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Reading for Module B, 4.3.3:

Excerpt from Pope John XXIII, Pacem in Terris (1963)

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Political Rights

26  The dignity of the human person involves the right to take an active part in public affairs and to contribute one’s part to the common good of the citizens. For, as Our Predecessor of happy memory, Pius XII, pointed out: “The human individual, far from being an object and, as it were, a merely passive element in the social order, is in fact, must be and must continue to be, its subject, its foundation and its end.”²³

27  The human person is also entitled to a juridical protection of his rights, a protection that should be efficacious, impartial and inspired by the true norms of justice. As Our Predecessor Pius XII teaches: “That perpetual privilege proper to man, by which every individual has a claim to the protection of his rights, and by which there is assigned to each a definite and particular sphere of rights, immune from all arbitrary attacks, is the logical consequence of the order of justice willed by God.”²⁴

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Source: Pope John XXIII, Pacem in Terris, translation issued by the US Bishops (Washington, DC: United States Catholic Conference, 1963), accessible (20 Dec. 2013) at:  http://www.clerus.org/bibliaclerusonline/en/index3.htm. (This link takes you to a long list of Church teaching documents; scroll down to ‘Encyclicals’, then to John XXIII, where you will see Pacem in Terris.)

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Notes

23. Cf. Radio Message, Christmas Eve, 1944, A.A.S. XXXVII, 1945, p. 12 [#15].
24. Cf. Radio Message, Christmas Eve, 1942, A.A.S. XXXV, 1943, p. 21.