Critics have cited two troubling areas in Vitoria’s teaching. First, shocked by reports of cannibalism among the natives, he seemed to back Spanish intervention to protect the victims whom he argued could not renounce their rights and were thus deserving of help. Second, he developed a theory of the rights of hospitality, including the right to travel, dwell and trade in the places visited, which belonged to all travellers. He did not seem to think it necessary for visitors to seek the consent of the natives and argued instead that travellers had the right to wage a just war if deprived of these rights of hospitality.

It remains unclear why Vitoria took such a stand. Some have speculated that he faced pressure from Spanish rulers to develop a theory more sympathetic to their policies. It is known, for example, that after his second lecture on the American Indians, the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V sent a letter to the prior of his convent demanding that the theologians of his school hand in all material on the Indian issue and stop writing or lecturing on it.

Despite these criticisms levelled against him, Vitoria’s legacy is real. His teachings laid the foundation for a renaissance of thought among those 16th-century Spanish theologians who collectively came to be known as the School of Salamanca. They went on to develop his ideas on the liberty and equality of all men, values that the Catholic Church today embraces as the hallmark of a good society.

In his 1963 encyclical Pacem in Terris, Pope John XXIII wrote: “Any well-regulated and productive association of men in society demands the acceptance of one fundamental principle: that each individual man is truly a person. His is a nature that is endowed with intelligence and free will. As such he has rights and duties, which together flow as a direct consequence from his nature. These rights and duties are universal and inviolable, and therefore altogether inalienable.

“When, furthermore, we consider man’s personal dignity from the standpoint of divine revelation, inevitably our estimate of it is incomparably increased. Men have been ransomed by the blood of Jesus Christ. Grace has made them sons and friends of God, and heirs to eternal glory.”

Or as Las Casas wrote more pithily about the American Indians: “They are our brothers, and Christ died for them.”

An old idea, but still a challenge

Internationally, acceptance of human rights as universal and belonging to every human being has grown. In a bid to prevent a repeat of the atrocities committed against the Jewish people during the Second World War, the United Nations proclaimed in 1948 the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. It recognises the inherent dignity and the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family as the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world.

But the ideals it sets out are not upheld in many countries and in many others, only to a limited degree.

For Catholics the theory of the rights of strangers, as Vitoria and his contemporaries first conceptualised it, still challenges us in the practice of our faith today. For what has remained unchanged through the centuries is an abiding temptation to rationalise our desire to deprive others of the rights that we ourselves enjoy.

That is what the Spanish conquerors of the 15th and 16th centuries did to the native Americans. It is what we do today to criminals on death row, foreign workers and maids, even the poor. Whether the motive be vengeance or fear or economic exploitation, we tend to salve our conscience by first distancing ourselves from these people, turning them into strangers and finally, into something less than fully human.

When we are tempted to do so, Scripture shines a harsh light on our attitudes. It tells us that we are all God’s children and urges us to always welcome the strangers in our midst, by inviting them into our homes and into our hearts.

Did you like Lydia’s article? Got a question? Send your e-mails to theprompt@catholic.org

Lydia Lim is a cradle Catholic whose views on human rights have been shaped by her interactions with fellow Catholics in Singapore. She is a journalist by profession.

© Copyright MMVI, Lydia Lim. All rights reserved.