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Google AI: In "'Sacred and Inviolable': Rerum Novarum and Natural Rights", Boston College scholar Ernest L. Fortin utilizes French legal historian Michel Villey’s critique to highlight a major contradiction: Pope Leo XIII attempted to defend pre-modern natural law while adopting modern "subjective rights" language that fundamentally conflicts with traditional Catholic theology.

In "'Sacred and Inviolable': Rerum Novarum and Natural Rights", Boston College scholar Ernest L. Fortin utilizes French legal historian Michel Villey’s critique to highlight a major contradiction: Pope Leo XIII attempted to defend pre-modern natural law while adopting modern "subjective rights" language that fundamentally conflicts with traditional Catholic theology. [1, 2]
Fortin’s application of Villey's critique centers on the claim that the modern rights-based paradigm ultimately undermines the classical framework of duties and natural law. The core components of this critique include: [1]
  • The Problem of "Subjective Rights": Following Villey's historical thesis, this language stems from 14th-century nominalism (specifically William of Ockham). It shifted the focus of moral law from objective right (what is just or due to others in the cosmic order) to subjective rights (inalienable powers or possessions inherent to the individual). [, 2, 3]
  • Contradiction with Aquinas: Leo XIII frequently cited Thomas Aquinas. However, classical Thomistic natural law focuses primarily on duties and what one owes to others based on a divinely ordered nature. Fortin notes that adopting modern rights language creates a philosophical clash with Aquinas's classical virtue ethics. [, 2]
  • The "Sacred and Inviolable" Problem: By using terms like "sacred and inviolable" to describe private property in \([Rerum\ Novarum]\), Leo XIII inadvertently embraced an individualistic, anthropocentric foundation for rights. Fortin argues that this modern framing of rights was alien to the Patristic and medieval church traditions. [1, 2, 3]
  • The Irony of Christian Apologetics: Villey and Fortin both argue that by adopting the Enlightenment’s rhetoric of "rights" to combat socialism, the Church legitimized the very secular, possessive individualism it was trying to correct. [1]
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