All of these rights, and others listed elsewhere in Catholic social teaching are derived from the dignity of each human person and God's desire that they flourish. By protecting these rights we help people flourish. Where rights are not protected suffering is rife. The Second Vatican Council expresses this in paragraph 27 of its 1965 Pastoral Constitution of the Church in the Modern World, Gaudium et spes: Furthermore, whatever is opposed to life itself, such as any type of murder, genocide, abortion, euthanasia or wilful self-destruction, whatever violates the integrity of the human person, such as mutilation, torments inflicted on body or mind, attempts to coerce the will itself; whatever insults human dignity, such as subhuman living conditions, arbitrary imprisonment, deportation, slavery, prostitution, the selling of women and children; as well as disgraceful working conditions, where men are treated as mere tools for profit, rather than as free and responsible persons; all these things and others of their like are infamies indeed. They poison human society, but they do more harm to those who practice them than those who suffer from the injury. Moreover, they are supreme dishonor to the Creator.

Consequently, even those rights that seem to allow for some sort of individualism or egoism are nonetheless to always be considered in light of the prior right of others to the basic good necessary for their flourishing. So we see, for example, Pope Blessed Paul VI's 1967 encyclical On the Development of Peoples—Populorum Progressio—affirming that the right to private property is not more important than the duty to ensure the basic conditions for the common good are met: Now if the earth truly was created to provide man with the necessities of life and the tools for his own progress, it follows that every man has the right to glean what he needs from the earth. The recent Council reiterated this truth: 'God intended the earth and everything in it for the use of all human beings and peoples. Thus, under the leadership of justice and in the company of charity, created goods should flow fairly to all.' All other rights, whatever they may be, including the rights of property and free trade, are to be subordinated to this principle. They should in no way hinder it; in fact, they should actively facilitate its implementation. Redirecting these rights back to their original purpose must be regarded as an important and urgent social duty.

This commitment to human dignity and the common good in Catholic Social teaching translates into the call for solidarity. Solidarity can be understood as a virtue, that is an habitual disposition, to stand with and for those who are marginalized and disadvantaged by systems and structures that we have put into place to facilitate our social interactions. Pope Francis put it this way in his Apostolic Exhortation 'On the Joy of the Gospel'—Evangellii Gaudium: Solidarity is a spontaneous reaction by those who recognize that the social function of property and the universal destination of goods are realities which come before private property. The private ownership of goods is justified by the need to protect and increase them, so that they can better serve the common good; for this reason, solidarity must be lived as the decision to restore to the poor what belongs to them. These convictions and habits of solidarity, when they are put into practice, open the way to other structural transformations and make them possible. Changing structures without generating new convictions and attitudes will only ensure that those same structures will become, sooner or later, corrupt, oppressive and ineffectual.