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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 13 January 2009
In this essay I will try to develop a natural law justification of welfare rights. The justification I will undertake is from the perspective of Catholic natural law, that is, the strand of natural law that has been developed theoretically by Roman Catholic canonists, theologians, and philosophers since Aquinas, and affirmed by Catholic teachers as the basis for most moral obligations. Catholic natural law is, therefore, natural law as developed and understood by Catholics or others respecting Catholic traditions of inquiry. It is not, however, primarily or exclusively natural law for Catholics, since the very idea of natural law includes the conviction that it is accessible in principle to anyone.
1 The classic statement is John, Pope XXIII, Pacent in Terris (Peace on Earth), trans. National Catholic Welfare Conference (Washington, DC: National Catholic Welfare Conference, 1963)Google Scholar, par. 11: “Beginning our discussion of the rights of man, we see that every man has the right to life, to bodily integrity and to the means which are suitable for the proper development of life; these are primarily food, clothing, shelter, rest, medical care, and finally the necessary social services. Therefore, a human being also has the right to security in cases of sickness, inability to work, widowhood, old age, unemployment, or in any other case in which he is deprived of the means of subsistence through no fault of his own.” This teaching is continued in Vatican Council II and in subsequent papal teaching; for the most recent statement of this, see Paul, Pope John II, Centesimus Annus: On the Hundredth Anniversary of Rerum Novarum (Boston: Daughters of St. Paul, 1991)Google Scholar, par. 48. John Paul rejects what he calls the “welfare state,” but his reasoning makes plain that this position is meant to be consistent with welfare rights. Papal teaching does not stipulate the specific forms or organizational structures that respecting welfare rights requires; it affirms welfare rights as social responsibilities that political society has the responsibility to enforce, and rejects socialist remedies that either deny private property or remove individual and nonpolirical group initiative.
For earlier defenses of welfare rights by Catholic moralists in the natural law tradition, see Ryan, John A., Distributive Justice: The Right and Wrong of Our Present Distribution of Wealth, new rev. ed. (New York: Macmillan, 1939), 87–113, 268–81Google Scholar; and Messner, Johannes, Social Ethics: Natural Law in the Western World, trans. Doherty, J. J., rev. ed. (St. Louis, MO: B. Herder, 1965), 646–55.Google Scholar
2 For a discussion of all the relevant texts, see Finnis, John, Aquinas: Moral, Political, and Legal Theory (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), 189–96.Google Scholar Finnis explains the textual nuances and complexities that my shorter recounting slights.
3 Aquinas, Thomas, Summa Theologiae, II–II, q. 66, a. 1.Google Scholar The second part of the second part of the Summa Theologiae contains Aquinas's mature doctrine on specific moral issues. The first part of the second part contains his ethical theory and moral psychology, including his general treatment of natural law. Question 66 of the second part of the second part is his question on stealing; it is part of the discussion of injustice. Because the Summa Theologiae appears in many editions and translations, most of which can be followed through use of the standard method of referring to the work, I will use the standard method, exhibited in the first sentence of this note.
4 The English word “possess” does not seem to capture precisely the relationship to things that Aquinas is after here. Nevertheless, he uses the Latin noun “possessio” and the Latin verb “possidere.” I do not know why he did not use the word “usus.”
5 Aquinas, , Summa Theologiae, II–II, q. 66, a. 2.Google Scholar The verb “dispensare” also means “to weigh out or pay out” and “to manage.” Having the power or authority both to take care of something and to distribute it or its benefits seems very close to the idea of being in charge of something and being responsible for its use. Ownership may suggest a stronger claim on a thing, so my usage has a stipularive component.
6 See ibid., II–II, q. 66, a. 2c.
7 Among other places in Aquinas's discussion of possessio quasi proprium, see ibid., II–II, q. 66, a. 2, ad 1. See Donagan, Alan, The Theory of Morality (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1977), 99Google Scholar, for a generalization from this text to the effect that Aquinas represents the Hebrew-Christian moral tradition here in denying that there is any natural right to private property. However, I do not think that this Thomistic text or any other denies that some division of property among groups or individuals—as opposed to a detailed, specific division—is a requirement of moral considerations prior to human decision, and therefore a matter of the natural law.
8 See Aquinas, , Summa Theologiae, I, q. 98, a. 1, ad 1.Google Scholar
9 Ibid., II–II, q. 66, a. 2. The translation is mine. Aquinas's Latin for what I translate as the last clause reads ut scilicet defacili aliquis eas communicet in necessitates aliorum.
10 See also ibid., II–II, q. 32, a. 5. Here, Aquinas treats giving alms as a moral obligation. That is, he maintains that giving alms falls under a precept, not a counsel of perfection, when one has more than one needs. He goes on to define what is superfluous and makes clear that taking care of one's own necessities and providing for those in one's care is not superfluous and is ordinarily the prior responsibility. Finnis, , Aquinas, 190–93Google Scholar details the nuances of Aquinas's understanding of what is superfluous.
11 See Aquinas, , Summa Theologiae, II–II, q. 66, a. 7Google Scholar, sed contra. At least in the Summa, this part of a Thomistic article is usually an authority with whom Aquinas largely agrees. Here, however, no authority is cited—there is simply the dictum—in necessitate sunt omnia communia.This dictum was likely a canonical commonplace. Aquinas affirms this sentence unambiguously elsewhere; see, for example, II–II, q. 32, a. 7, ad 3. But here at II–II, q. 66, a. 7, ad 3, he qualifies the dictum by saying that necessity renders the thing taken the property, not of everyone, but of the person in need.
12 Finnis, , Aquinas, 191–93Google Scholar provides the details of Aquinas's position on this matter. Although Aquinas's discussion appears to emphasize the duties of owners rather than the rights of the needy in these situations, it seems to me that because these duties are chiefly grounded in the needs of the needy, it is reasonable to refer to these duties as rights that the needy possess; see note 16 below. For the canonical background of Aquinas's discussion, which suggests that some canonists recognized the existence of the rights of the needy in these situations (and that some canonists considered the possibility of enforcing these rights via ecclesiastical authority), see Tierney, Brian, The Idea of Natural Rights (Atlanta, GA: Scholars Press, 1997), 73–75.Google Scholar
13 Catholic social teaching since Leo, Pope XIII (1810–1903)Google Scholar emphasizes this element of value in private property: it is the ground for Catholic judgments that property should be widely held and not concentrated in the holdings of a few. See my “Natural Law, Ownership, and the World's Natural Resources,” Journal of Value Inquiry 23 (1989): 196Google Scholar, and the sources cited there.
14 I am not supposing that all natural law accounts of property and political society would be consistent with welfare rights. Stoic natural law theory—at least as represented by Cicero, whom Aquinas read—would likely have rejected welfare rights as incompatible with the importance of political society's respect for private property. See Cicero, , De Officiis, trans. Miller, Walter (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1913)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, bk. II, chap. 73: “For the chief purpose of constitutional state and municipal governments was that individual property rights might be secured. For although it was by Nature's guidance that men were drawn together in communities, it was in the hope of safeguarding their possessions that they sought the protection of cities.” See also chap. 79. For Aquinas, political society is natural in a way that property—and certainly ownership—is not. Yet even modern natural law theorists whose normative views are more like Aquinas's than Cicero's reject welfare rights; see Veatch, Henry B., Human Rights: Fact or Fancy? (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1985), 177–97Google Scholar; and Rasmussen, Douglas, “Economic Rights Versus Human Dignity: The Flawed Moral Vision of the United States Catholic Bishops,” in Rasmussen, Douglas and Sterba, James, The Catholic Bishops and the Economy: A Debate (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Books, 1987), 45–84.Google Scholar
15 For evidence that Aquinas had a conception of human rights, see Finnis, , Aquinas, 132–38.Google Scholar
16 See Raz, Joseph, The Morality of Freedom (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987), 166Google Scholar: “Definition: ‘X has a right’ if and only if X can have rights, and, other things being equal, an aspect of X's well-being (his interest) is a sufficient reason for holding some other person (s) to be under a duty.” Raz deals here with the general concept of a right, not with specific issues created by the legal establishment of rights. I assume that Raz's general account of rights is silent about the moral principles needed to move from a person's need to others' duties.
17 Cicero, , in De OfficiisGoogle Scholar, bk. II, chap. 79, details the moral and social effects of unjustified expropriation and redistribution of property. Any regime of welfare rights requiring the sort of expropriation Cicero describes would run afoul not only of Cicero's theory of property, but also Aquinas's more limited and circumspect approach.
18 For an earlier statement of mine of this limitation on welfare rights, see Boyle, Joseph, “Catholic Social Justice and Health Care Entitlement Packages,” Christian Bioethics 2, no. 3 (12 1996): 284–86.Google ScholarPubMed
19 The Golden Rule has historically been taken as a principle, or as closely related to principle, in natural law; I cannot defend the status of the Golden Rule here. For a brief exploration of some of the historical and conceptual issues, see Donagan, , The Theory of Morality, 57–66.Google Scholar For an account of the logic of the Golden Rule, see Grisez, Germain, The Way of The Lord Jesus, vol. 3, Difficult Moral Questions (Quincy, IL: Franciscan Press, 1997), 861–70.Google Scholar
20 My earlier formulation of this argument did not attend sufficiently to the role of voluntary associations in fulfilling the responsibility of common use; see Boyle, Joseph, “Catholic Social Justice,” 286.Google Scholar Here I recognize that voluntary associations are presumptively the proper vehicle for providing social assistance to the needy, but argue that the specific coordination of common action, which only the authoritative action of political society can provide, is also necessary.
21 See Finnis, John, Natural Law and Natural Rights (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1980), 146–47, 159Google Scholar; and Grisez, Germain, The Way of the Lord Jesus, vol. 2, Living a Christian Life (Quincy, IL: Franciscan Press, 1993), 356–59.Google Scholar
22 For Aquinas's account of the common good of political society and of the specific form of coordination provided by its legal actions, see Finnis, , Aquinas, 247–52.Google Scholar