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