Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church

Inextricably connected to the topic of rights is the issue of the duties falling to men and women, which is given appropriate emphasis in the interventions of the Magisterium. The mutual complementarities between rights and duties — they are indissolubly linked — are recalled several times, above all in the human person who possesses them.^{322Cf. John XXIII, Encyclical Letter Pacem in Terris: AAS 55 (1963), 259-264; Second Vatican Ecumenical Council, Pastoral Constitution Gaudium et Spes, 26: AAS 58 (1966), 1046-1047.} This bond also has a social dimension: “in human society to one man's right there corresponds a duty in all other persons: the duty, namely, of acknowledging and respecting the right in question”.^{323John XXIII, Encyclical Letter Pacem in Terris: AAS 55 (1963), 264.} The Magisterium underlines the contradiction inherent in affirming rights without acknowledging corresponding responsibilities. “Those, therefore, who claim their own rights, yet altogether forget or neglect to carry out their respective duties, are people who build with one hand and destroy with the other”.^{324John XXIII, Encyclical Letter Pacem in Terris: AAS 55 (1963), 264.}