CORPUS CHRISTI, TX (Catholic Online) - The political community is ordered to the promotion of the common good.  Intimately tied to the common good--in a manner that the two cannot be separated--are the fundamental and inalienable human rights.  No political community is promoting the common good where these fundamental and inalienable human rights are trespassed or not enforced. 

It follows that the political community has as one of its principal purposes the defense and promotion of these fundamental and inalienable human rights.  Here the American Declaration and Catholic social doctrine are in perfect agreement and accord.

Compare the words of the Declaration of Independence with the words of the Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church:

First the Declaration: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men . . . are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men . . . ."

Now the Compendium: "Considering the human person as the foundation and purpose of the political community means in the first place working to recognize and respect human dignity through defending and promoting fundamental and inalienable human rights: 'In our time the common good is chiefly guaranteed when personal rights and duties are maintained.'  (Compendium, No. 388) (quoting John XXIII, Pacem in terris, 273)

The distinction between alienable and unalienable rights in Jefferson's Declaration appears to have come from the moral philosopher Francis Hutcheson.  In his Inquiry into the Original of Our Ideas of Beauty and Virtue first published in 1725 and highly regarded by the Founding Fathers, Hutcheson clearly anticipates the language eventually appearing in the Declaration of Independence: "For wherever any Invasion is made upon unalienable Rights, there must arise either a perfect, or external Right to Resistance. . . . Unalienable Rights are essential Limitations in all Governments."  

Though unmentioned in the Declaration of Independence, but stressed in the Compendium, Hutcheson also linked these unalienable rights with the common good, stating in the same book, that "there can be no Right, or Limitation of Right, inconsistent with, or opposite to the greatest publick Good."

Though both the Enlightenment thinkers and the Church agree that inalienable or unalienable rights pre-exist the State and relate to the common good, the Church's social doctrine is broader as it includes not only inalienable "rights," but also the other side of the rights equation: inalienable "duties."
 
"The rights and duties of the person contain a concise summary of the principal moral and juridical requirements that must preside over the construction of the political community.  These requirements constitute an objective norm on which positive law is based and which cannot be ignored by the political community, because both in existential being and in final purpose the human person precedes the political community.  Positive law must guarantee that fundamental human needs are met." (Compendium, No. 388)

Natural right and natural duty-the natural law-comes before the State and is what should inform our laws.

In this regard, the political philosophy underlying the Declaration of Independence and the philosophy underlying the Church's Social Doctrine are aligned.

The role of political authority is to assure that its citizens can pursue the good life.  "The political community pursues the common good when it seeks to create a human environment that offers citizens the possibility of truly exercising their human rights and of fulfilling completely their corresponding duties." (Compendium, No. 388, 389) 

In other words, governments are instituted among men to protect the "moral ecology" or the "social ecology" of a people.  We might borrow from Robert Bellah who in his Habits of the Heart defined "moral ecology" or "social ecology" as "[t]he web of moral understandings and commitments that tie people together in community."

If this is indeed the case, our government has unquestionably failed in its fundamental task.  The "web of moral understandings and commitments" that tie Americans together, including commitments to the right to life, to marriage and family life, to modesty, to respect, to self-sufficiency, seems to be unraveling at breakneck speed. 

The political community is not a "necessary evil" in its best state, as Thomas Paine called it in his book Liberty and Great Libertarians (though he was certainly right that in its worst state it is an "intolerable evil").  Rather, the political community is a positive good and required ...