{"id":1614,"date":"2017-11-19T05:00:42","date_gmt":"2017-11-19T10:00:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sjcmetheology.wpengine.com\/?p=1614"},"modified":"2017-11-19T05:00:42","modified_gmt":"2017-11-19T10:00:42","slug":"rights-duties-and-freedom","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.sjcme.edu\/theology\/rights-duties-and-freedom\/","title":{"rendered":"Rights, duties, and freedom"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Carol Reed\u2019s classic film The Third Man<\/em>, based on a story by Graham Greene, takes place in post-war Vienna where Harry Lime is operating a criminal scheme involving tainted medicine. Lime kills sick people for money.<\/p>\n

Money. We all need it, some of us have enough of it, and many don\u2019t. Franklin Roosevelt wanted America to recognize that, beyond the basics enumerated in the Bill of Rights, human beings also have the right to a decent home, security in old age and sickness, and the right to health care and an education. In other words, one\u2019s civil rights need to be augmented by economic rights. Roosevelt\u2019s New Deal was influenced by Father John Ryan, whose tireless efforts for working men and women stands today as an important milestone in the American Catholic social justice tradition. Pope Pius XI recognized his contribution by making him a domestic prelate (a sort of honorary bishop).<\/p>\n

But where there are rights, there must also be duties. Your right is my obligation to respect and, according to my situation, provide for that right, and vice versa. My taxes, for example, help pay for Medicaid. Politicians devoted to the individualist philosophy of Ayn Rand disagree and want to reduce the scope of rights, in the famous phrase of Thomas Hobbes, simply to freedom from force and fraud. As for economic security, you\u2019re on your own.<\/p>\n

The Christian social justice tradition, however, holds that without a minimum of financial resources, one is inevitably the victim of force. Those who view social justice merely as the freedom of the individual from constraints, with no duty to support the common good, are not that different from Harry Lime, who cheated sick patients out of wholesome medicine to enrich himself. Harry Lime took the direct and illegal route to riches by diluting medicine; today, it is more common to find corporate plunder occurring through legal channels (see, for example, the BBC report<\/a>, \u201cPharmaceutical industry gets high on fat profits\u201d.<\/p>\n

We are still trying to figure out how society can fairly distribute its wealth so that everyone\u2019s freedom will be enhanced. Movie producers put up an investment so that the artists and laborers can be paid for the work they do. Alexander Korda was the producer for The Third Man<\/em> and the great showman Orson Welles played the villain Harry Lime. The tension between the artists and laborers who make the film, and the producers who supply the funds is, of course, legendary. Producers want their investment to make money for them while the artists want the financial freedom to create. On the set of Reed\u2019s film, this tension evoked a bon mot<\/em> from Welles, who told Korda, \u201cI wish the Pope had made you a Cardinal.\u201d \u201cWhy is that?\u201d Korda asked. \u201cBecause then we would only have to kiss your ring,\u201d Welles answered.<\/p>\n

There is a sense in which every human being is a creative artist, intended by God to make something of himself or herself, according to the gifts and circumstances of life. Everyone, therefore, needs the financial basics to achieve the creation that is one\u2019s authentic self, free not only from force and fraud, but from poverty, homelessness and preventable illness. Our kiss should be that of genuinely free men and women.<\/p>\n

David Hammond\u00a0<\/b>teaches theology for\u00a0Saint Joseph\u2019s College Online Theology Program<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Carol Reed\u2019s classic film The Third Man, based on a story by Graham Greene, takes place in post-war Vienna where Harry Lime is operating a criminal scheme involving tainted medicine. Lime kills sick people for money. Money. We all need … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":48,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,12,22,1],"tags":[291],"class_list":["post-1614","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-art","category-moral-theology","category-social-justice","category-uncategorized","tag-the-third-man"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sjcme.edu\/theology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1614","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sjcme.edu\/theology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sjcme.edu\/theology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sjcme.edu\/theology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/48"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sjcme.edu\/theology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1614"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sjcme.edu\/theology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1614\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sjcme.edu\/theology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1614"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sjcme.edu\/theology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1614"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sjcme.edu\/theology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1614"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}