201510.22

October 22, 2015 – In Memoriam Jesuit Fr. Robert Araujo – Significant Articles on Life and Family

Summary:

The late Father Araujo’s brilliant essay on discrimination discusses false views of equality used to promote abortion and same-sex marriage in opposition to human dignity. He then articulates the Church’s more insightful understanding that not all discrimination is unjust; there is just discrimination. Treating differently situated things unequally is not unjust, for justice is giving to each what is his due. In fact, to treat differently situated things equally would be unjust. A man/woman couple and a man/man couple are fundamentally different in that the former can bear children and the latter cannot. So being differently situated, justice demands that they be treated unequally.

Father Araujo discusses the Declaration of Independence and its principle that “all men are created equal” as being consistent with the vision of the Church regarding human equality. The Founder’s understand the relational nature of the human person, and like the Church, insisted that rights and duties are co-relative. A theoretical understanding of equality that does not take into account the relational nature of the human person nor the fact the equality comes from God not man mistakes real equality for unjust egalitarianism.

Father Araujo: The International Sovereignty and Personality of the Holy See: (Same summary as previous)

https://scholarship.law.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1369&context=lawreview

Father Araujo: Conscience Protections and the Holy See:

https://avemarialaw-international-law-journal.avemarialaw.edu/Content/iljarticles/ConscienceProtectionandtheHolySee.pdf

Summary: Father Araujo addresses the attempt of European experts to subvert lawfully binding concordats (treaties) between the Holy See and European states. The subversion is intended to reduce conscience protections in those concordats and other laws to the point where, once they come in conflict with certain “new rights,” such as the “right to reproductive health,” which allegedly includes abortion, the “new rights” trump the right to conscience protection. This is in spite of the fact that the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights expressly protects conscience rights in Article 18. The liberal democracies of the 20th century thus become totalitarian by insisting upon universal adherence to the public policy preferences of the elite European experts.

Father Araujo: The Catholic Neo-Scholastic Contribution to Human Rights: the Natural Law Foundation

https://avemarialaw-law-review.avemarialaw.edu/Content/articles/v1i1.araujo.copyright1.pdf

Summary: Father Araujo discusses the unique Catholic contributions to human rights relating to natural law and discusses, in particular, the excellent contributions of Francis de Vitoria, Francis Suarez, and Robert Bellarmine.

Under the Human Rights issue:

Father Araujo, Catholic Contributions to and Critiques of Human Rights Within the United Nations

https://avemarialaw-international-law-journal.avemarialaw.edu/Content/ILJ/articles/RobertJohnAraujoCatholicContributions.pdf

Summary: Father Araujo discusses the conflict between positivism that aids totalitarianism and natural law that aids authentic human rights and duties. Specifically, he critiques the U.S. Supreme Court’s caricature of liberty in the Casey decision, wherein the Court sadly subscribed to license, not authentic liberty which must be correlative with responsibility. The liberty which comes to us from the natural law tradition is an “ordered liberty,” and it is a liberty that is best for all people and not just the enlightened few.

https://www.e-ir.info/2013/09/24/the-nature-and-role-of-the-catholic-church-and-the-holy-see-in-the-international-order/

Father Robert Araujo discusses the international person and sovereignty of the Holy See in relation to the mission of the Holy See to shine the spiritual and moral light of Christ into the world. He argues persuasively that this sovereignty has been acknowledged by the international community time and time again, and is not strictly derivative of the Lateran Pact between the Holy See and Italy. Some supposedly “Catholic” organizations challenge this claim and wish to reduce the Holy See to the status of an NGO. As Father Araujo clearly affirms, this novel position is no where supported by the evidence. Rather, it is motivated by a hostility to the teachings of the Church of social issues, and a corresponding attempt to diminish the influence of the Holy See.