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Justice and human rights from: from meetingrimini.org The speech of Mary Ann Glendon, US Ambassador to the Holy See Rimini, Meeting per l’amicizia dei popoli, August 27, 2008. Reflections on the Address fo Pope Benedict to the UN Our panel has been asked to discuss the themes of “Justice and Human rights” in Pope Benedict XVI’s April 18 address to the United Nations. As it happens, I had the good fortune to be present at the UN when the Holy Father delivered that speech, and to witness the enthusiastic standing ovation that it received. At the time, however, I could not help wondering whether those who applauded the Pope with such enthusiasm had really grasped the full implications of his words. For, as with many of Pope Benedict’s speeches, it is one where some rather complex ideas are expressed in a very condensed fashion. It is a speech that needs, as they say to be “unpacked”. I would say, too, that it is a speech directed at a far wider audience than the assembled diplomats in the UN General Assembly. The messages delivered from the platform were certainly meant for all who wish, in the expression of Don Luigi Giussani, to be “protagonists” rather than “nobodies” in our increasingly interdependent, yet conflict ridden, world. Thus it is especially appropriate that we are pondering those messages here at this Meeting. Pope Benedict’s treatement of the modern international human rights project, like that of his predeessors, is supportive. Back in 1948, the proponents of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights received considerable discret assistance from Cardinal Angelo Roncalli, then the papal nuncio in Paris. Later Blessed Pope John XXII. And Pope John Paul II often spoke approvingly of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, referring to it as “one of the highest expressions of the human conscience of our time”. It was during the pontificate of John Paul II that the international human rights movement –with the 1948 Declaration as its polestar– demonstated its remarkable potential as a force for peaceful change, particularly in Eastern Europe and South Africa. Yet, in 1989, the very year when that influence was at its height, he expressed concern that the “Declaration does not contain the anthropological and moral bases for the human rights that it proclaims”. And in 1989, he warned that “two shadows” were hovering over the Declaration’s 50th anniversary –in the form of attacks on “two essential characteristics of the very idea of human rights: their universality and their indivisibility”. By then, those attacks had become especially virulent, as was evident at the Cairo and Beijing conference. Against that background, there was much curiosity about what Pope Benedict would say when he addressed the UN in the year of the Declaration’s 60th anniversary. Today, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights has become the single most important common reference point for cross-national duiscussion of decent human behaviour, and the language of rights has become the principal language for carrying on those discussions. Pope Benedict took those facts as his starting point when he spoke to the UN. “Human Rights” he said “are increasingly being presented as the common language and ethical substratum of international relations”. But success has had its costs. For the more the international human rughts idea has shown its power for various ends, not all of which are respectful of human dignity. In 1948, many scoffed at the idea that mere words could make the difference. By 1989, the world was marveling that a few simple words of truth – a few courageous people willing to “call good and evil by name” – could change the course of history. Who would have thought in those heady days that the human rights project would become so powerful that it risked being turned against itself, and against the human person? But that question comes to mind when one ponders Pope Benedict’s pointed discussion of the challenges facing human rights in the year of the Declaration’s 60th anniversary. The Pope began his discussion with praise for the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, describing it as the outcome of a process designed “to place the human person at the heart ofn institutions, laws and the workings of society.” And he credited it with having enabled “different cultures, juridical expressions and institutional models to converge around a fundamental nucleus of values and hence of rights.” But what is striking is that those expressions of appreciation are accompanied by a set of warnings that amount the most sobering cautionary discussion about human rights that has ever appeared in any papal document. Pope Benedict’s short speech signals no fewer than nine dilemmas that have beset the human rights project from the beginning - nine dilemmas that, ironically, have become more acute as the human rights project has advanced: (1) the threat posed by cultural relativism, (2) the risk of positivism, (3) the unsettled question of foundations, (4) the temptation of utilitarianism, (5) the spread of selective approaches to rights, (6) escalating demands for new rights, (8) hyper-individualistic interpretations of rights, (9) forgetfullness of the relation between rights and responsabilities and (9) the threat to religious freedom posed by dogmatic secularism. What makes these challenges especially poignant is that many of them have emerged from developments that nearly ever friend of human rights would consider to have been genuine advances for humanity, while others contain elements of constructive criticism. Publishing date:
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