Problems with "rights": Rist wrote that the apparently liberal Pope Leo XIII in a "major break...with earlier Church practice" of "virtues and vices" traditional language seemed to "almost single-handedly... [have] 'invented'... defence of rights" which was "hitherto largely secularist territory" (Infallibility, pages 50-51). Moreover, in Confusion in the West, Rist speaking of a founder of "rights" language in the Church, Bartholome de Las Casas, who went against tradition: "dating back to Augustine identified all virtues as modes of love [caritas or charity], Las Casas ... made rights a matter of justice." (page 81)
"Cardinal Rampolla assembled the ideas for the [rights] encyclical Rerum Novarum (“New Things”), issued by Leo in 1891" Britannica [https://www.britannica.com/biography/Mariano-Rampolla]
"The Human rights ideology is at once universalist and relativist." Ralph C. Hancock (PhD Harvard) is a Professor of Political Science at Brigham Young (Natural Law and Human Rights, page XIX-XX)
Philosopher John Rist in his book Augustine Deformed says that the Medieval thinkers starting with Anselm "misconstrue[ing]" of Augustine's "voluntas" which means "caritas" love in the Pauline sense was "reified" to mean "so-called faculties of will and intellect" which brought about future ambiguity and confusion.
Rist wrote that the apparently liberal Pope Leo XIII in a "major break...with earlier Church practice" of "virtues and vices" traditional language seemed to "almost single-handedly... [have] 'invented'... defence of rights" which was "hitherto largely secularist territory" (Infallibility, pages 50-51).
Moreover, in Confusion in the West, Rist speaking of a founder of "rights" language in the Church, Bartholome de Las Casas, who went against tradition: "dating back to Augustine identified all virtues as modes of love [caritas or charity], Las Casas ... made rights a matter of justice." (page 81)
Might Pope Leo's "novel utterances in a non-ex cathedra context" on "rights" possibly be in "err" because he placed "rights" not in the domain of loving God first and then secondarily your neighbor as yourself apparently Leo may have placed "rights' outside of the "mode... of love" virtue of "responsibility" to God and His created ordered universe as well as to His creation of humanity that is placed in His universe of order?
Kirkus Reviews explains the problem with modern "rights" language which seems to have brought us wokeness in the world and the Church:
Harvard Law School professor Glendon argues eloquently and persuasively that modern American political discourse, by emphasizing an ever-expanding catalogue of rights to the exclusion of duties and responsibilities, has lost the central role in civic life envisioned for it by the Founding Fathers. Glendon shows that, in American society, both sides in political debates frame issues in terms of individual rights—flag- burning, domestic relations, and human reproduction, for example- -and that this tendency impedes understanding and compromise. Such stark formulations, she says, ultimately lead to coerced, and often unsatisfying, social arrangements. Glendon makes a compelling case that the American political lexicon lacks a vocabulary for expressing normative and moral concepts that individual Americans understand and value highly, and that the legal culture, with its single-minded emphasis on obtaining civil rights (as opposed to cultivating moral norms), has actually contributed, albeit unwittingly, to the debasement of American political and legal discourse. Glendon calls for the inclusion of the ``missing language of responsibility'' and the ``missing language of sociality'' in American political dialogue, and for an increasing emphasis on individuals' responsibilities to [God and] their communities. [https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/mary-ann-glendon/rights-talk/]
Also, scholars Michael D. Greaney and Dawn K. Brohawn say:
"Some even asserted that Leo XIII changed fundamental Catholic teaching due to their confusing the recommended social program with the mandatory social doctrine." [https://www.cesj.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/C-EconPersonalism_Web-NOblanks.pdf]
Might Pope Leo have started a problematic seemingly poorly defined "rights" language that may have helped bring about the ambiguous Vatican II that in part has lead to the current Francis crisis with his "rights" language instead of the traditional virtue language?
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