An Objective Ground for Human Rights through Roman Catholic Understandings of Natural Dignity and Practical Difference

This paper will build on the Roman Catholic intellectual tradition in order to move beyond the Magisterium’s contemporary teaching on religious diversity as represented by Nostra Aetate: that non-Christian, as well as non-Catholic varieties of Christian, traditions are necessarily in a subordinate position. Instead, this paper will argue for an objective ground for human dignity that values the actual range of religious diversity in the world as equally dignified expressions of Truth and reflections of Being. The understanding of Truth as well as multiplicity will be drawn from the insights of Nicholas of Cusa, John Henry Newman, and Jacques Maritain. From this position, religious diversity should be valued not only as a temporary compromise but as a positive good and therefore worthy of protection from deliberate erasure. Adequate protection for religious freedom, then, becomes a question of positive support and solidarity not only negative freedom from centralisation or homogenising efforts from the majority.