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American Law, Canon Law, and those topics of particular interest to Church Leaders. A four week course is obviously insufficient to cover any body of law with any depth, but we explored a lot of topics at least superficially. At the end of the course, for the final exam, after a series of more objective short-answer questions about a scenario presented by the professor, he also asked us to respond to this prompt:
Describe ways in which American law (e.g., the Constitution and its interpretation, statutes, common law) in your view helps the Church in carrying out its work. Then describe ways that American law in your view hinders the work of the Church. Finally, if you had the power, how would you change American law to increase the ways it helps the Church and decrease the ways it hinders the Church?
I responded as follows:
Much of what we call “common law” finds its roots in the notion of natural law. This law should not be understood to be principles drawn from observation of the animals and plants existing in an undisturbed world before human contact, or as the observable behaviors common groups of men. Rather, Natural Law, at least as it is understood by Catholic thinkers today, gives expression to the notion that each thing that exists, exists as a result of four distinct causes. First, the final cause, can be understood to be a thing’s telos, end, reason, or purpose for which it exists. Each thing also has a formal cause, which encompasses the type of thing that exists, and accounts for the kind of thing that it is including its shape, the pattern after which it is made, those qualities common to its genre and species, and the like. Each thing has an efficient cause, which can be understood to be that which brought a thing into being – its creator or maker and the tools by which it is caused to come into existence. Each thing also has a material cause, which is the “stuff” from which a thing is made, and the principle of individuation by which this specific thing can be differentiated or distinguished from another thing whose other causes are identical.
These causes, considered as a whole, give provide the definition and contour of a thing’s nature, and thus help determine the laws by which a thing is bound. Natural law insists, for instance, that a man or a goat must eat in order to ensure its ongoing existence while a stone is not likewise obliged. A hammer might lawfully strike a nail in accord with the nature of the hammer and the nature of the nail. The same hammer may not strike an infant human because the nature of an infant human is to live and ultimately freely pursue eternal life.
These principles, often most clearly articulated in the laws of the Romans, were preserved in Catholic tradition and found fertile soil in which to take root as Christendom replaced the Roman Empire after the horrors of the fifth century. The very notion of justice to which all western law (common law included) appeals relies upon centuries of assumptions about man, his purpose, his obligations, and his rights that have been defined, preserved, purified, and tested by the Church across the centuries. The noble, liberal principles to which the Founders pledged their Lives, Fortunes, and Sacred Honors were fundamentally Catholic notions born of a Catholic milieu from which the founders could not extricate themselves, not simply by dint of cultural accretion, but because they are True. American Law, at the most basic level, assists the Church in her mission to make disciples of all nations to the extent that her laws are an expression and guardian of Truth. In contrast, American Law stands athwart the Church’s mission to the extent that it expresses and defends ideas in contradiction to and destructive of the Truth.
Concrete examples of the abovementioned scenarios abound. For instance, that an accused man be allowed to offer defense of himself is a reflection and safeguarding of the Truth. Man, created in God’s image and likeness, has an inherent dignity that is degraded when the powerful are allowed to do him harm or degrade or diminish him dishonestly, without cause, and/or by force. That government might not prevent a man from observing his basic obligation to render worship unto his creator in the manner prescribed by that same creator is a demand of man’s dignity; the First Amendment to the Constitution preserves this right, and is at the service of Truth. That no man may own another man as a slave; that a man may not be deprived of his property without just cause; that a man might defend his dignity, even by force – these are all expressions of the truth of man’s existence, acknowledgment of the dignity of his creation, and reverence for his duty to pursue eternal life. American Law, in preserving truth, aids the Church inasmuch as any truth is a participation in God who is Truth.
In contrast, the bald eagle, the black footed ferret, the grey wolf, and the grizzly bear, existing solely to serve man as he pursues eternity, have no comparable dignity, and thus no comparable rights. That a man, of infinite and eternal value, might be deprived of the means of providing sustenance for himself and his family, that he might be deprived of his property, or that his rights to make use of his property in deference to these animals in an indignity and an injustice. While the man has no right to degrade his own dignity by wantonly destroying these other creatures, nor does he have a right to deprive future generations of their just patrimony, the man’s just interests always take precedence over care for an animal, no matter the precariousness of species’ existence. The Endangered Species Act regularly stands athwart the Church’s purpose. That a man is allowed to take the innocent life of another man by means of a surgical or chemical abortion is a failure of the law to protect and promote the Truth of man’s dignity. That the sexual congress of two persons of the same sex is equated with the definitionally life-creating act between man and woman is an abject failure to defend the dignity of man. That a man might even potentially be obliged to bake, cook, arrange flowers, photograph, or bear legal witness to the so-called marriage of a same-sex couple in an intrusion upon his conscience under scrutiny of which he will one day render an account of himself before the Throne of the Almighty, and it is a violation so egregious that Christian martyrs have chosen to die for less. In short, the Church is well-served by American Law when American Law serves the Truth. The Church is hindered when American Law defends that which is false.
Some might argue that these examples reflect value clashes inherent to a pluralistic society with competing notions of Truth. There seems, however, to be a somewhat more objective approach by which to evaluate how American Law might be more deliberately ordered toward Truth in a way that is both broadly acceptable while simultaneously harmonious with Catholic thought and practice. The fundamental lacuna in American Law, and the element I would change were I empowered to do so, is an enumeration of the duties that accompany rights. A duty or obligation always co-exists with a right, and at least in the estimation of most Catholic thinkers, is ontologically prior to the right. A right exists in order that its attendant duty might be fulfilled. For example, it is not so much that man has a right to freely worship, but that he is under obligation by virtue of his nature to do so. He must, thus, be free to exercise his religion so as to fulfill that obligation. All men are meant to be converted to the Truth, and those in possession of it are obliged to lead others toward it. Man must thus be free to express himself in word and deed so as to induce others to join him and thereby fulfill his obligation. Man is obliged to defend the dignity of one who is incapable of defending himself, and so he must be free to possess the means by which to provide a defense. To honor one’s obligation to grow in sanctity, one must have the right to make, own, and use the goods of creation by which such a task might be accomplished. If one cannot reason one’s way to an explanation of a right by reference to a corresponding duty or duties that arise from man’s nature, it seems that one does not really possess a right. Similarly, if a duty is imposed that does not admit of a right by which the duty is accomplished, one might legitimately question the validity of the obligation.
Obviously, in all of this, one must not overlook that man is by nature social and that this condition obliges him to consider the common good. Moreover, it obliges him to exercise his rights such that they do not unjustly inhibit the rights of another to fulfill his own obligations. As a result, a man’s rights are not absolute, or at least not without some limitation. The boundaries of rights are fixed in law to make provision for occasions when individual virtue fails.
The observations above lead us to observe that law cannot and should not be separated from the notion of morality. In its purest form, law is the objective norm for moral behavior. Morality, however, cannot be considered apart from reference to some objective standard that exists apart from any individual person against which all notions of right and wrong, good and bad, or good and evil are evaluated. This objective standard necessarily bespeaks obligations to achieve at least a bare minimum of moral conduct. Freedom permits man to achieve this standard, or at least to try. The Founders, I suspect, knew this and made assumptions that their nascent nation would always know it. I fear their confidence may have been misplaced. Many legislators, administrators, and jurists appear to have forgotten this truth. Until it is remembered, the mission of the Church and the laws of this nation will always exist in an uneasy symbiosis, dependent on one another for a shared history and tradition, but regularly motivated by intentions at cross-purposes with one another, leaving both to settle for the least bad form of mediocrity available to them as they lurch forward, only by increment, to that day when Christ Jesus will be all in all.
