by Matthew Moore
The Family Research Council’s recent study of the United Nations and its 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights offers an introduction to the U.N.’s track record on defending or violating the various “unalienable and transcendent rights of the human person.” The 50th anniversary in 1998 of the Universal Declaration, which is the so-to-speak “constitution” establishing the United Nations, makes the book’s critical assessment of the U.N. timely. Its publication is also occasioned by the efforts of “re-interpretation strategists” to pervert the meaning of the Declaration and, therefore, the original mission of the U.N.
Published in May 2001, Fifty Years is a collection of 19 essays written in the Declaration’s 50th year, 1998. Each essay makes specific reference to a right delineated in the Declaration and then evaluates the United Nations in the light of that right. Most essays also provide helpful commentary on the Declaration and the specific right with which they are concerned. There is a single concern motivating the essays: “…this series of papers attempts to throw the spotlight on some of the little noticed areas where gross distortions of human rights concern and activism are taking place.” Despite the single motivational concern, however, there is not a single perspective that runs through each of them. Each essay has a different author.
The stated purpose of this book is to bring the U.N. back to the original direction given it by the 1948 Declaration. Editor Teresa Wagner notes that setting the United Nations back on course involves interpreting the Declaration with the view of human rights and of man with which it was written. Human rights must be seen as “before and beyond governments.” In other words, human rights must be grounded in natural law. The Declaration, in this view, does not bestow rights but recognizes rights bestowed by God. Man must be understood to have a “dimension” that comes from God and transcends society. In contrast, the “re-interpretation strategists” view human rights as bestowed upon people by the Declaration itself. Man, they claim, is a “material, autonomous self, necessarily preoccupied with his own wants.”
Despite this purpose, all of the essayists do not share the Declaration’s original view of rights and man. This is the book’s greatest weakness. The first two essays, for instance, are written by legal positivists. The third essay fails to clearly condemn euthanasia when requested by a patient.
Fifty Years has other, less glaring weaknesses. Lack of documentation, for instance, limits the book’s audience to those who are willing to trust Family Research Council, i.e. those who think like FRC. Also, enthusiasm for the Declaration seems to blind some of the authors, thus making them appear naïve. Consequently, many of the authors fail to evaluate the failure or progress of the United Nations and a specific right in the light of what could be realistically expected.
Even with these failings, Fifty Years is a valuable study. It is, as the editor writes, “… a first step.” Most of the essays — in fact, all of the essays after Chapter 3 — offer clear, well-reasoned introductions to their subjects. Being briefed in each of the various categories necessary to keep track of the all-too-cryptic United Nations makes the read worthwhile. Similar to the question of evolution this past century, globalism stands before the 21st century as a new issue toward which the Catholic Church will be directing its attention and teaching. Despite its disappointing defects, this book stands overall as a good introduction to many of the issues upon which the “new world order” will need to be confronted by the People of God.
Matthew Moore is a Professor of Philosophy and Theology at Our Lady of Corpus Christi in Corpus Christi, Texas. This article courtesy of HLI Reports, a publication of Human Life International..
