Upholding values is to protect human rights

Archbishop Denis Hurley worked in South Africa, Oscar Romero in El Salvador, Cesar Chavez in the United States, Kerry Kennedy in Kenya and Northern Ireland and Fr Peter Nguyen Van Hung in Taiwan— whether you know them or not, you need to be aware of the massive contribution Catholics such as these have made in the fight for human rights around the world, in various areas of concern. While these are the famous examples, as Christians, our own lives should contribute to the rights of others simply by living out our faith.

Fr Brian Williams, director of Sekwele Centre for Social Reflection in the diocese of Bethlehem says that while we are not all called up to the front line of the human rights fight, we are all called to “act justly, love tenderly and to walk close to the side, if not in the footsteps of God”. The centre, the brainchild of Bishop Hubert Bucher, retired of Bethlehem, seeks to recover the precondition of social reflection for action.

Fr Williams believes if we answer this call to act justly, human rights activism could be one of many outcomes — all important. “For Catholics, human beings are made in the image of God. This belief makes all the difference to how we view, relate and treat people irrespective of their gender, generation, religion or ethnicity,” he said.

“The best service we as Catholics can offer each other and our society is to commit ourselves to a common mission, that mission being the vision of the SACBC Pastoral Plan of 1989—‘Community in Service of Humanity’. Just as we are only beginning to discover and mine the value of the Second Vatican Council 50 years on, so we have yet to discover and mine the value of that prophetic document of the Southern African Catholic Church 25 years on,” Fr Williams says.

The same inspiration is what keeps one Pretoria Catholic youth active in the human rights movement. Joepac Ndaba of the cathedral of Sacred Heart parish says human rights need not be earned and therefore cannot be denied.

Mr Ndaba believes that in order to stop the cycle of degrading other fellow human beings, individual, associations, churches and states should institute policies aimed at human rights protection. As he heads the Western Deanery Youth of Pretoria and is a member of Archdiocese of Pretoria Youth Committee, he believes that rights should be proactively protected through legislation and where that fails, actively assisted to correct the errors.

“Catholics should all remember that for us to preserve life and respect others, human rights must be managed efficiently.” He says issues of mistrust, undignified betrayal and past injustices must be addressed, and the rule of law must be restored. Mr Ndaba says we should also pioneer new social norms or reestablish old moral standards and practise ubuntu as it is a basic Christian value.

Fr Rampe Hlobo SJ, assistant country director of Jesuit Refugee Services in South Africa (JRS), believes that post-apartheid South Africa is filled with zeal and enthusiasm to talk and approach the notion of human rights. “The promotion and protection of human rights in South Africa in the last two decades has even led to the country receiving accolades from unanticipated sources.”

However, while South Africans have worked together to improve the rights of the majority, many people “have sadly, still not come to perceive human rights as applicable to other members of the human race, especially the marginalised members of society like gays and lesbians, refugees and migrants, just to mention a few,” the Jesuit feels. “For many South Africans, these human rights are perceived to be applicable to South Africans and not to everyone living in this country,” so there is still much work to be done.

“Rights are not just legalistic declarations that can be argued and debated under judicial systems—they are intrinsically in harmony with ethical and religious beliefs based on the natural law written in the human heart as Popes John XXIII and Benedict XVI have argued. Hence they are inalienable, that is can never be taken away,” Fr Hlobo says.

Father Sean O’Leary is the director of the Denis Hurley Peace Institute, a body of the Southern African Catholic Bishops’ Conference (SACBC) that is dedicated to peace-building in Africa. He says the role of the agents involved in social justice, like the peace institute, is to challenge and try to change injustice wherever it is found, be that in the political, economic, social, religious, cultural or environmental arenas. He says the Church, throughout the world “is sustaining the hearts of people living in near despair as a result of conflict, exploitation, and abject poverty”.

It was in fact during the Second Vatican Council that Pope John XXIII and the bishops from all around the world decided that the Church needed to be more involved in the world. Enter the Pontifical Commission for Justice and Peace and a decision that each bishops’ conference should establish their own Justice and Peace (J&P) Commission and that all bishops work towards establishing J&P commissions in their dioceses. “The SACBC was one of the first bishops’ conferences in the world to establish a Justice and Peace department in 1967,” says Dominican Father Mike Deeb, head of the department today.

J&P continues the mission of Jesus Christ in our societies by promoting human dignity, justice, peace and the integrity of creation both within the Church and in the broader society, drawing on gospel values and the social teachings of the Church, the director says. The department also works to help all levels of the Church in the conference “to realise that work for justice and peace is an integral and indispensable part of our Christian faith”.

Further to the establishment of a human rights commission, the launch of Africae Munus (2010), the papal exhortation that is the culmination of the Second Bishops’ Synod on Africa, “places the struggle for social justice at the very heart of the ministry of the Church in Africa”, says Fr O’Leary. For at least the next two years, he says, those working in the field of social justice have a solid papal backing. “This is the golden moment for social justice advocacy in the African Church and we must seize the moment,” Fr O’Leary says.

“We are called as human beings and as fellow believers to uphold and respect the rights of other human beings because every person is created in the image of God,” says Fr Hlobo.

He says irrespective of our milieu — faith or none — we all have this innate and indestructible image of God. “Christianity draws arguments to support the notion of human dignity from the biblical view that we are all made in the image of God and stand at the peak of creation. Judaism and Islam also exalt humanity above other creatures with the divine image imbedded in humanity,” the Jesuit explains. “It is through this understanding that there exists in Christianity the teachings of love or charity for others irrespective of their social status.”

And there are plenty of organisations doing the work of the Church and of this fundamental Christian belief. “The work of the Catholic Parliamentary Liaison Office is a prime example of effective social justice advocacy and in particular in the persons of Fr Peter-John Pearson and Mike Pothier. Bishop Kevin Dowling of Rustenburg is known worldwide as a social justice advocate,” says Fr O’Leary. He adds that the work towards human rights can come in various forms and is an “an integral part of the both evangelising and in particular the Social teaching of the Church”.

Such is the inspiration for the  JRS; whose mission is to accompany, serve and advocate for the rights of refugees. “In our endeavour to address the socio-economic needs of refugees and the forcibly displaced, JRS is in its small and humble way contributing in the restoration and protection of the human dignity in all refugees.”

Fr Hlobo says that in helping refugees to enjoy their rights, JRS prevents further violations of their human rights. “It is a mission that tries to protect the human dignity because the dignity of the human person, as John Paul II has repeatedly said, is the pivot on which the entirety of Catholic social doctrine turns.”

Because we are all built in the image of God, we all deserve the dignity of basic human rights and, as Fr Williams says, acting to protect the lives and rights of others is “a characteristic of obedience, love and most importantly an active love for what belongs to God — and everything belongs to God”.