"For the power of Man to make himself what he pleases means, as we have seen, the power of some men to make other men what they please."
C.S. Lewis, The Abolition of Man
We believe that universal understandings of freedom and truth are "written on the human heart." America's founders also believed this to be true.
In 1776 John Dickinson, one of the framers of our Constitution, affirmed: "Our liberties do not come from charters; for these are only the declaration of pre-existing rights.
They do not depend on parchments or seals, but come from the king of kings and the Lord of all the earth."
The words of the Declaration of Independence speak of the "Laws of Nature and of Nature's God," and proceed to make the historic assertion:
"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness ..."
Today, more than two centuries of the American experiment have passed. We tend to take these words for granted. But for the founders, writing on the brink of armed revolution, these phrases were invested not just with their philosophy but with their lives.
This is why they closed with a "firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence." The words of the Declaration of Independence illuminate the founding principles of the American Republic, principles explicitly grounded in unchanging truths about the human person.
The principles of the Declaration were not fully reflected in the social or political structures of its own day.
Then human slavery and other social injustices stood in tension to the high ideals the Founders articulated. Only after much time and effort have these contradictions been reduced.
In a striking way, we see today a heightening of the tension between our nation's founding principles and political reality.
We see this in diminishing respect for the inalienable right to life and in the elimination of legal protections for those who are most vulnerable.
There can be no genuine justice in our society until the truths on which our nation was founded are more perfectly realized in our culture and law.
One of those truths is our own essential creatureliness.
Virtual reality and genetic science may give us the illusion of power, but we are not gods.
We are not our own, or anyone else's, creator. Nor, for our own safety, should we ever seek to be. Even parents, entrusted with a special guardianship over new life, do not "own" their children any more than one adult can own another.
And therein lies our only security. No one but the Creator is the sovereign of basic human rights -- beginning with the right to life.
We are daughters and sons of the one God who, outside and above us all, grants us the freedom, dignity and rights of personhood which no one else can take away.
Only in this context, the context of a Creator who authors our human dignity, do words like "truths" and "self-evident" find their ultimate meaning. Without the assumption that a Creator exists who has ordained certain irrevocable truths about the human person, no rights are "unalienable," and nothing about human dignity is axiomatic.
This does not make America sectarian.
It does, however, underline the crucial role God's sovereignty has played in the architecture of American politics.
While the founders were a blend of Enlightenment rationalists and traditional Christians, generations of Jews, Muslims, other religious groups and non-believers have all found a home in the United States.
This is so because the tolerance of our system is rooted in the Jewish-Christian principle that even those who differ from one another in culture, appearance and faith still share the same rights. We believe that this principle still possesses the power to enlighten our national will.
We should praise those women and men who have a vocation to public office.
It encourages active citizenship. It also reminds us that, "The political community . . . exists for the common good: This is its full justification and meaning, and the source of its specific and basic right to exist.
The common good embraces all those conditions of social life which enable individuals, families and organizations to achieve complete and efficacious fulfillment".
In pursuing the common good, citizens should "cultivate a generous and loyal spirit of patriotism, but without narrow-mindedness. They must also be conscious of their specific and proper role in the political community:
They should be a shining example by their sense of responsibility and their dedication to the common good.
As to the role of the Church in this process:
The political community and the Church are autonomous and independent of each other in their own fields.
Nevertheless, both are devoted to the personal vocation of man, though under different titles. Yet at all times and in all places, the Church should have the true freedom to teach the faith, to proclaim its teaching about society, to carry out its task among men without hindrance, and to pass moral judgment even in matters relating to politics, whenever the fundamental rights of man or the salvation of souls requires it.
The inviolability of the person, which is a reflection of the absolute inviolability of God, finds its primary and fundamental expression in the inviolability of human life.
Above all, the common outcry, which is justly made on behalf of human rights -- for example, the right to health, to home, to work, to family, to culture -- is false and illusory if the right to life, the most basic and fundamental right and the condition of all other personal rights, is not defended with maximum determination.
The human being is entitled to such rights in every phase of development, from conception until natural death, whether healthy or sick, whole or handicapped, rich or poor. Moreover, if, indeed, everyone has the mission and responsibility of acknowledging the personal dignity of every human being and of defending the right to life, some are given particular title to this task: such as parents, teachers, healthworkers and the many who hold economic and political power.
We cannot simultaneously commit ourselves to human rights and progress while eliminating or marginalizing the weakest among us.
Nor can we practice the dignity of life only as a private thoughts. Americans must live it vigorously and publicly, as a matter of national leadership and witness, or we will not live it at all.
"For the power of Man to make himself what he pleases means, as we have seen, the power of some men to make other men what they please."