Every right carries with it a correlative duty. Every duty is meant to accommodate a right. The Declaration of Independence sets forth this paradigm:
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.– That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men….”
According to the American Founders, the protection of individual rights is the purpose of government. Government has a duty therefore to “secure these rights”. Individual rights, government duty.
The Catechism of the Catholic Church holds that the civil authorities, or government, have duties. Every human person needs life in society[i] as “society is essential to the fulfillment of the human vocation.”[ii] The human vocation is to know, love and serve God in this life so as to be with Him in the next life. The Catechism puts it forth this way:
“1877 The vocation of humanity is to show forth the image of God and to be transformed into the image of the Father’s only Son. This vocation takes a personal form since each of us is called to enter into the divine beatitude; it also concerns the human community as a whole.
“1878 All men are called to the same end: God himself.”
Therefore, “human society must primarily be considered something pertaining to the spiritual”[iii] and society must “promote the exercise of virtue, not obstruct it.”[iv] The goal and purpose of human society become clear, and now the goal and purpose of the governing authorities of that society must be made clear and consistent with these goals and purposes.
Recognizing that every society has to have authority to govern it,[v] the Catholic Faith teaches that authority “is to ensure as far as possible the common good of the society.”[vi] Pursuing that duty (to ensure the common good of society) is required if that authority is to be legitimate,[vii] Authority is legitimately exercised if it is for the common good of the society.[viii] The state’s role or purpose is “to defend and promote the common good of civil society, its citizens, and intermediate bodies.”[ix]
Authority acts through laws and orders in achieving the common good. Laws and orders that require obedience issue from authorities[x] however a “human law” is law “to the extent that it accords with right reason, and thus derives from the eternal law.”[xi] Anything less than that is an unjust law and amounts to “a kind of violence”.[xii] Therefore, human laws must derive from the eternal law.[xiii] That in turn means that human law must derive from the divine positive law of Jesus Christ, or the Catholic Faith.
What comprises the common good? Of note, prior to answering that question with quotes from the Catechism, one may look to Dignitatis Humanae[xiv] which defines society’s common good as “the sum total of those conditions of social life which enable men to achieve a fuller measure of perfection with greater ease.”[xv] The Catechism defines the common good as “the sum total of social conditions which allow people, either as groups or as individuals, to reach their fulfillment more fully and more easily.”[xvi] “Fulfillment” can only refer to “fulfillment of the human vocation”[xvii] mentioned earlier in the Catechism, and so the common good must refer to helping people to heaven and again as referenced earlier in the Catechism, the common good must be oriented towards society fulfilling its duty to its members to promote the exercise of virtue.
The common good has three components. One is that it requires peace by establishing “stability and security of a just order.” As stated elsewhere, “morally acceptable means are to be utilized in this regard.[xviii]
Second, the common good requires being made available sufficient material goods and services also called “social well-being and development of the group itself.”[xix]
Third, and most importantly, particularly for this discussion, the common good requires the protection of fundamental rights. The Catechism explains that this means that each of society’s members are to be permitted to “fulfill his vocation” by respect for “fundamental and inalienable rights of the human person.”[xx] Sounding a bit like the American Declaration of Independence with reference to “inalienable rights”, the reality is that something else other than the right to life, liberty and pursuit of happiness is intended by the Catechism. The common good “resides in the conditions for the exercise” of “natural freedoms” which allow the “development of the human vocation.”[xxi] These natural freedoms are things such as “`the right to act according to a sound norm of conscience and to safeguard…privacy, and rightful freedom also in matters of religion.’”[xxii] “Sound norm of conscience” can only mean that one has a right to act in accordance with the Catholic Faith.
Indeed, the very term “freedom” is defined by the Catechism as acting in accordance with what is good: “The more one does what is good, the freer one becomes. There is no true freedom except in the service of what is good and just. The choice to disobey and do evil is an abuse of freedom….”[xxiii] Actions for evil are abuses of freedom[xxiv], and hence are not protectable under the definition of the common good.
This is very significant.
Since the common good includes those “conditions for the exercise of the natural freedoms indispensable for the development of the human vocation,” (Section 1907), and since society is to promote the exercise of virtue (Section 1895), and since the state is to “defend and promote the common good” (Section 1927), the state has an obligation to provide the institutions and policies that comprise the conditions that allow, if not also encourage, acting in accordance with the Catholic faith in private and public life as the Faith mandates actions in both spheres of one’s existence. The state is therefore responsible for insuring that it does not act in contravention of the Catholic Faith or that it permits conditions, institutions, policies and more to come about that would harm the common good in the area of protecting the exercise of one’s fundamental right to act in accordance with a right conscience. This is in effect the Catholic confessional state. We – all people since we all have the same vocation and are called to beatitude[xxv] – have a fundamental right to the Catholic confessional state because the Catholic Faith offers everyone the way to beatitude. Catholicism teaches that the Catholic religion is the right and true way as “Only the divinely revealed religion has clearly recognized man’s origin and destiny in God, the Creator and Redeemer.”[xxvi]
Summary
Living in society is part of man’s nature, and every person is called to the same end which is salvation. Society is required to encourage virtue so as to permit man to realize his salvation. Freedom, or acting in accordance with the Catholic Faith is to be protected and encouraged. Abuse of that freedom is not entitled to protection.
Every society has a supreme authority which is the state or the civil authorities. The state must therefore set policies and conditions that permit and encourage life in accordance with the Catholic Faith for to do so is to provide the common good and to assist in achieving the end of existence (or vocation) for man. This means the state must implement rules that are truly laws or rules of right reason. The State’s laws must be in accordance with God’s law, the eternal law, the divine positive law or, in other words, the Catholic Faith.
Every human has the same calling and the right to be protected in reaching that vocation. The Catholic Faith provides that way. Every human being has a fundamental right to the Catholic Confessional State. That means that the State is responsible for establishing policies that are in accord with the Catholic Faith and that the State is to recognize, in law, the Catholic Church as the official church of the state. This is Catholic doctrine.
[i] Catechism of the Catholic Church, section 1891. Also, see, Section 1879: “The human person needs to live in society. Society is not for him an extraneous addition but a requirement of his nature.”
[ii] Catechism of the Catholic Church, section 1886; Gaudium et Spes, Section 22 paragraph 5: “For since Christ died for all, and since all men are in fact called to one and the same destiny, which is divine, we must hold that the Holy Spirit offers to all the possibility of being made partners….”; Catechism Sections 1716-1729.
[iii] Catechism of the Catholic Church, section 1886 and reference is made to Pope St John XXIII’s Pacem in Terris, (1963) 36.
[iv] Catechism of the Catholic Church, section 1895.
[v] Catechism of the Catholic Church, Section 1898: “Every human community needs an authority to govern it.”
[vi] Catechism of the Catholic Church, Section 1898.
[vii] Catechism of the Catholic Church, Section 1902:”Authority does not derive its moral legitimacy from itself. It must…act for the common good as a `moral force based on freedom and a sense of responsibility.’”
[viii] Catechism of the Catholic Church, Section 1921: “Authority is exercised legitimately if it is committed to the common good of society.” Section 1903: “Authority is exercised legitimately only when it seeks the common good of the group concerned and if it employs morally licit means to attain it.”
[ix] Catechism of the Catholic Church, Section 1910.
[x] Catechism of the Catholic Church, Section 1897.
[xi] Catechism of the Catholic Church, Section 1902 citing St. Thomas Aquinas, STh I-II, 93, 3, ad 2.
[xii] Ibid.
[xiii] See, Dignitatis Humanae, chapter I, paragraph 3, clause 1: “the highest norm of human life is the divine law itself – eternal, objective and universal, by which God orders, directs and governs the whole world and the ways of the human community….”
[xiv] There should not be any contradiction between the Church documents of Vatican II and the Catholic Faith.
[xv] Dignitatis Humanae, chapter I, section 6, clause 1.
[xvi] Catechism of the Catholic Church, section 1906.
[xvii] Catechism of the Catholic Church, Section 1886.
[xviii] Catechism of the Catholic Church, Section 1909, 1925.
[xix] Catechism of the Catholic Church , Sections 1908, 1925.
[xx] Catechism of the Catholic Church, Section 1907.
[xxi] Catechism of the Catholic Church, Section 1907.
[xxii] Catechism of the Catholic Church, Section 1907.
[xxiii] Catechism of the Catholic Church, Section 1733.
[xxiv] Catechism of the Catholic Church, Section 1733.
[xxv] Gaudiem et Spes, Section 24, paragraph 1.
[xxvi] Catechism of the Catholic Church, Section 2244.