Each of those inflection points bears obvious significance in the Catholic stance regarding human rights. The first serves as a positive source of inspiration (witness the praise heaped upon the Universal Declaration in the recent Vatican document Dignitas Infinita) for a changed assessment of rights language after centuries of suspicion. The second provides a cautionary tale regarding the potentially disastrous effects of global disorder, one which obviously afforded “Good Pope John” great incentive to promulgate this revolutionary teaching document as one of the final acts of his papacy—and indeed of his own earthly life itself.
Many words of praise are due to the writings of Hollenbach on human rights—from his 1979 volume Claims in Conflict: Retrieving and Renewing the Catholic Human Rights Tradition; to his three recent volumes on the rights of refugees published in 2008, 2010, and 2019; to this year’s Human Rights in a Divided World: Catholicism as a Living Tradition. I am especially eager to call attention here to a single accomplishment within this corpus. It may perhaps best be characterized as the task of achieving and maintaining a particular felicitous balance in our understanding of rights and the skillful invoking of rights language to the greatest possible effect.
If Hollenbach has earned a broad audience both within the Catholic community and in wider pluralistic circles of scholars of international law and human rights theory (and he has), his success may be attributed to the skill he demonstrates in maintaining a binocular gaze simultaneously upon constructive human rights discourse and upon fundamental commitments that characterize a theistic worldview. Pulling off such a “balancing act” requires fluency in multiple “moral languages.” While the content of both pans of this scale constitute weighty considerations with normative significance for human behavior, theologically grounded commitments display a transcendent dimension to which no contingent loyalty or strictly propositional conviction can aspire. In other words, ethical commitments of a secular and of a sacred nature do not function on the same level.
Without in any way dismissing or even diminishing the value or weighty implications of secular human rights theory, I would contend that people of religious faith display a distinctive way of affirming fundamental dimensions and purposes of human life—matters pertaining to the origin, nature, and destiny of human existence itself. At stake is the broadest vision of human fraternity and belonging, involving the deepest bases of identity and even of vocation—the sense of sacred calling that is understood as a path to holiness. Under a religious perspective, one’s freely chosen ethical actions are motivated ultimately by a relationship with the divine as one understands it; as such, respect for the well-being of other humans (or of humanity in general) nests within an entire cosmologically-grounded narrative with transcendent significance.
The writings of David Hollenbach on the theory and practice of human rights unfold against the broadest theological horizon, with consistent and utmost respect for the convictions of all people of faith. While acknowledging that the concept of human rights provides an attractive normative framework for social order that richly deserves the support of people of all religious faiths and none at all, Hollenbach’s work demonstrates profound respect for the distinction between what one might perceive as ultimate and what falls short of ultimacy in nature and extent.
It serves no purpose to exaggerate the potential differences between the convictions of faith and the conclusions of secular human rights theory. In fact, the most valuable lessons on display here involve the remarkable convergence of ethical insights that emanate from both sources. As ever, paying close attention to specific terms employed by various observers of human rights compliance, as well as violation, pays rich dividends in clarity gained. Consider the recent example of Pope Francis’ denunciation of the repeated refusal of life-saving assistance to refugees attempting perilous sea crossings of the Mediterranean Sea. Francis has, of course, long lamented the indifference of much of the world community to the plight of migrants in general. In comments he offered on August 28, 2024, during his weekly outdoor audience in Saint Peter’s Square, the pontiff labelled the refusal to assist migrant vessels “a grave sin.”
Needless to say, this denunciation enlists a category that does not find its way into secular human rights theory. For Catholics and many other religious adherents, moral obligations to preserve the lives of those in desperate straights are due to persons by virtue of one’s relationship with God, which issues forth in commands to love our neighbors and to protect them from harm. To sin is to damage that network of relationships; there is nothing abstract about such violations. For all the achievements of secular human rights theory, including the codification of various behavioral standards and ethical obligations in various international law instruments, a stronger power to motivate life-saving actions attaches to the religious language of divine command, judgment, and love of neighbor. When Pope Francis insists that the Mediterranean not become a “cemetery for migrants,” the language he employs taps into the wellsprings of the human imagination—the heart and even the gut, rather than just the head. For all their importance, human rights are, after all, merely the minimum conditions for the establishment of justice. Or, as succeeding popes have affirmed in documents of Catholic social teaching, duties of charity go beyond strictly defined duties of justice.
At the risk of placing more words than I have already in the mouth of my fellow Jesuit (full disclosure: David Hollenbach was both my teacher and faculty colleague at Boston College), I would suggest that the influence of Jesuit theologian John Courtney Murray (1904-1967) is readily evident in this “double-barreled appeal” of Hollenbach’s contributions to human rights literature. Recall that Murray’s approach to prudent constitutional order was grounded in the seminal distinction between “articles of faith” and “articles of peace.” The content of the former consists of the type of theological commitments that might be held by individuals or communities within a polity, or “the truths that we hold” in ways that are private in nature. The latter are truths appropriate for civic affairs, and upon which a pluralistic polity may rightly hope to forge a workable public consensus.
Murray’s primary examples of articles of peace were the religious freedoms and civil rights enshrined in the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, which of course allowed fellow citizens the liberty to engage in behaviors that any one of us might find misguided or even repugnant. By introducing this felicitous distinction, Murray allowed an unprecedented rapprochement between Catholicism and liberalism that has served well many parties, not the least of which are Catholic scholars seeking the requisite standing to contribute to sensitive policy debates with constructive proposals grounded in the best of theological argumentation and even the Church’s social teachings.
For his evident sensitivity to both secular argumentation and faith-based convictions, David Hollenbach has emerged as among the very best of these scholars. The balance he has struck between scholarly precision and forthright advocacy for refugees and other marginalized people provides a model for constructive engagement of human rights discourse in service of human flourishing. The habits of mind that Hollenbach displays in achieving this balance provide valuable lessons for all.
