The United States is currently laboring for national security by wedding its nuclear strategy to an incomprehensibly futile set of policies. Among the separate elements of this set, none is more dangerous and misconceived than the “relocation option,” also called Crisis Relocation Planning (CRP). What exactly is this option? According to an official statement, Protection in the Nuclear Age (Department of Defense, 1977):

In El Salvador I think that President Duarte is trying hard. Fidel Chavez Mena, his foreign minister, and José Antonio Morales Ehrlich, the other Christian Democratic member of the junta, are both good men. Manuel Ungo [of the FDR] is not bad and not good. I looked at the agrarian reform and inspected a farm and it seemed to be well run, but they can't make a cent because of the world price of coffee. The price of coffee is Salvador's number one problem. Cayetano Carpio, the top Communist in El Salvador, is a very stubborn man—very hard to deal with. You can deal with some Communists. Fidel Castro is a real bastard, but you can deal with him.

The people in Washington think they know what they are doing, but they don't. I have had hundreds of experiences with the U.S. Government.

Heeding this cautionary note from a perceptive theorist who has explored the philosophical dimensions of rights policy, my limited purpose here is to examine three concepts from Roman Catholic theory that structure the Church's participation in the human rights debate. These concepts are: (1) the foundation of human rights; (2) the range of human rights claims; and (3) the conception of the state in international relations today.