Being a novice in this arena, I was nonetheless wondering how inherent rights, or predication about anything metaphysical or ethical is authoritative apart from God as the source of all things, including truth and knowledge. The alternative appears to be the opinion of one constrained by his or her own perspective, resulting in pure relativism and ultimately skepticism. How does one limited to thoughts and senses have the capacity to speak authoritatively on these issues?

Jefferson had opinions, borrowing portions of Scripture suitable to his liking, rejecting others, but on what basis? And what made his choice of what is true or false in the Bible more authoritative than the choice of another?

Those speaking of inherent rights borrow from somewhere, their culture, tradition, schools of philosophy, et al, but where do their conscious or unconscious sources get their authority? And if the source of their opinions are not ultimately authoritative, what is? Can the finite human being, here today and gone tomorrow, transcend finite earthly existence to objectively explain the meaning of it?

I am at a loss to understand the basis of truth with respect to any of the issues discussed in this thread if there is no ultimate authority to which all opinions (and they are opinions) are ultimately judged, including the opinions of a magesterium. It does seem like we are kidding ourselves, especially if one believes in atheistic evolution. Perhaps the next hungry lion or crocodile you meet will be convinced of your inherent rights.

I think Michael Gillespie’s new book Theological Origins of Modernity is essential reading for the topic of rights. He argues that modernity is a product of, and never quite escapes from, medieval nominalism. In other words, the Enlightenment and post-Enlightenment “discovery” of rights, in its secular form, is just one political mode of trying to deal with the ghost of the nominalist god. Secularism has not and cannot exorcise him, for it only makes him stronger because more obscure. There is a sense in which rights are meant to ensure one’s security from the arbitrary, inscrutable, and untrustworthy god that Ockham bequeathed to us, though this god, or his ghost, is not recognized as that which one is trying to protect oneself against. There is another sense, Milbank’s sense, in which rights are one way of imitating this god, since he is a social monad, autonomous, pure will and agency (no receptivity and essential nature), and arbitrary.

In any event, the modern “individual” who claims rights is a product of, because a deliberate and conscious rejection of, both the classical and Christian notions of politics and man’s relationship to God and society. Pierre Manent explains this well in his The City of Man .

In short, what one rejects is what one cannot do without. Ultimately, Modernity, as William Cavanaugh has shown in Theopolitical Imagination , is parasitical. The ghost of Christianity cannot be exorcised by merely another version of its ghost, however humanized this ghost appears. All that modernity can do is recognize its dependence, and either submit or continue to futilely rebel. What Christianity should do is to recognize in modernity a misguided child, neither a pure enemy nor a parallel friend, and offer it paternal guidance, realizing that it shouldn’t be too proud to learn something from its child, however rebellious and misguided.

How can this be true if “Plato, a pagan, and Simone Weil, a Jew,” would agree with you. They certainly were “without Christ.”

I don’t see “rights-based” liberalism as the fruit of Christianity in any traditional or orthodox sense, but coming from some “other” place.

And I am not convinced by the evidence that traditional orthodox Christianity of whatever bent (Roman Catholicism, Protestantism, or capital O Orthodox Christianity) is necessary to sustain such liberalism.

But I do understand Dr. Kraynak’s case that traditional religion is necessary to prevent rights from making too broad a claim against a Burkean moral traditionalism. In that sense, rights need to be downplayed. If, on the other hand, you don’t mind a “rights oriented” government that permits folks to “do their own thing” as it were, then stress rights as much as you want.

That’s where I am coming from.

Well, I have simply made my position known as well, but instead of rational argument, or thoughtful and sympathetic questions as to why I might hold the positions I do, the responses have been vitriolic, accusatory, and insinuating.

Does someone have a rational argument to make regarding my (and Gil Bailie’s and Rene Girard’s, and implicit in Simone Weil’s thought) claims that secular, rights-based liberalism cannot prevent discriminatory and even violent scapegoating, or, alternatively, apocalyptically-escalating violence, and that right-based liberalism is the fruit of a Christ-generated ethos that can’t be sustained without Christ. I would say that this is pretty much the thesis of John Milbank, an Anglican.

Calling all this superstition or an “unreal” ideal simply won’t due.

You write:

“The problem I have with it is, it’s not what the American Founding/natural rights are all about (as I see it).”

Who said anything about the American Founding? We are searching and arguing about the nature of rights , what is true or not about them, are we not?, not what fits with any theoretical, practical, cultural, or political tradition or regime, no matter how venerated or venerable the tradition, the personal representatives of this tradition, and regime is.

Who’s “reading ideas into the American Founding anyway”?

And, as I have shown, the ideas I have been expressing regarding scapegoating and the need for divine intervention to avoid it, pace liberalism , are shared by Plato, a pagan, and Simone Weil, a Jew. So much for the effectiveness of dismissing them with the magical incantation of “Roman Catholic.”

Oh, I see, it’s an “ideal” world I am advocating, meaning “unreal.” Got it. I am glad you respect my fairy tale.

I don’t share your perspective but I can see (and respect) the “ideal” world from which you come. The problem I have with it is, it’s not what the American Founding/natural rights are all about (as I see it).

Thus, why should your Roman Catholic ideas be read into the Founding any more than any other competing sense of ideas. I could just as easily see (and HAVE seen) uber-Protestant fundamentalist ideas “read in” to the concept of “natural rights,” ideas that are pregnant with very anti-Roman Catholic sentiments.

Now, we wouldn’t want that, would we?

“Nowadays there is a tendency to claim that agnosticism and skeptical relativism are the philosophy and the basic attitude which correspond to democratic forms of political life. … It must be observed in this regard that if there is no ultimate truth to guide and direct political activity, then ideas and convictions can easily be manipulated for reasons of power. As history demonstrates, a democracy without values easily turns into open or thinly disguised totalitarianism.” (John Paul II, Centesimus annus #46)

How about Simone Weil?

“The Great Beast is the only object of idolatry, the only ersatz of God, the only imitation of something which is infinitely far from me and which is myself.”

“The social is irremediably the domain of the devil. The flesh impels us to say me and the devil impels us to say us; or else to say like the dictators I with a collective signification. And, in conformity with his particular mission, the devil manufactures a false imitation of what is divine, an ersatz divinity.”

And finally, Plato. Was he a psychobabbler? Here’s a “right-thinking” man who surely knew “what was good for everyone,” for he was the first ever (aside from the Hebrew prophets) to teach accurately about the Good itself and it’s rejection by men:

“As for individuals who give paid lessons, the multitude calls them sophists and regards them as our rivals. But they only teach the opinions of the multitude, opinions which arise when a crowd is assembled. It is that which they call wisdom. Take for comparison a great, powerful beast; his keeper learns to know his angers and his desires, how best to approach him, from which side to touch him, at what moments and for what reasons he becomes irritable or gentle, what calls he customarily makes in such and such a humour, which words are apt to soothe or excite him. Suppose, having learned all such by practice over a period of time, the keeper calls that wisdom, and he makes a method of it, and uses it as subject-matter for his teaching. He knows nothing in reality of what among those opinions and desires is beautiful or ugly, good or evil, just or unjust. He uses those terms as they apply to the opinions of the great beast. Whatever pleases the animal he calls good, whatever annoys him he calls bad, and he has no other criterion. Things that are necessary he calls good and beautiful, for he is incapable of seeing or showing to others to what degree the essence of the necessary is in reality different from the essence of good. Wouldn’t this be a strange instructor? Well, he is exactly so who believes he can take for wisdom the aversions and the tastes of a crowd made up of dissenting elements, whether these be upon the subject of painting, or music, or politics. Thus if anyone has dealings with the multitude and communicates a poem or any other work of art or political idea, if he allows the multitude to become master outside the domain of necessary things, an iron necessity will force him to that which the multitude approves.” (Plato, Republic 493a-d)

“And yet, said Socrates, I have not spoken of the greatest compulsion. Which? The action that these educators, these sophists, take against those whom they cannot persuade by words. Do you not know that he who will not be persuaded they punish with disgrace and fines and death? Do you believe that any private sophistry or single individual could successfully stand up against that? No, certainly, and it would be great foolishness even to try. For there is not, there never was, there never will be, any other teaching concerning morality than that of the multitude. At least no other human teaching. For concerning what is divine there must be exception. This must be well understood. Whatever is saved and becomes what it ought to be, so long as cities have their present structure, if one means to speak truly, must be considered saved by the effect of a predestination which comes from God.” (Plato, Republic 492d-493a)

The Great Beast is the scapegoating beast, the source of, yes, dare I say it, “sacred violence.” Only God’s grace can save us from such violence, from the “great beast,” as even Plato the pagan saw. An “overlapping consensus” can’t do it and, pace Mr. Sheehan, we are not all Christians now, and that’s precisely the problem. This is not “Catholic” truth, but just plain truth, though it takes a firm rejection of the great beast to see it. Those under the sway of the great beast cannot see the plain truth about the violent, scapegoating nature of all non-authentically-Christian cultures (meaning those that actually practice what they preach), especially their “enlightened” secular, progressive, pluralist regimes in which the great beast wears the mask of “reason” or “tolerance” or “change.” As Plato said (pre-echoing the “Magisterium”): “Whatever is saved and becomes what it ought to be, so long as cities have their present structure, if one means to speak truly, must be considered saved by the effect of a predestination which comes from God.”

Even more so because it is dressed up in seemingly sophisticated language.

“Sacred” violence?

“Deviation of desire”?

Only us right-thinking Catholic Christians know what is good for everyone. Therefore all of humankind must submit to the “authority” of the “magisterium.”