First Talk
After Archbishop Quevedo’s keynote address, the first talk began. This talk was done by Br Varghese Theckanath, SG, who highlighted how the issues of social justice were a challenge to religious life in Asia today.

He affirmed that human rights was an issue that appealed to all people. In fact, even people who did not have track records for upholding human rights seemed to speak positively of it. But in the socio-political scheme of Asia, various hindrances presented themselves to the Church’s struggle for human rights, which the speaker touched on briefly.

According to Br Varghese, human rights must be equal for all, inalienable, universal, indivisible, and binding on the state. The speaker also spoke of how the Church and certain popes failed to uphold human rights during what he called “the dark ages”. (I personally have serious misgivings about such dispensational misinterpretations of various epochs of the Church, especially when done so without due consideration to the historical context of each epoch. But anyhow, I’m just reporting what had been presented.)

The speaker affirmed that the Chuch had made great contributions to the development of human rights as we had them today. And yet the Church itself was said to be characterised by contradictions: “Heroic defense of human rights outside, little room for human rights inside”. He gave three live examples of how this was so. (Again, I personally think that one must learn to distinguish between the Church and the people/leaders of the Church. Our ecclesiological nuance is such that one must not confuse between the Church itself and the failure of her people/leaders. But I do agree with this observation to a large extent, as I recall a religious brother having once commented, “We go around teaching about human rights, but we cannot even fight for human rights in our own diocese”.)

This talk does leave us much to think about in terms of how we choose to respond to the call and need for upholding human rights in our world. The tricky part lies in being able to do this without heaping blame on the failure of Mother Church, or anyone else, for that matter.

I also take on very keenly to Archbishop Quevedo’s comment that we need to balance the aspect of human rights with the gospel of the Jesus Christ who laid down his rights by “turning the other cheek” (I’m paraphrasing here).