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HUMAN RIGHTS VERSUS HUMAN DIGNITY

“Human dignity has been explicitly mentioned as the underlying principle in many human rights conventions, such as the Universal declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), and in some state constitutions like the German Basic Law.”[i]

For many Christians the notion of human dignity has its foundation in Sacred Scriptures. In Gen 1: 26-27, God made human beings in his own ‘image and likeness’. The Catholic Church holds that by this God gave to human beings part of his powers and a special place (dominion) over all other creatures. Psalm 8 talks about the exalted position of human beings and their special relationship with God. “Lord what is man that you care for him…crowned him with honour and glory, gave him power over the works of your hands: you put all things under his feet.” The dignity of human beings stems from man being created in the image of God (Imago Dei) with God-like powers and dominion, and the capacity to reason.[ii] The Catholic Church sees human dignity as the basis of all human rights including right to religious freedom.[iii]

But most enlightenment philosophers and secular humanists like Kant tried to strip human beings of their Divine origin and emphasized reason as the source of human dignity[iv] thereby creating a dichotomy and tension between faith and reason. Pope John Paul 11 tried to bridge the gap created between faith and reason by atheists and secular humanists, in his book Fides et Ratio (Faith and Reason). “Faith and reason are like two wings on which the human spirit rises to the contemplation of truth…”[v]

According to Mc Crudden, “The central meaning of dignity remains the common core and judicial interpretation has done little, so far, to help move beyond this.”[vi]

This tension between human dignity and human rights came up in a recent High Court case in the United Kingdom of Ms Heidi Crowther, who has Down’s syndrome and Ms Maine Lea-Wilson, whose son has Down ’s syndrome, both of whom sued the government for allowing abortion up to birth for non-fatal foetal anomalies such as Down’s syndrome. They lost the case.

Reacting to the judgment, the Catholic Archbishop of Westminster Cardinal Vincent Nichols opined the Catholic Church’s teaching on the human being as possessing “an intrinsic dignity from the moment of natural conception until the moment of natural death.”[vii] He called on the courts to recognize the” innate dignity” of human life saying, “It seems to me that the arena in which the administration of the law mainly takes place is that of human rights, and not human dignity…. Of course, dignity and rights are deeply connected… but the law deals with codified rights rather than innate human dignity.”[viii]

 [i] John Loughlin, Human Dignity: the Foundation of Human Rights and Religious Freedom, in Memoria Y Civilizacion 19 (2016) 313-343 [ISSN: 113-0107; ISSN-e: 2254-63671] DOI: 10.15581/001.19.313-343. P 314.

[ii] Catechism of the Catholic Church, paragraph 1701ff

[iii] Second Vatican Council, Dignitatis Humanae, no 2

[iv] John Loughlin Op cit. p 326ff

[v] John Paul 11, (1998), Fides et Ratio, Vatican City

[vi] Christopher Mc Crudden, Human Dignity and Judicial Interpretation of Human Rights, in European Journal of International Law, vol 19, Issue 4, Sept 2008, p655-725, https://doi.org/10.1093/ejil/chn043.

[vii] John Loughlin Op. Cit p 333; Catechism of the Catholic Church, paragraph 1700

[viii] Vincent Nichols, The Tablet, 9 October 2021

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THE BRUTAL KILLING OF BRISTISH MP, SIR DAVID AMES

On the 15th of October, this year the entire British nation was thrown into shock and mourning as the news of the brutal killing of, yet another member of parliament Sir David Ames hit the air waves. This came barely five years after the senseless murder of the then member of parliament Jo Cox on 16 June 2016.

Sir Ames was at constituency surgery (a one-to -one meeting that a member of parliament, or other political officeholder may have with their constituents) at the church hall of Belfair’s Methodist Church on Eastwood Road North in Leigh-on-sea, Essex, to speak with members of his constituency when a man emerged from the group and fatally stabbed him several times with a knife.

Sir David held no senior position in parliament and was not looking to run for any higher office, so why was he targeted?

The assailant, 25-year-old Ali Harbi Ali, a British national of Somali descent was born and raised here in the UK. The son of a former adviser to a previous Somali prime minister and nephew of Somali ambassador to China. As a teenager he was referred to the government extremism programme ‘prevent’ but was never a formal ‘subject of interest’ for the MI5. According to the metropolitan Police’s counter Terrorism command, early investigation revealed ‘a potential motivation linked to Islamist extremism.’  

Ali Harbi Ali was born and raised here in the UK, he is not known to have travelled to Somalia and there is no evidence that he has contact with any extreme group. From his family background, it cannot be said that he is one of the youths forced by poverty or lack to live on the fringes of society. So why did he do it and why was Sir David Ames targeted?

David was a devout Catholic who publicly stood to his faith. According to the chairman of Leigh-on -Sea council, Douglas Cracknell, “Sir David’s devout faith was well known to locals who…feared it could have provided the motive for his murder. Everyone knew about David’s catholic faith- it was a big part of his character”

According to Catholic Archbishop of Westminster, Cardinal Vincent Nichols, “Davis carried out his vocation as a Catholic in public life with generosity and integrity.” He was a ‘pro-life champion.’ He was also instrumental in the historic visit of Pope Benedict to parliament in 2010. Lord Alton of Liverpool who with Sir David welcomed Mother Teresa to parliament in 1988 said, “his catholic faith informed his passionate commitment to the very right to life, to human dignity and the common good.” He championed human dignity, preferential option for the poor and the care for the environment.

The radical Islamic preacher, Anjem Choudhary however suggested that Sir David may have been killed because he was pro-Israel.

If Sir David Ames was targeted and killed for publicly espousing his catholic faith and values, what does that say about other devout Christian members of parliament or public servants? Is this a one-off thing or a deliberate and rising attempt to silence or remove religion (especially the Christian religion) from the public square?

The public profession of one’s faith should not cost anyone his or her life; not in the 21st century and definitely not in a first world, free, and secular society. If Sir David Ames paid the ultimate price for holding on to his faith, the Catholic faith, without fear or favour, one may be tempted to ask, is this another brazen attack on the Christian faith? We hope this will make governments all over the rise and especially in the UK to take seriously the issue of the rise of anti-Christian attacks. Else Sir David Ames’ death will only be one in the long list of Christian killed for their faith.

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COVID-19, LAW AND RELIGION

The corona virus (SARS-COV-2) pandemic is one of the deadliest diseases to hit humanity in recent history. It was first detected in 2019. The origin is being debated. As of December 16, 2021, the World Health Organisation reported 271,963,258 confirmed cases and 5, 331, 019 deaths of corona virus worldwide. This is utter devastation. In this piece I want to show that with the heights attained by science, it does not have all the answers to the problems of humanity.

The meteoric rise in cases and deaths gave many world governments unprecedented powers over the lives and businesses of people. Laws were passed and signed to restrict movements, ban social gatherings and visits, close schools, and businesses, ban international travels and impose total lockdown in some places for months. https://gov.wales/coronavirus-law. It was unprecedented and cataclysmic to say the least.

Many resented the stringent regulations and laws but were powerless because the courts upheld them. One instance is the case of  R(Dolan) v Secretary of State for Health and Social Care. Many worry whether we will be able to get our freedoms back when the pandemic passes.

Covid-19 also came face to face with religion which caters for man’s relationship with the Other or the Supreme Being. The advent of science which gave man great powers over nature and the cosmos, was not able to upstage religion. For the more territories man conquered, the more knowledge of the universe he gained with the aid of science, the more he realised he was only scratching the surface. Man must accept the fact that nature is bigger than we can see, and life is more than we can know.

This pandemic has once more shown that neither man nor science has all the answers. For two years the entire world, (from the weakest to the strongest, from the poorest to the richest) has been brought to its knees by this seemingly intractable virus. It has waged a most unconventional war on humanity. The battlefield has been laboratories and praying houses of all faiths. Our best brains and strategists seem to have run out of ideas as the stubborn virus keeps changing strategy (mutating) from Alpha (UK) to Beta (South Africa) to Gamma (Brazil) to Delta (India) to Omicron (Multiple countries)

Covid-19 brought the world to its knees; it rendered superpowers powerless. Science wabbled and fumbled, law tightened its grip not on the virus but on people, governments failed, with little or no plausible explanation to give to people. Medicines lost their potency, and millions died. Hospitals were overwhelmed and morgues ran out of space. The best hospitals and doctors could not slow the rate of deaths. But people held on to their faith. It was like people lost faith in medicine but found medicine in faith. People could not say goodbye to their dying parents and relatives and friends, there were no proper and dignified burials, grief became an unwelcome guest in many homes. It was a calamity of unimaginable proportion.

Where science, law and government were found wanting, faith came to the rescue. Amidst confusion, sorrow, darkness and hopelessness, Churches, Mosques, Synagogues, Temples and praying houses, though under lock down provided spiritual services to people via the internet. Many who could not go to places of worship formed prayers groups on line. Religion became an oasis in the arid desert land of grief. It still provides comfort in sorrow, assurance in tribulation and has kept the hope of a better and brighter tomorrow alive in the hearts and homes of survivors.

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THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION, AN “ENDANGERED SPECIE”?

The Christianity is the largest religion in the world, professed by over 30% of the world population. From a small persecuted ‘sect’ in Palestine two thousand years ago, it moved to Rome where it was first rejected and persecuted for over 200 years before it was recognised by Emperor Constantine in 313 AD and later declared official state religion by Emperor Theodosius 1 in 380 AD.

The Roman Empire which rules most of Europe then, functioned as “wind beneath the wings” of the nascent faith to spread like wildfire over Europe and North Africa. For over 1500 years it was the dominant religion in Europe, and with the help of European explorers, traders, missionaries and colonialists, the religion spread to the new world (America), Africa and parts of Asia.

But the enlightenment philosophers of the 17th and 18th centuries which was followed by the secularisation, gave reason and the individual prominence over faith. God was dethroned and man enthroned. People began to question the authority of the church and the existence of God. People like Friedrich Nietzsche wrote, “God is dead” as reason and science seemed to answer hitherto unanswered questions, unravel mysteries and break frontiers.

Secularisation led to religious indifference, repudiation and sometimes disdain for religion-the Christian religion. Karl Marx would refer to religion (Abrahamic) mainly Christianity, as “the opium of the people.” These attacks on the faith in no small way affected the practice and growth of the faith in Europe. In the UK which was a strong Christian country, 55% claim to be non-practising Christians while only 18% claim to be practising Christians.

Christians are discriminated against and attacked in Europe, massacred in states hit by NATO. In recent years the attacks on Christian religion have seen an exponential rise with hate crimes against Europe Christians up to 100 in 2020. Attacks on Christians in Europe rose 285% since 2008.

According to Bishop Dominique Rey, “We are witnessing the convergence of laicism — conceived as secularism, which relegates the faithful only to the private sphere and where every religious denomination is banal or stigmatized — with the overwhelming emergence of Islam, which attacks the infidels and those who reject the Koran. On one hand, we are mocked by the media ... and on the other, there is the strengthening of Islamic fundamentalism. These are two joint realities."

The Christian religion has become the most targeted religion for hate crimes all over the world. In Europe attacks against the religion went up 70% in 2019.

Before Christmas 2016, in the North Rhine-Westphalia region, where more than a million Muslim migrants reside, some 50 public statues of Jesus and other Christian figures were beheaded and crucifixes broken. In 2015, following the arrival of another million Muslim migrants to Dülmen, a local newspaper said “not a day goes by” without attacks on Christian statues.

A January 2017 study revealed that “Islamist extremist attacks on Christians” in France rose by 38 percent, going from 273 attacks in 2015 to 376 in 2016; the majority occurred during the Christmas season, and “many of the attacks took place in churches and other places of worship.” 

Most of these attacks do not make headlines in the news and have increased with immigration. There are now over 25 million Muslims in the EU, birth-rate among white Europeans is low, while among Muslim immigrants it is high. If the trend continues, then in a matter of years The Muslim population in Europe will dwarf that of Christians; and Christianity which is under threat now, may no longer exist. It is indeed an ‘endangered specie.’

In Africa, it is a similar case if not worse where Christian churches are attacked and Christians killed indiscriminately. In Nigeria the Boko Haram terrorist group, burn churches, kidnap school children from their dormitories, force them to convert to Islam and the girls as young as 12 years are married off to the terrorists. The aim of this group is to turn Nigeria into a Muslim country.

A global campaign was launched for the release of the kidnapped school girls

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The War on Christmas

Christmas is a Christian celebration of the birth of Jesus Christ which started about the 4th century. Notwithstanding the long history, it has not been without rejection and attacks. There have been attempts to either ban the celebration or limit its scope. This is ‘the war on Christmas’.

The term ‘war on Christmas’ originated quite recently as a reaction to the surreptitious and sometimes blatant moves to ban the celebration of Christmas. The term originated from the writing of an American Peter Brimelow in 1999) But it was not until 2005 when the American news channel, Fox News presenter, Bill O’Reilly, host of ‘The O’Reilly Factor’ popularised it when he hosted John Gibson, author of the book, ‘The War on Christmas: How the Liberal Plot to Ban the Sacred Holiday is Worse than you Thought’.

The term ‘war on Christmas’ may be recent but the war has been waging for a very long time. In 1644 the Puritans banned the celebration of Christmas in England, but it was restored with the restoration of the monarchy in 1660. They also influenced the banning of Christmas in the United States about 1659 until it was made a national holiday in 1870.

The French revolution which started in 1789 rebranded Christmas cakes and renamed Christmas, ‘Dog Day’ to mock the holiday. The Nazis in Germany did not do away with Christmas but twisted the celebration and rewrote Christmas carols to remove any reference to Christ. In 1970 Fidel Castro banned the celebration of Christmas in Cuba until it was restored 30years later (Irishtimes.com) Brunei only allows private and quiet celebration of Christmas so as not to ‘damage’ the beliefs of the country’s Muslim majority. Saudi Arabia does not recognise any other religion apart from Islam even though about 1.2 million Christians live in the country. The police arrests people for ‘plotting’ to have Christmas parties.

 In recent times ‘the war on Christmas’ by far-left liberals and unmitigated secularists, has assumed a new dimension. With the three major ‘megaphones’ (media, entertainment, and academia) of America controlled by the far-left liberals, the drive to purge Christmas of Christ is gaining ground. (Douglas Mackinnon, Townhall.com, Dec 16, 2017) They are pushing for a secular Christmas. Radio and TV stations scarcely play Christmas carols like before. In some parts of the United States to be politically correct, Christmas has turned into winter break and Easter to Spring break. But John Gibson says, “The Christians are coming to retake their place in the public square, and the most natural battleground in this war is Christmas.”

For years US presidents have been sending Christmas cards to notable persons with the greeting, ‘happy Christmas’. But under pressure from liberal groups, President George W Bush dropped ‘Christmas’ and signed ‘happy holiday. Until President Trump who said during his campaign, ‘If I win ‘Merry Christmas’ will be back, and ‘happy holiday’ would be out’ the last US President to sign happy Christmas was the first president Bush in 1992. By the way, Trump kept his promise. We wait to see what President Joe Biden will sign.

This war on Christmas is one of the many ways anti-Christian groups are using to attack the faith. They are not asking for Christmas celebration to be abolished; they like the holiday and the festivities. They only want a secular Christmas where the celebration is stripped of its religious and spiritual roots.

Watch out for my next blog titled, The Christian Religion, an “endangered specie?”

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Is Christmas still Christmas?

●  Christmas is the celebration of the birth of Jesus Christ. It is primarily a spiritual celebration; it is a thanksgiving to God for the inestimable gift of His only Son Jesus Christ to the world; for the salvation of the human race. Jesus Christ is the reason for the season. The word ‘Christmas’ is an English term for ‘Mass on Christ’s day.’ The first Christmas celebration was about the 4th century, and it was “in reaction to a harvest festival that marked the winter solstice—the return of the sun. By 529 A.D., after Christianity had become the official state religion of the Roman Empire, Emperor Justinian made Christmas a civic holiday.” (The Buffalo News, Nov. 22, 1984) Christmas is a time to reflect on the Jesus’ story, the reason Jesus came into the world and his impact on the entire world. Christmas is our annual reminder (as if we needed to be reminded) of the love and presence of God in our world. (Jn 3: 16) It is also an invitation to reach out to others in love, which is the gift of Christmas; God’s love. The traditional purpose of Christmas is to celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ who is love, light, hope and peace.Christmas is about loving; it is about wiping tears and putting smiles on faces; it is about forgiving and making up; it is about sharing; it is about healing; it is about joy. ‘Joy to the world the Lord has come.’ (Psalm 98: 4-6; Luke 2: 10-11) This is the ‘Spirit of Christmas’.But in recent times, with the way Christmas is celebrated, it feels we are losing ‘the spirit of Christmas’. Christmas has become so commercialized that it is now more about buying and selling and making money by big corporations and businesses; with signs all over of ‘Christmas Sales’ and purported reduction of prices for Christmas. In 2016 the total expected Christmas sale in the United States was $1 trillion; and it is projected to rise every year. The commercialization of Christmas blurs the traditional beauty (the spirit of Christmas) and leaves behind a materialistic, superficial, and hollow outlookIt is now less about the ‘Spirit’ and more about the commerce. To further remove the spirit from Christmas, ‘some retail companies no longer even use the term ‘Christmas’ to describe the’ celebration, instead they use, ‘Tis the season’, ‘Happy Holiday’, or ‘season’s Greetings’ to appeal to a wider range of consumers who are not religious’ or Christians.Commercialization is robbing this most wonderful and happy time of its beauty, grandeur, and spirit. And from the look of things this trend is not abating, in fact, it is project to increase each year. But unless our capitalistic, atheistic, and profit driven society steps back from this insatiable pursuit of money and profit, I am afraid Christmas may no longer be Christmas!