WHAT IS A "RIGHT"?

Very interesting short article from: www.catholicassociates.com
And a handy, concise explanation for use during those 'discussions' we have with those of our friends and family who talk more about 'Rights' than about 'Obligations'
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In his encyclical letter Tametsi futura, published in 1900, Pope Leo XIII commented: "The people have heard quite enough about what are called the rights of man. Let them hear about the rights of God for once." This is precisely what we shall do now.

Strictly speaking, God alone has rights which be­long to Him of His very nature. As human beings we possess only contingent rights, rights which are accorded to us by God. We have a right to do only what is pleasing to God. This is synonymous with stating that we are free to do only what is pleasing to God, and the freedom referred to here is moral freedom, or moral liberty. Whenever the term "right" is used in this study, it must be taken to mean "moral freedom." To state that a man has a right to perform an action means that he is morally free to do so, and he can never be morally free to perform any act that is displeasing to God.

The fundamental meaning of the word "liberty" is the ability to act without constraint. There can be three forms of constraint: physical, psychological, and moral.

Freedom from physical restraint simply means the absence of any external constraint which could prevent a person from carrying out a desired action. A football player who wished to take part in an important match, but who had broken his leg and was in hospital at the time of the game, would not be physically free, or able, to participate in the event.

Psychological liberty is better known as free will and involves the capacity to make moral choices. It is thus restricted to angels and to men. Beings who possess free will, or psychological liberty, are the masters of their acts, and hence are responsible for them. Animals have physical but not psychological freedom. A pair of blackbirds necessarily select the tree in which they will build their nest on the basis of which tree seems most useful; they cannot choose to sacrifice the better tree and select a poorer one. Nor do they possess the free will enabling them to decide whether or not to build a nest and raise a family, or even what type of nest to build.

It should be clear that being physically able to perform an action, and being psychologically able to choose whether to perform it, do not mean that one has a right to perform it. There may be a moral constraint against performing the action. Two simple examples should make this clear. A bank clerk might find himself in a position to defraud his employers of a large sum of money with very little likelihood of being detected. He would be physically free to perform the action, that is, he would be able to remove the money without being detected. He would be psychologically free to perform it, that is, he would be able to use, or rather misuse, his free will to commit the theft. But he would not be morally free to steal the money, since theft is forbidden by the Commandments of God. In this case the law of God and the law of the State concur, and just as there is no moral right to steal, there is also no legal right to steal.

But a legal right does not necessarily confer a moral right, as the following example will demonstrate. A woman may be physically, psychologically, and legally free to have an abortion, but the so-called legal right to murder her baby does not confer a true right, since murder is forbidden by the Commandments of God.

With thanks and acknowledgements for the extract from
‘The Reign of Christ the King’
by Michael Davies
Printed by
TAN Books and Publishers Inc. 1992
PO Box 424
Rockford, Illinois 61105