Much is said and written today about the rights of man. Government are asked to pass Bills of Rights. The French Revolution made much of its declaration of the Rights of Man.
Some people may be liable to think that the rights of man take birth in such action. This is a mistake. Bills of Rights may recognize the rigths of every individual. They may define those rights in words. But they do not create them. The rights of man existed long before the first bill of rights was ever worded by any legislator.
Bills of Rights too often ignore the religious rights of man, which are the most sacred of all. Most of the Bills of Rights fail to trace the rights of man to their only source: the Creator of man.
The rights of the person can be State-protected, but they cannot be State-given. They are God-given. And because they are God-given, they are inalienable. No government, no power on earth, has authority to violate the fundamental rights of man.
In a pastoral letter for Lent 1952, Cardinal D'Alton, the Archbishop of Armagh, Ireland, wrote:
"As created by God in His own image, with a spiritual and immortal soul, as redeemed by the blood of Christ, and destined to share God's happiness for all eternity, man is invested with a unique dignity.
"If, in accordance with God's design, he is to fulfill his destiny, both his nature and the purpose of his existence demand for him the possession of certain inalienable rights. Amongst these are:
The right to life, to bodily integrity, to the necessary conditions of existence;
The right to material goods, which will enable him to develop and perfect his corporal and spiritual nature;
The right to marry and found a family;
The right to a free choice of a state of life;
The right to form associations;
And above all, the right to give God His due worship, and to tend to his ultimate goal of happiness, in heaven, through the means provided for him by his Creator.
These rights have their origin in God, and are not, as some contend, conferred by the State, or by any human power. Having determined man's rights, and placed them on their true foundation, the Church constantly proclaims that they must never be violated.“
The philosophy behind the Social Credit policy and Social Credit financial proposals is quite in accord with those principles. Social Credit condemns those financial rules which practically deny to many "the right to the necessary conditions of existence" and "the right to material goods which will enable the individual to develop and perfect his corporal and spiritual nature".
Not only does Social Credit condemn such rules; but its proposals of a dividend to all, served periodically from the cradle to the grave, is, in our age of mass production, the surest guarantee of the right to the necessary conditions of existence. And this as a birthright, not conditioned by any avocation or employment, not in the least hurting the dignity of the individual, and leaving him perfectly free to choose his own career and organize his own life.
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