Father Robert F. Drinan, S.J. spoke to a crowd of about 40 in Goddard Chapel on Tuesday about taking personal and national responsibility for human rights at the international level.
Drinan's talk, entitled "How Can America Advance Democracy and Human Rights?" was the second part of the University Chaplaincy's Religion and the Law Forum.
A Catholic priest and former U.S. congressman, Drinan addressed three main points in his lecture: the evolution of human rights, the revolution in Congress for human rights, and what individuals can do to promote human rights.
"If there is one concept of an international morality, it is the importance of international human rights," Drinan said, adding that there are still obstacles to the recognition of human rights in America. "You just can't change humanity so that we are suddenly so much better than we were," he said.
"[The United States] pretends that we are a superpower," Drinan said. "But we are not living up to our duties."
Drinan traced the evolution of the U.S. stance on human rights, first lauding President Jimmy Carter, who made "human rights the soul of our foreign policy," he said.
Under Carter, "the world saw that the U.S. was serious about human rights," Drinan said.
President Ronald Reagan kept human rights in the national spotlight, but focused exclusively on "anti-communism," and President George H.W. Bush brought "four years of ambiguity," Drinan said.
As for President Bill Clinton, Drinan labeled him "devoted to human rights," but his evaluation of the current president was much more damning - George W. Bush "seems militantly against human rights," he said.
Drinan urged students to "keep up with this" issue of human rights, because it is "a movement of global consequence." He urged the audience to "learn about it, pray about it, and act on it."
He cautioned that "we in the United States, isolated by two great oceans, don't want" to get involved in human rights on an international scale.
Islamic nations can pose unique difficulties in this domain. "It is an entirely new problem in the history of our country, where suddenly one fifth of the world's population doesn't like us," he said.
Drinan came down in opposition to the Iraq war, asking "Why are we bombing these poor people? Why do we want Fallujah?"
"You may say 'Well, those are political issues,'" he said. "Well, they're human rights issues."
Drinan provided examples of specific cases in which the United States has broken international law, including the possession of 19 submarines with 2,000 nuclear weapons in the Pacific and Atlantic oceans, he said.
"Why are we doing this? It's not to protect democracy and it's not to protect human rights," Drinan said.
Drinan most emphasized the importance of individual action. "You may say 'I just want to lead a simple life.' Well, you can't ... we are all called to democracy," he said. "We have to be well-informed, we have to be articulate, and we have to defend human rights."
He gave the example of a Catholic lawyer in London who was just "one man," but took on the case of five unlawfully detained Portuguese students. That "one man" founded what became Amnesty International. "You count," Drinan said to his audience.
Drinan called attention to specific issues that students could work on, including "the plague of AIDS," the plight of refugees, and issues of children's rights.
"The world is begging for the U.S. to give, and we give, but not enough," he said. "When I read the foreign press, it is very painful." Drinan said the United States ranks only 21st among the list of 26 "donor nations" that give money to the poor, relative to size.
He made a special call to the Catholics in the audience. "The whole world is looking at American Catholicism," he said.
According to Drinan, the 62 million Catholics in the United States make up 26 percent of the country's population, leading other countries to wonder, "Can't [Catholics] have more impact?"
"They see the scandals ... but they also see the promise," he said, adding that Catholics are the "best-paid ethnic group in the country."
Drinan also said that he was "disappointed in the Catholic vote" in this year's presidential election. "We have to face the fact that it is a conservative country, it's a selfish country," he said.
Drinan said religion and politics are intertwined. "You can say that the churches should be completely removed from politics, but that's a myth. You need the churches," he said.
Currently a law professor at the Georgetown University Law Center, Drinan has acted as a visiting law professor at a number of U.S. law schools and is the former dean of the Boston College Law School.
Drinan served in the U.S. Congress as the Massachusetts representative from the Fourth District from 1971 to 1981. He resigned when the newly-elected Pope John Paul II changed Church policy so that a priest could no longer serve as a politician.
The next installment of the University Chaplaincy's "Forum on Religion and the Law" will take place on Dec. 7 when Professor Joseph Walser of the Comparative Religion Department will speak on "Buddhism and the Law."
