In this article, we share the transcripts of a recent video recording with Mary McAleese, former President of Ireland and speaker of the next session of Unified Consciousness Series ‘Inalienable Human Rights: God’s Gift to his People‘ .
The session will be held online on 27th September, 7:30 – 9:30 PM (French Time). If you’re unable to join the live session, you can watch recordings in your own time.
“We’re talking about the inalienable human rights that each of us has, you and I, and they are God’s gifts to every single one of his people as individuals: Freedom of consciousness, belief, religion, freedom to change religion…
Many people try to take them away but these are our birthright, the oxygen of life themselves, God-given gifts and the question I want to ask is: the Catholic Church was deeply implicated in the development of the idea of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights – as a global champion of human rights: migrants, the poor, climate change, the workers – all of these things the Church has championed – externally but it has a problem internally.
Because internally as members of the Catholic Church, these rights are all constricted by the rules of canon law and I want to look at the legitimacy of that.”
Some see these rights as arising from ‘natural law’, as an innate element of human dignity. Some of us describe them as God-given.
What does this mean for the most powerful Christian Church on earth, the Catholic Church?
What does that Church have to say to its own members about their inalienable God-given human rights, especially their intellectual rights?
