scholarly journals A Moral Language for Our Time? Human Rights and Christianity in Historical Perspective

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-12
Author(s):  
Rachel Johnston-White
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Human Rights ◽  
Natural Environment ◽  
Common Good ◽  
Historical Perspective ◽  
The Other ◽  
Global Inequality ◽  
Moral Language ◽  
Pope Francis ◽  
The Poor

On 3 October 2020 Pope Francis issued his third encyclical, Fratelli Tutti. Signed in the symbolic location of Assisi, home of St Francis, the encyclical represented the pope's response to the fears and anxieties wrought by the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as the burning injustices of racism, global inequality and climate change. The encyclical explicitly invoked human rights, criticising the ways in which, ‘in practice, human rights are not equal for all’. As nations and societies succumb to ‘disenchantment and disappointment’, ‘the temptation to build a culture of walls’ to keep out the ‘other’ grows ever greater. The antidote, Francis insisted, is a ‘culture of encounter’ in which it is again possible to ‘rediscover the needs of the brothers and sisters who orbit around us’. Priority, too, must be given to ‘the dignity of the poor’ and ‘respect for the natural environment,’ rather than the privileges of the affluent to continue to amass wealth at all costs. Only then – by aligning human rights with the global common good – can rights become truly universal.

Óscar Romero and the Politics of Sainthood

2011 ◽  
Vol 5 (3) ◽  
pp. 265-291
Author(s):  
Manuel A. Vasquez ◽  
Anna L. Peterson
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Civil War ◽  
El Salvador ◽  
The Other ◽  
Post Colonial ◽  
Holy See ◽  
The Poor ◽  
The Face ◽  
Crisis Of Modernity ◽  
The One

In this article, we explore the debates surrounding the proposed canonization of Archbishop Oscar Romero, an outspoken defender of human rights and the poor during the civil war in El Salvador, who was assassinated in March 1980 by paramilitary death squads while saying Mass. More specifically, we examine the tension between, on the one hand, local and popular understandings of Romero’s life and legacy and, on the other hand, transnational and institutional interpretations. We argue that the reluctance of the Vatican to advance Romero’s canonization process has to do with the need to domesticate and “privatize” his image. This depoliticization of Romero’s work and teachings is a part of a larger agenda of neo-Romanization, an attempt by the Holy See to redeploy a post-colonial and transnational Catholic regime in the face of the crisis of modernity and the advent of postmodern relativism. This redeployment is based on the control of local religious expressions, particularly those that advocate for a more participatory church, which have proliferated with contemporary globalization

scholarly journals Luther and Economic Questions

1910 ◽  
Vol 2 ◽  
pp. 131-150 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Alfred Faulkner
Keyword(s):  
Common Good ◽  
Kingdom Of God ◽  
The Other ◽  
Word Of God ◽  
The Common Good ◽  
The Poor ◽  
Special Knowledge ◽  
The Common ◽  
The Church

There are two facts to be borne in mind in regard to Luther's whole attitude to social and economic questions. The first is that ordinarily this was a territory to be confined to experts, in which ministers should not meddle. He believed that a special knowledge was necessary to deal with some of these matters, and that they had better be left to those to whom Providence had assigned them, whether the jurists, those clever in worldly knowledge, or the authorities. The other fact is that the Church after all has social duties, and that Church and clergy must fight flagrant abuses and try to bring in the Kingdom of God on earth. The Church must use the Word of God against sin and sinners, and so by spiritual ministries help the needs of the time. The authorities on their part shall proceed by strict justice against evil doers. But there is another fact here which it is necessary to mention to get Luther's whole attitude, viz., that the State's function is not simply to administer justice, but to secure the general weal. They shall do the very best they can for their subjects, says Luther. “The authorities shall serve their subjects and use their office not petulantly [nicht zu Mutwillen] but for the advancement of the common good, and especially for the poor.” The princes shall give laws which shall limit as far as possible social misery and national dangers. They should listen to the proposals of the Church to this end, and on the ground of wise counsels of churchmen, do away with old laws and make new ones.

Subsistence Emissions and Luxury Emissions

2010 ◽  
Author(s):  
Henry Shue
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
United States ◽  
United Nations ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Other ◽  
The Poor ◽  
The World ◽  
The United Nations ◽  
Carbon Dioxide Co2

The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change adopted in Rio de Janeiro at the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) in June 1992 establishes no dates and no dollars. No dates are specified by which emissions are to be reduced by the wealthy states, and no dollars are specified with which the wealthy states will assist the poor states to avoid an environmentally dirty development like our own. The convention is toothless because throughout the negotiations in the Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee during 1991 to 1992, the United States played the role of dentist: whenever virtually all the other states in the world (with the notable exceptions of Saudi Arabia and Kuwait) agreed to convention language with teeth, the United States insisted that the teeth be pulled out. The Clinton administration now faces a strategic question: should the next step aim at a comprehensive treaty covering all greenhouse gases (GHGs) or at a narrower protocol covering only one, or a few, gases, for example, only fossil-fuel carbon dioxide (CO2)? Richard Stewart and Jonathan Wiener (1992) have argued for moving directly to a comprehensive treaty, while Thomas Drennen (1993) has argued for a more focused beginning. I will suggest that Drennen is essentially correct that we should not try to go straight to a comprehensive treaty, at least not of the kind advocated by Stewart and Wiener. First I would like to develop a framework into which to set issues of equity or justice of the kind introduced by Drennen. It would be easier if we faced only one question about justice, but several questions are not only unavoidable individually but are entangled with one another. In addition, each question can be given not simply alternative answers but answers of different kinds. In spite of this multiplicity of possible answers to the multiplicity of inevitable and interconnected questions, I think we can lay out the issues fairly clearly and establish that commonsense principles converge to a remarkable extent upon what ought to be done, at least for the next decade or so.

Laudato Si

2018 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
pp. 28-55
Author(s):  
William N. Holden ◽  
William O. Mansfield
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Scientific Basis ◽  
Social Thought ◽  
Catholic Social Thought ◽  
Pope Francis ◽  
Poor Countries ◽  
The Poor ◽  
The World ◽  
The Church

Abstract This article examines the highly influential Papal encyclical Laudato Si issued by Pope Francis in June 2015. The scientific basis behind climate change is discussed, as are the consequences of climate change, which will be disproportionately borne by the poor countries and poor peoples of the world. The Pope’s prescriptions for coping with climate change are reviewed and the article concludes with a discussion of how Laudato Si exemplifies the simultaneous, and frequently intersecting, themes of protecting the environment and protecting the poor in Catholic social thought. In many ways, Laudato Si is the product of the church of the poor confronting climate change.

The Janus-Head of Human Rights and Climate Change: Adaptation and Mitigation

2011 ◽  
Vol 80 (4) ◽  
pp. 403-423 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ole W. Pedersen
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Human Rights ◽  
Clean Development Mechanism ◽  
The Other ◽  
Absolute Minimum ◽  
Climate Change Responses ◽  
Reduction Of Emissions ◽  
Mitigate Climate Change ◽  
National Governments ◽  
Adaptation And Mitigation

AbstractThis article examines the role human rights instruments play when states seek to adopt regulatory initiatives in the name of addressing climate change. The article argues that a series of important restrictions exist. Governments responding to climate change need to take into account existing human rights. This observation is particularly relevant for countries implementing Reduction of Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation (REDD) projects and for countries taking part in Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) projects under the Kyoto Protocol. The article likewise argues that special human rights obligations arise in relation to the risks associated with climate change. These place on states a responsibility to secure risk assessment and risk communication while taking steps to mitigate climate change-associated risks. While the article considers these requirements to constitute an absolute minimum, it is argued that they can offer a way of securing that national governments are accountable when it comes to climate change responses. On the other hand, it will be shown that these human rights restrictions will sometimes have the potential to run counter to the adoption of effective climate change responses.

The Catholic Church, “Politics,” and Violence: The Colombian Case

1977 ◽  
Vol 39 (2) ◽  
pp. 220-249 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel H. Levine ◽  
Alexander W. Wilde
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Latin American ◽  
Social Presence ◽  
Catholic Church ◽  
The Other ◽  
Public Controversy ◽  
The Poor ◽  
The One ◽  
The Church ◽  
The Catholic Church

The issue of politics and the Catholic Church in Latin America, relegated until recently to nineteenth-century historians, is very much alive today. On the one hand, the church as an institution is enmeshed in public controversy over human rights with repressive regimes from Paraguay to Panama, from Brazil to Chile. When it serves as a shelter for political and social dissent, it is accused by secular authorities of engaging in a “new clericalism.” On the other hand, it has been assailed by critics within for being wed to existing political powers. These radical clergy and lay people believe that the church's social presence is inevitably political, but want to change its alliances to benefit the poor and dispossessed. Furthermore, they believe that the existing order in given situations is aform of “institutionalized violence” against which the Christian response must be “counterviolence.” Such attacks from right and left occur, paradoxically, just at a time when the Latin American church has turned with unprecedented resolve to fundamental pastoral tasks. Politics has thus become a problem just as the hierarchy can claim, with considerable justification, to have eschewedthe practice of partisanship and the pursuit of power.

scholarly journals Pope Francis, climate change and the environmentalism of the poor

2016 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 49-74
Author(s):  
Marina Malamud
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Pope Francis ◽  
The Poor ◽  
America Latina

"Estamos al borde del suicidio. Espero que los gobiernos tomen en serio el cambio climático o no habrá generaciones futuras", dijo el Papa Francisco al Vatican Insider en noviembre de 2015. El compromiso personal del pontífice con el medio ambiente y cómo afecta a las sociedades de bajos ingresos no debe pasarse por alto. El evento histórico de un Papa jesuita de América Latina que plantea la cuestión del cambio climático inducido por el hombre puede introducir un nuevo equilibrio en la agenda política mundial. Desde un enfoque cualitativo centrado en el análisis del discurso y encuestas de opinión actuales, exploramos la relación entre medio ambiente y crecimiento económico. Una posible conceptualización de la posición del Papa se puede asociar con el ecologismo de los pobres. Este enfoque se basa en prerrogativas de justicia ambiental como una respuesta al intercambio económico desigual entre las naciones. América Latina está particularmente expuesta a las consecuencias del cambio climático y eso afecta la existente estabilidad política volátil y las perspectivas de desarrollo sostenible. Se argumenta que el cambio climático supera las posiciones científicas y económicas; es en última instancia una consideración moral.

Khums in Imāmī Shī'ī jurisprudence, from the tenth to the sixteenth centtury A.D.

1982 ◽  
Vol 45 (1) ◽  
pp. 39-47 ◽  
Author(s):  
Norman Calder
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
The Other ◽  
The Poor ◽  
Material Gain

Khums was, like zakāt, a ritual duty incumbent on individuals, a farīḍa 'alā l-'ayn. Distinguished from the other 'ibādāt by being as to immediate aim human rights and not divine ones (ḥaqq li'l-ādamiyyīn not ḥaqq li'llāh) the final aim of both khums and zakāt was none the less divine reward and more certain salvation. The qur'ānic basis for khums was found in the verse (8: 41):Know that whatever you acquire as material gain a fifth belongs to God and to the Prophet and to those related and the orphans and the poor and the wayfarers.

scholarly journals Laudato Si’, Pope Francis’ Call to Ecological Conversion: Responding to the Cry of the Earth and the Poor—Towards an Integral Ecology

AJIL Unbound ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 109 ◽  
pp. 136-141 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ileana M. Porras
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Environmental Degradation ◽  
Global Climate ◽  
Religious Tradition ◽  
Careful Analysis ◽  
Environmental Crisis ◽  
Pope Francis ◽  
The Poor ◽  
The Earth ◽  
Integral Ecology

The recent Encyclical by Pope Francis, Laudato Si’, On Care for our Common Home, is a remarkable document, both original and continuous within the tradition of Catholic social doctrine. Emerging from and grounded in a very specific religious tradition and constrained by the peculiar encyclical literary form, the document nonetheless seeks to open a dialogue with “every person living on this planet,” about care for our common home. Using the urgency of addressing global climate change as its point of departure, the Encyclical does a superb job summarizing the scope of the present environmental crisis and the disproportionate harms suffered by vulnerable populations of the poor and excluded. It also provides a careful analysis of the root causes of environmental degradation, mapping out the complex linkages and tensions between globalization, economic growth, liberalized trade, unsustainable patterns of consumption and production, environmental degradation, involuntary migration, immiseration and growing inequality. In this respect, the Encyclical, may well come to serve as a useful position paper for the upcoming Paris climate change negotiations or as a background text for a course on climate change or sustainable development. Yet, properly understood, this is not its true purpose. Rather, in its deepest sense, the Encyclical is an appeal to all of humanity to listen to “the cry of the earth and the cry of the poor,” to reject the “throwaway” culture of consumerism, and to embrace a culture of care and a commitment to pursue integral ecology. It is, in other words, a call to ecological conversion: a call addressed not only to individuals but also to individuals-in-community.

scholarly journals THE HUMAN RIGHTS IN ISLAM (The Study of Al-Muwafaqat by Imam Al-Syathibi)

2018 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 1-5
Author(s):  
Moch. Cahyo Sucipto
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Common Good ◽  
The Other ◽  
Western Philosophy ◽  
The West ◽  
Religious Texts ◽  
The Common Good ◽  
The Third ◽  
The Common

The zhahiriyyah school is a school that stores certain texts by forgetting the global objectives of sharia. Among them there are those who are more dominant with the nature of religion, and among them there are those who are dominant in the nature of politics, even though they are all the same in terms of understanding literalism. The Zhahiriyya have been exaggerated in extracting text literalism to bring them to the strange understanding rejected by religion and reason. Zahiriyyah characteristics literal understanding and interpretation in understanding and interpreting texts without seeing things hidden in them, both in illat form and intentions that can be known by profound researchers: 1) Difficult and difficult; 2) Arrogant towards their opinions; 3) Don't accept different people; 4) Kafir people who have different opinions; 5) Whatever slander. The Bathiniyyah school is the opposite of the forgotten zhahiriyah school, even deliberately refusing, certain texts. This flow claims that they see the common good and global goals. This flow dares to oppose religious texts brought by the revelation ma`sum, both the Qur'an or al-Sunnah. They reject the text without caring, and freeze it without knowledge and guidance unless they follow the nature of themselves or others who want to make slander against the teachings of truth revealed by God. When they annulled religious texts in the name of human benefits. They claim that from these spies they are not out of the Shari'ah, they defend their intentions and maintain their spirit and substance, even though they do not maintain symbols and forms. Characteristics of the divine; 1) Superficial understanding of sharia `ah; 2) Dare to think without knowledge; 3) Follow westward. The third characteristic of the bathiniyyah school is to follow the other, west, both capitalism, liberalism or marix, all born in the west. From this they want to impose Western philosophy on the life, western views of religion, the concept of western scularism, and western, social, political, linguistic, and cultural legal theories for us. Some of them said, "we have to eat when they eat, dress when they are dressed, write when they write

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