Considerations about the Roman Catholic Church and the evolution of its comprehension on the Human Rights

• Autor(a) principal: Caldeira, Rodrigo Coppe
• Data de Publicação: 2017
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: por
• Título da fonte: Horizonte - Revista de Estudos de Teologia e Ciências da Religião
• Texto Completo: http://periodicos.pucminas.br/index.php/horizonte/article/view/P.2175-5841.2017v15n47p770
• topic: toman catholic church; modern humanism; liberal state; human rights; Religious studies; History Of Christianity; igreja católica romana; humanismo moderno; estado liberal; direitos humanos; Ciências da Religião; história do cristianismo

The main objective of the article is to present some of the historical aspects about the relations between the Roman Catholic Church and the denominated "human rights". The Church, one of the institutions that most felt the impacts of the rise and the consolidation of the modern liberal state, since not only its doctrine was opposed, but also and especially its temporal power, initially posited itself in a very critical way related to the "new rights" that were arising, opposed to a worldview marked particularly by the notion that the social order should politically and judicially reflect the divine order. Analyzing some works written in the immediate period of the French Revolution (1789) and some papal documents of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, it is possible to observe that, since the Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen of 1789 until the pontificate of John XXIII, new interpretations of human rights have emerged, which was one of the fundamental points for the Church begin to dialogue with political modernity. With this in view, the article will, firstly, address the philosophical roots of subjective law from a long-term perspective, the fundamental basis of the right to freedom of conscience and the context of the emergence of the liberal state. Secondly, the relations between Catholicism and the human rights, antagonisms and approximations, starting from an analysis of the magisterial documents and also from works of Catholic theologians who already at that time sought bridges between their articles and some points of Christian doctrine.