Obligations Over Rights
Liberalism is an ideology of perpetually increasing rights and entitlements. The very concept of obligations and duties is antithetical to a committed liberal. An obligation is “an act or course of action to which a person is morally or legally bound”, which of course implies that there are commitments beyond the autonomous consent of the individual. However, what the committed liberal fails to understand is that for each right there is a concomitant obligation. A legal right is simply an instance of a particular discriminating authority. For instance, the right to life implies the moral and legal obligation not to murder. The law discriminates between victim and murderer or attempted murderer. Similarly, the law discriminates between property owner and trespasser or thief. By focusing on the empowering language of rights, the committed liberal has obscured the concomitant obligation, duty and constraint inherent in every right. In order to elucidate this point, we should move beyond speaking in the language of “rights” and “entitlements” and instead focus on obligations, duties, virtues, truth and the common good:
The morality of acts is defined by the relationship of man's freedom with the authentic good. This good is established, as the eternal law, by Divine Wisdom which orders every being towards its end: this eternal law is known both by man's natural reason (hence it is "natural law"), and — in an integral and perfect way — by God's supernatural Revelation (hence it is called "divine law"). Acting is morally good when the choices of freedom are in conformity with man's true good and thus express the voluntary ordering of the person towards his ultimate end: God himself, the supreme good in whom man finds his full and perfect happiness. The first question in the young man's conversation with Jesus: "What good must I do to have eternal life? " (Mt 19:6) immediately brings out the essential connection between the moral value of an act and man's final end. Jesus, in his reply, confirms the young man's conviction: the performance of good acts, commanded by the One who "alone is good", constitutes the indispensable condition of and path to eternal blessedness: "If you wish to enter into life, keep the commandments" (Mt 19:17). Jesus' answer and his reference to the commandments also make it clear that the path to that end is marked by respect for the divine laws which safeguard human good. Only the act in conformity with the good can be a path that leads to life.
The rational ordering of the human act to the good in its truth and the voluntary pursuit of that good, known by reason, constitute morality. Hence human activity cannot be judged as morally good merely because it is a means for attaining one or another of its goals, or simply because the subject's intention is good. Activity is morally good when it attests to and expresses the voluntary ordering of the person to his ultimate end and the conformity of a concrete action with the human good as it is acknowledged in its truth by reason. If the object of the concrete action is not in harmony with the true good of the person, the choice of that action makes our will and ourselves morally evil, thus putting us in conflict with our ultimate end, the supreme good, God himself.
In order to understand the “rational ordering of the human act” we first must understand the object or species of the human act. The object of a specific act or behavior is separated from the motive, foreseeable consequences or the reason for which the choice is made. Three examples will illustrate this point. Imagine a situation where a man is shot dead and his wallet is stolen, a man is shot dead in rage over a dispute and a man is shot dead in order to possibly prevent him from harming others in the future. In each example the reasons and motives are distinct. In the first example, the motive of the chosen act is money. In the second example, the motive of the chosen act is anger. In the third example the motive of the chosen act is the foreseeable consequence of preventing something bad from happening in the future. Despite the different motives and reasons, each is an example of the object or species of murder. Furthermore, morality can be split into two general subcategories: negative precepts and positive precepts.
The negative precepts are described as “intrinsically evil”. These acts are wrong in of and themselves independent of motive, desire or circumstance:
The negative precepts of the natural law are universally valid. They oblige each and every individual, always and in every circumstance. It is a matter of prohibitions which forbid a given action semper et pro semper, without exception, because the choice of this kind of behaviour is in no case compatible with the goodness of the will of the acting person, with his vocation to life with God and to communion with his neighbour. It is prohibited — to everyone and in every case — to violate these precepts. They oblige everyone, regardless of the cost, never to offend in anyone, beginning with oneself, the personal dignity common to all.
The prohibitions of the Ten Commandments are prime examples of intrinsically evil acts (e.g. idolatry, murder, theft, adultery, bearing false witness). Many of these prohibitions can be framed as “rights”, such as the right to life and property, but by speaking in terms of prohibitions we shift the language away from entitlements to constraints and obligations. As stated previously, the right to life implies the obligation not to murder; it necessarily constrains human behavior. The set of morally licit acts is thus a proper subset of all possible acts. There is no issue today in which the language of “rights” obscures all obligations and duties more than abortion.
We know with certainty that when a human male gamete (i.e. sperm) fertilizes a human female gamete (i.e. egg) that a unique human individual is conceived. Every existing human being was conceived in this manner and every single existing human being developed in his mothers womb. In other words, we know with certainty that human mothers are pregnant with human babies. It is here that the modern obsession with “rights”, both real and imagined, is most apparent. The most basic right — the right that precedes all other rights — is the right to life. For example, the right to property and liberty cannot possibly exist without life. It is here that even the most minimal obligation of the mother is obscured by the empowering language of “rights”. The obligation of a mother not to murder her baby is the very minimum of her obligations as a mother. In order to understand the obligations and duties of mothers, fathers and all persons more generally, we must understand the positive precepts.
Unlike the negative precepts which are prohibited in all circumstances, the positive precepts are neither prohibited or required in any and all circumstances. It takes prudence, which is “the intellectual virtue which rightly directs particular human acts, through rectitude of the appetite, toward a good end” to understand which acts are appropriate given the circumstances. The positive precepts,
order us to perform certain actions and to cultivate certain dispositions, are universally binding; they are "unchanging". They unite in the same common good all people of every period of history, created for "the same divine calling and destiny". These universal and permanent laws correspond to things known by the practical reason and are applied to particular acts through the judgment of conscience. The acting subject personally assimilates the truth contained in the law. He appropriates this truth of his being and makes it his own by his acts and the corresponding virtues…
On the other hand, the fact that only the negative commandments oblige always and under all circumstances does not mean that in the moral life prohibitions are more important than the obligation to do good indicated by the positive commandments. The reason is this: the commandment of love of God and neighbour does not have in its dynamic any higher limit, but it does have a lower limit, beneath which the commandment is broken.
For example, courage is a virtue, but it takes prudence to understand in which circumstances to act courageously. In many circumstances we are obligated to come to the physical defense of others, but it takes practical reason and a healthy moral conscience to distinguish courage from cowardice and cowardice from stupidity.
As I mentioned early, a mothers most basic obligation is to not murder her own child. However, a parents obligation goes well beyond this. Parents are obligated to provide food, clothing and shelter. Parents are obligated to educate their children and to help cultivate virtue in their children’s daily lives. By focusing on the empowering language of “rights”, all of these duties and obligations are largely forgotten. The empowering language of “rights” also tends to animate ego and pride — individuals are more focused on their own desires and preferences instead of the obligations and duties we have towards others — rather than love, which is “to will the good of another”. This is not to say that we do not have rights, but by adequately understanding that with every right there is a concomitant duty or obligation, it can help focus us away from our own ego and pride and to the duty and love of others.