
    • Consecrated Life in Miles Jesu
  • Vinculum
• Our Spirituality
  • The Spirituality of the Epiphany
  • Patron Saints
  • Promoting Loyalty to the Holy Father
  • Praying
    • Pray the Rosary
    • The Blessed Sacrament
    • Meditations
    • Submit a Prayer Request
  • Retreats
  • Recommended Reading
• Miles Jesu Missions
• Newsletter
• Evangelization Programs
  • Summer Girls Camp (USA)
  • Continuity in the British Isles
• In The News
• Home

The Source and Synthesis of Human Rights
From the Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church

The teachings of Pope John XXIII, the Second Vatican Council, and Pope Paul VI have given abundant indication of the concept of human rights as articulated by the Magisterium. Pope John Paul II has drawn up a list of them in the Encyclical Centesimus Annus: “the right to life, an integral part of which is the right of the child to develop in the mother’s womb from the moment of conception; the right to live in a united family and in a moral environment conducive to the growth of the child’s personality; the right to develop one’s intelligence and freedom in seeking and knowing the truth; the right to share in the work which makes wise use of the earth’s material resources, and to derive from that work the means to support oneself and one’s dependents; and the right freely to establish a family, to have and to rear children through the responsible exercise of one’s sexuality. In a certain sense, the source and synthesis of these rights is religious freedom, understood as the right to live in the truth of one’s faith and in conformity with one’s transcendent dignity as a person.” (Centesimus Annus, 47)

The first right presented in this list is the right to life, from conception to its natural end (cf. John Paul II, Encyclical Letter Evangelium Vitae, 2) which is the condition for the exercise of all other rights and, in particular, implies the illicitness of every form of procured abortion and of euthanasia. (cf. Second Vatican Ecumenical Council, Pastoral Constitution Gaudium et Spes, 27) Emphasis is given to the paramount value of the right to religious freedom: “all men are to be immune from coercion on the part of individuals or of social groups and of any human power, in such wise that no one is to be forced to act in a manner contrary to his own beliefs, whether privately or publicly, whether alone or in association with others, within due limits.” (Second Vatican Ecumenical Council, Declaration Dignitatis Humanae, 2) The respect of this right is an indicative sign of “man’s authentic progress in any regime, in any society, system or milieu.” (John Paul II, Encyclical Letter Redemptor Hominis, 17)