William J. Bennet has recently published an excerpt of his recent book America: the Last Best Hope. He explodes the myth that the modern concepts of natural rights and international law originated with the philosophy of John Locke and eighteenth-century British rationalism. Rather, these were products of Catholic Christianity that were elucidated in the sixteenth-century disputes over the rights of American Indians that involved such figures as Bartolome de Las Casas and Francisco de Vittoria. This has also been eloquently pointed out in Thomas Wood’s great book How the Catholic Church Built Western Civilization.
An excerpt from the excerpt:
“Speculation about the nature of the Indians—were they fully human?—led such Spanish thinkers as the Dominican friar Francisco de Vitoria to write extensively on the nature of human rights. He deserves to be ranked along with Suarez and Grotius as founders of modern international law.
Among Vitoria’s firm principles were these:
Every Indian is a man and thus capable of attaining salvation or damnation.
The Indians may not be deprived of their goods or power on account of their social backwardness.
Every man has the right to the truth, to education . . .By natural law, every man has the right to his own life and to physical and mental integrity.
The Indians have the right not to be baptized and not to be forced to convert against their will.Critics have pointed out that these morally sophisticated principles were rarely honored in Latin America. That may be true, but where else were such principles even enunciated and defended? And it should be remembered that these leading thinkers were churchmen, not governors. Few of today’s critics would argue for the state to be run by the church. Still, might the criticism of Spanish conduct in Latin America be not that it was too Catholic, but that it was not Catholic enough?”
David Bennett
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