Samuel Moyn - Christian Human Rights

Samuel Moyn in his ‘Christian Human Rights’ argues that the Catholic Church’s endorsement of human rights in 20th century was a tactical appropriation of an ideology alien to Catholicism – and it was designed to stop Communism. In a 2016 symposium with him, I took a different view. Belief in human rights, this paper argues, was central to traditional Catholic moral and political theology – in particular, the Church’s use of human rights to oppose religious coercion by states had a clear basis within the Catholic tradition. The new factor was not simply fear of Communism, but a central feature of Vatican II - a novel complacency about the effects on human nature of the Fall.