Health care is a human right that precedes the State.

ecent­ly a meme made its way around Face­book; and on the left side, it depict­ed a mem­ber of the U.S. mil­i­tary; and on the right, a Mex­i­can attempt­ing to scale a wall. The meme told us that the sol­dier deserves free health care and the Mex­i­can does not. He’s break­ing a law, don’t you know? What dis­turbed me most—perhaps it ought not have—was, the rea­son I came across this meme in the first place was because a well-known Catholic apol­o­gist shared it.

The nar­ra­tive we’re sup­posed to accept here is that health care is a reward for hav­ing con­tributed to soci­ety in a way that soci­ety approves of. If you’ve not—if you’re just a Mex­i­can scal­ing a wall to mooch, for that’s what they do—you can go die.

This nar­ra­tive is one that Pope Fran­cis (oth­er­wise defend­ed by the Catholic apol­o­gist I won’t name) has warned against. Back in 2016, the pope said: “Health is not a con­sumer good but a uni­ver­sal right, so access to health ser­vices can­not be a priv­i­lege.” The pope reject­ed the notion that health care is for “those [who] can afford it.” (Don’t make here the facile dis­tinc­tion between health care and health cov­er­age.)

In say­ing this, the pope is not going off on his own Catholic left­ist, SJW, lib­er­al boil­er­plate, Patheos blog­ger path. He is repeat­ing what any one of you can read in the Church’s Mag­is­te­r­i­al texts.

But Alt! What does it mean to say that health care is a uni­ver­sal human right?

Glad you asked. The Com­pendi­um of the Social Doc­trine of the Church tells us in §388:

The rights and duties of the per­son con­tain a con­cise sum­ma­ry of the prin­ci­pal moral and juridi­cal require­ments that must pre­side over the con­struc­tion of the polit­i­cal com­mu­ni­ty. These require­ments con­sti­tute an objec­tive norm on which pos­i­tive law is based and which the human per­son pre­cedes the polit­i­cal com­mu­ni­ty. Pos­i­tive law must guar­an­tee that fun­da­men­tal human needs are met.

Because “the human per­son pre­cedes the polit­i­cal com­mu­ni­ty,” he has human rights (which come from God) that the State must guar­an­tee. Whether he is a mem­ber of that com­mu­ni­ty is irrel­e­vant because he has those rights as a per­son made in the image of God, and not as an Amer­i­can, or a Jor­dan­ian, or a Nor­we­gian.

But Alt! Where does the Church list health care as one of those rights?

Glad you asked. It does so in the same Com­pendi­um §166:

The demands of the com­mon good … [require] the pro­vi­sion of essen­tial ser­vices to all, some of which are at the same time human rights: food, hous­ing, work, edu­ca­tion and access to cul­ture, trans­porta­tion, basic health care, the free­dom of com­mu­ni­ca­tion and expres­sion, and the pro­tec­tion of reli­gious free­dom.

But Alt! The Com­pendi­um of the Social Doc­trine of the Church is not doc­trine!

I’m not try­ing to be amus­ing, dear read­er; some­one did in fact say that to me once. I think he was try­ing to make the point that what is in the Com­pendi­um has no more author­i­ty than the author­i­ty of the orig­i­nal source. Which might be true, but the orig­i­nal source is Pope St. John XXI­I­I’s encycli­cal let­ter Pacem in Ter­ris, and encycli­cals rank just below apos­tolic con­sti­tu­tions as author­i­ta­tive doc­u­ments. Here is what J23 writes in §11:

But first we must speak of man’s rights. Man has the right to live. He has the right to bod­i­ly integri­ty and to the means nec­es­sary for the prop­er devel­op­ment of life, par­tic­u­lar­ly food, cloth­ing, shel­ter, med­ical care, rest, and, final­ly, the nec­es­sary social ser­vices.

But Alt! If you break the law, you for­feit those rights!

No. No you don’t. Not the rights that per­tain to you as a human per­son made in the image of God. And the USCCB, teach­ing with the same author­i­ty as any suc­ces­sor of the apos­tles in union with Peter, makes this clear specif­i­cal­ly with ref­er­ence to “ille­gal immi­grants.”

In the Bible, God promis­es that our judg­ment will be based on our treat­ment of the most vul­ner­a­ble. Before God we can­not excuse inhu­mane treat­ment of cer­tain per­sons by claim­ing that their lack of legal sta­tus deprives them of rights giv­en by the Cre­ator.

And one of those rights is the right to be treat­ed when you are sick. Whether you can pay for it or not is irrel­e­vant. Whether you have com­mit­ted a crime or not is irrel­e­vant.

When the Good Samar­i­tan encoun­tered the wound­ed man on the road to Jeri­cho, he did not ask if he was there legal­ly. He did not ask whether he had com­mit­ted a crime. He did not ask if he had fought in the Jew­ish army and did his duty. No. He paid for him to be treat­ed, and then gave the trav­el­er a hand­out on top of it.

Jesus told this para­ble to a legal­ist who asked him, “What must I do to inher­it eter­nal life?” And then Jesus said: “Go and do like­wise.”