Human Rights and Social Doctrine of the Church: a contribution on the occasion of the sixtieth anniversary of the Declaration Universal

Abstract

On the 60.th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, this article presents the key Catholic principles on human rights, underlying the Catholic social teaching in the defence and promotion of them. Beginning especially with Pacem in terris in 1963, the documents on social teaching use the language of human rights as one way of expressing what is owed to all human beings by virtue of their dignity. Its capital importance for the Church can be recognised through different aspects reviewed in the present study: foundation, genesis and evolution, classification of human rights (personal, social and instrumental), and connections among them, where the right to development plays a very special role. Two complementary fields —religious freedom and migration— are particularly good examples of how Catholic social teaching deals with fundamental rights. The author has been researching these two areas during the last several years and wishes to offer, on occasion of this important commemoration, some of the mostsignificant proposals that come from Catholic debates.