Father speaks to the family

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The Holy Father, Pope Benedict XVI, took to the floor of the UN General Assembly Friday and observed the 60th anniversary of the Declaration of Human Rights with what seemed like a completely cordial and diplomatic address.

In his speech, Benedict touched on themes important both to his three-year-old papacy and his decades of writing as a cardinal and one of the church’s leading intellectuals.

At base, the pope presented the idea that there are universal values that transcend the diversity — cultural, ethnic or ideological — embodied in an institution like the United Nations, founded to help prevent the ruin of another world war. Those values are at the base of human rights, he said, as they are for religion. Thus religion, he said, cannot be shut out of a body like the United Nations, which he said aims at “a social order respectful of the dignity and rights of the person.”

“A vision of life firmly anchored in the religious dimension can help achieve this,” he said. “Recognition of the transcendent value of every man and woman favors conversion of heart, which then leads to a commitment to resist violence, terrorism, war and to promote justice and peace.

The New York Times is trying here to comprehensively cover that address, providing the video, transcript and topics within the text.

What most media are missing is the deeper message of the pope’s elegant words.

He began in French, the language of the United Nations, and only in reading the transcript do you see the rich defense he makes, repeatedly, of the dignity of the human person and the protection of the human family.

The founding principles of the Organization – the desire for peace, the quest for justice, respect for the dignity of the person, humanitarian cooperation and assistance – express the just aspirations of the human spirit, and constitute the ideals which should underpin international relations.

This is only the second paragraph, still in French, and he goes into the first precise challenge.

The United Nations embodies the aspiration for a “greater degree of international ordering” (John Paul II, Sollicitudo Rei Socialis, 43), inspired and governed by the principle of subsidiarity, and therefore capable of responding to the demands of the human family through binding international rules and through structures capable of harmonizing the day-to-day unfolding of the lives of peoples.

That was the affirmation. Now the challenge…

This is all the more necessary at a time when we experience the obvious paradox of a multilateral consensus that continues to be in crisis because it is still subordinated to the decisions of a few, whereas the world’s problems call for interventions in the form of collective action by the international community.

Note that “decisions of a few”, because he’ll come back to that. Consensus has replaced truth and right order, he goes on to say, in all kinds of areas, like…

the way the results of scientific research and technological advances have sometimes been applied.  Notwithstanding the enormous benefits that humanity can gain, some instances of this represent a clear violation of the order of creation, to the point where not only is the sacred character of life contradicted, but the human person and the family are robbed of their natural identity.  Likewise, international action to preserve the environment and to protect various forms of life on earth must not only guarantee a rational use of technology and science, but must also rediscover the authentic image of creation.  This never requires a choice to be made between science and ethics: rather it is a question of adopting a scientific method that is truly respectful of ethical imperatives.

From that gem, the media plucked the reference to the environment, and made whole stories out of it. The larger message was missed, but Benedict speaks here firmly of the consistency of ethics. Not their relative application.

The very next line continues the point…

Recognition of the unity of the human family, and attention to the innate dignity of every man and woman, today find renewed emphasis in the principle of the responsibility to protect.

This section grabbed the media’s attention as well, because of the pope’s attention to violations of rights and humanitarian crises. What they missed was the wider application to all humans and the sanctity of all life.

About the UN’s “responsibility to protect”, he said,…

this principle has to invoke the idea of the person as image of the Creator, the desire for the absolute and the essence of freedom. 

The UN’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights…

was the outcome of a convergence of different religious and cultural traditions, all of them motivated by the common desire to place the human person at the heart of institutions, laws and the workings of society, and to consider the human person essential for the world of culture, religion and science. Human rights are increasingly being presented as the common language and the ethical substratum of international relations.

That’s a key line, that last sentence. It follows with this:

It is evident, though, that the rights recognized and expounded in the Declaration apply to everyone by virtue of the common origin of the person, who remains the high-point of God’s creative design for the world and for history.  They are based on the natural law inscribed on human hearts and present in different cultures and civilizations.

And this, all in the early portion of the address in French. He has yet to turn to the message in English.

That, next…