Freedom and Law: Pope Leo XIII's Libertas praestantissimum, Part 5

IS THERE SUCH A THING AS A MODERATE LIBERAL, a liberal that does not jettison notions of natural law and eternal law, that is, one that does not spurn the notion of an objective and knowable moral realm? Not all liberals, Pope Leo III admits, are as radical as those whom he addressed in the earlier part of his encyclical Libertas praestantissimum. There are those that reject any notion of an intemperate do-as-you-feel liberty, and maintain that liberty ought to be ruled by right reason and the natural law and, at least in theory, divine law. These liberals , however, would reject any public role of the Church as interpreter of the divine law and the natural law. They would expand the freedom of man and hold that man "as a free being is bound by no law of God except such as He makes known to us through our natural reason," LP, 17, thus cutting out divine law altogether at least in a public role, and thereby necessarily assigning "limits to His [God's] legislative authority." But this is to fail to render the obedience to God which God is due. Man's obligations to God go beyond the mere natural law (though they certainly encompass these), but they also include the obligation to obey the divine positive law. To these liberals who would limit God's bailiwick to the natural law, Leo XIII taught, to the contrary:

Man must, therefore, take his standard of a loyal and religious life from the eternal law; and from all and every one of those laws which God, in His infinite wisdom and power, has been pleased to enact, and to make known to us by such clear and unmistakable signs as to leave no room for doubt. And the more so because laws of this kind have the same origin, the same author, as the eternal law, are absolutely in accordance with right reason, and perfect the natural law. These laws it is that embody the government of God, who graciously guides and directs the intellect and the will of man lest these fall into error.

Necesse est igitur, vivendi normam constanter religioseque, ut a lege aeterna, ita ab omnibus singulisque petere legibus, quas infinite sapiens, infinite potens Deus, qua sibi ratione visum est, tradidit, quasque nosse tuto possumus perspicuis nec ullo modo addubitandis notis. Eo vel magis quod istius generis leges, quoniam idem habent, quod lex aeterna, principium, eumdemque auctorem, omnino et cum ratione concordant et perfectionem adiungunt ad naturale ius: eaedemque magisterium Dei ipsius complectuntur, qui scilicet, nostra ne mens neu voluntas in errorem labatur, nutu ductuque suo utramque benigne regit. Sit igitur sancte inviolateque coniunctum, quod nec diiungi potest nec debet, omnibusque in rebus, quod ipsa naturalis ratio praecipit, obnoxie Deo obedienterque serviatur.

LP, 17.

Yet another school of liberalism, even more moderate and tempered, stands condemned by its internal inconsistency. In this kind of liberalism, the advocate affirms "that the morality of individuals is to be guided by the divine law, but not the morality of the State." The divine law may be safely and morally disregarded by the State, and the "fatal theory of the need of separation between Church and State," is compelled as a matter of good governance. Given the existence of God, and given his revealed will in both the natural and divine law, and given that God is the author of both the Church and State, and is the authority behind both of them, "the absurdity of such a position is manifest." LP, 18. Indeed, the real problem seems to be a practical loss of faith.

Michelangelo Buonaroti, The Damned Soul (Uffizi)
(Enjoying his unbridled freedom of religion, speech, and conscience without reference to God)

The problem with an absolute separation between Church and State is that it ignores the complexity of the relationship between these two powers or institutions and substitutes in its place a facile formula that is calculated to reduce the authority of the Church in practical life. The problem is that there are, and always will be, areas of overlap between the two institutions. In those areas of overlap, how can one separate Church from State without giving one precedence over the other? In practice, the overweening State elbows the Church out as it has, for example, in the areas of marriage (e.g., instituting no-fault divorce), family life (e.g., homosexual marriage), education (especially moral education), health care (contraception, abortion, euthanasia, etc.):

[A]lthough the civil authority has not the same proximate end as the spiritual, nor proceeds on the same lines, nevertheless in the exercise of their separate powers they must occasionally meet. For their subjects are the same, and not infrequently they deal with the same objects, though in different ways. Whenever this occurs, since a state of conflict is absurd and manifestly repugnant to the most wise ordinance of God, there must necessarily exist some order or mode of procedure to remove the occasions of difference and contention, and to secure harmony in all things. This harmony has been not inaptly compared to that which exists between the body and the soul for the well-being of both one and the other, the separation of which brings irremediable harm to the body, since it extinguishes its very life.

Sed quod magis interest, quodque alias Nosmetipsi nec semel monuimus, quamvis principatus civilis non eodem, quo sacer, proxime spectet, nec iisdem eat itineribus, in potestate tamen gerenda obviam esse interdum alteri alter necessario debet. Est enim utriusque in eosdem imperium, nec raro fit, ut iisdem de rebus uterque, etsi non eadem ratione, decernat. Id quotiescumque usuveniat, cum confligere absurdum sit, sapientissimaeque voluntati Dei aperte repugnet, quemdam esse modum atque ordinem necesse est, ex quo, caussis contentionum certationumque sublatis, ratio concors in agendis rebus existat. Et huiusmodi concordiam non inepte similem coniunctioni dixere, quae animum inter et corpus intercedit, idque commodo utriusque partis: quarum distractio nominatim est perniciosa corpori, quippe cuius vitam extinguit.

LP, 18.

From his general review of liberalism, it its extreme dogmatic or ideological forms, to its more seeming moderate but equally inconsistent pragmatic forms, Leo XIII launches into an analysis of some of the more common "liberal" liberties or rights, and criticizes the liberal understanding or scope of these liberties or rights: the liberty of worship, liberty of speech and liberty of the press, and liberty of conscience. So much confusion is engendered by those who, wed to relativism or skepticism, or seeking to justify their own disordered appetites or immoral habits, would import license in worship, speech and press, and conscience, transforming license into liberty, and thereby making these rights theoretically or practically absolute, as if they transcended the very obligations of the natural and eternal law. It is, in fact, sheer error to suggest that liberty of worship, liberty of speech or the press, or liberty of conscience is a "safe harbor," a place where one may escape obedience to the law of nature and nature's God.

Whither shall I go from thy spirit? or whither shall I flee from thy face?
If I ascend into heaven, thou art there: if I descend into hell, thou art present.
If I take my wings early in the morning, and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea:
Even there also shall thy hand lead me: and thy right hand shall hold me.

(Psalm 138:7-10)

Liberty of religion, speech, the press, and conscience are not secular sanctuaries outside the pale of natural law or God's divine law, and those who think otherwise stand in the darkness of nothingness, which are the haunts of the Devil. For where there is not God, there is, by definition, nothing, or at least nothing real, and toward nothing is where the Devil trends. One should think there may be a lot of freethinkers and journalists in the Devil's retinue as he traipses to the Land of Nada, the Kingdom of Nihilo.

(continued)

Freedom and Law: Pope Leo XIII's Libertas praestantissimum, Part 4

A LIBERAL WILL SUFFER HEARTBURN at the next paragraphs in Leo XIII's encyclical Libertas praestantissimum. Indeed, the disquiet one may feel as one reads these parts of the encyclical dealing with liberalism may be a good indicator as to how much we have absorbed, and internalized, the liberal conventions of the day without even knowing it. (Another document that serves this salutory purpose may be the Syllabus of Errors issued during the pontificate of Pius IX.) These conventions have drawn us, as it were, away from the natural law main stream into a liberal distributary. Modern Westerners--Americans in particular--have a sort of liberalism as part of their civil religion, since there is more than a seed of liberalism, at least in its Lockean form, in the foundational documents and theories of the American revolution which began the American experiment. We have come to view liberalism as normal.

There is a certain freshness, boldness in Leo XIII's language, a "calling a spade a spade" type of style, a style more akin to the Jewish prophet than a Greek philosopher, or an unctuous diplomat, a style which is less circumspect, less reserved, and more biting than the more judicious language we have come to expect from papal encyclicals modernly. And yet, when it comes down to it, is it any less true?

But many there are who follow in the footsteps of Lucifer, and adopt as their own his rebellious cry, "I will not serve"; and consequently substitute for true liberty what is sheer and most foolish license. Such, for instance, are the men belonging to that widely spread and powerful organization, who, usurping the name of liberty, style themselves liberals.

Sed iam permulti Luciferum imitati, cuius est illa nefaria vox non serviam, libertatis nomine absurdam quamdam consectantur et meracam licentiam. Cuiusmodi sunt ex illa tam late fusa tamque pollenti disciplina homines, qui se, ducto a libertate nomine, Liberales appellari volunt.

LP, 14.

For Leo XIII, liberalism is rationalist or naturalist philosophy brought into the moral and political domain. "The fundamental doctrine of rationalism is the supremacy of the human reason, which, refusing due submission to the divine and eternal reason, proclaims its own independence, and constitutes itself the supreme principle and source and judge of truth." LP, 15. With a similar shrug and dismissal of the divine and eternal law, the liberals apply the same principle to the practical realm. Liberals ultimately "proclaim that every man is the law to himself," sibi quemque esse legem, thereby advance an ethical system that is essentially autonomous, "and which, under the guise of liberty, exonerates man from any obedience to the commands of God, and substitutes a boundless license." LP, 15. If this principle is applied to the political realm, we have entered into what Pope Benedict XVI would later call the tyranny of relativism, where the will of the majority determines right and wrong:

For, when once man is firmly persuaded that he is subject to no one, it follows that the efficient cause of the unity of civil society is not to be sought in any principle external to man, or superior to him, but simply in the free will of individuals; that the authority in the State comes from the people only; and that, just as every man's individual reason is his only rule of life, so the collective reason of the community should be the supreme guide in the management of all public affairs. Hence the doctrine of the supremacy of the greater number, and that all right and all duty reside in the majority.

Hoc enim fixo et persuaso, homini antistare neminem, consequitur caussam efficientem conciliationis civilis et societatis non in principio aliquo extra aut supra hominem posito, sed in libera voluntate singulorum esse quaerendam: potestatem publicam a multitudine velut a primo fonte repetendam, praetereaque, sicut ratio singulorum sola dux et norma agendi privatim est singulis, ita universorum esse oportere universis in rerum genere publicarum. Hinc plurimum posse plurimos: partemque populi maiorem universi iuris esse officiique effectricem.

LP, 15.

It is clear that the will of the majority does not define right. In a democratic form of government the majority, no less than one individual, is bound by the natural and eternal law, which alone determines right. A liberal democracy founded on relativism is a recipe for disaster for the very simple reason that it is repugnant to reason:

To refuse any bond of union between man and civil society, on the one hand, and God the Creator and consequently the supreme Law-giver, on the other, is plainly repugnant to the nature, not only of man, but of all created things; for, of necessity, all effects must in some proper way be connected with their cause; and it belongs to the perfection of every nature to contain itself within that sphere and grade which the order of nature has assigned to it, namely, that the lower should be subject and obedient to the higher.

Nullum siquidem velle homini aut societati civili cum Deo creatore ac proinde supremo omnium legislatore intercedere vinclum, omnino naturae repugnat, nec naturae hominis tantum, sed rerum omnium procreatarum: quia res omnes effectas cum caussa, a qua effectae sunt, aliquo esse aptas nexu necesse est: omnibusque naturis hoc convenit, hoc ad perfectionem singularum pertinet, eo se continere loco et gradu, quem naturalis ordo postulat, scilicet ut ei quod superius est, id quod est inferius subiiciatur et pareat.

LP, 15. It matters not what form of government a society finds itself under--democratic, aristocratic, regal--civil law, however engendered, remains subordinate to and must remain informed by, the natural law, that is to say, the eternal law.

The Upshot of Leo XIII's Libertas praestantissimum

Rejection of any principle of law outside man himself is a recipe for the corruption of both individual and society and it leads to eventual tyranny, for if man is the measure of all things, then man is the measure of what is right and wrong, and there is no appeal to reality itself: to nature, that is creation, and to God. Law has nothing to do with essence or form, but law becomes existential and formless. Law thing springs forth from the subjective, arbitrary will of man himself, to be formed as he sees fit. Usually, the form comes from an overruling and disordered passion: greed, lust, pride, power. Not ratio but libido is the principle of such law. Ultimately, the will that carries the most power determines what is most right. And this is no longer law.

Listen to the warnings which Leo XIII proclaimed in 1888 where the rejection of natural law would lead individuals vis-à-vis individual morality.

For, once ascribe to human reason the only authority to decide what is true and what is good, and the real distinction between good and evil is destroyed; honor and dishonor differ not in their nature, but in the opinion and judgment of each one; pleasure is the measure of what is lawful; and, given a code of morality which can have little or no power to restrain or quiet the unruly propensities of man, a way is naturally opened to universal corruption.

Sane reiecto ad humanam rationem et solam et unam veri bonique arbitrio, proprium tollitur boni et mali discrimen; turpia ab honestis non re, sed opinione iudicioque singulorum differunt: quod libeat, idem licebit ; constitutaque morum disciplina, cuius ad coercendos sedandosque motus animi turbidos nulla fere vis est, sponte fiet ad omnem vitae corruptelam aditus.

LP, 16.

The effect of such doctrines would have equally deleterious effect on public mores:

With reference also to public affairs: authority is severed from the true and natural principle whence it derives all its efficacy for the common good; and the law determining what it is right to do and avoid doing is at the mercy of a majority. Now, this is simply a road leading straight to tyranny.

In rebus autem publicis, potestas imperandi separatur a vero naturalique principio, unde omnem haurit virtutem efficientem boni communis: lex, de iis quae facienda fugiendave sunt statuens, maioris multitudinis permittitur arbitrio, quod quidem est iter ad tyrannicam dominationem proclive.

LP, 16.

It follows as the night the day, that once natural law is rejected, so will the public role of religion, which will be the last bastion against the tyrants. Neither natural law nor religion forming the characters of the citizens will require something other than conscience to hold them in check: "there will be nothing to hold them back but force, which of itself alone is powerless to keep their covetousness in check." LP, 16.

This may, perhaps, be the view of the more extreme liberals, and there are liberals who are more conservative or moderate in their views, and attempt to temper them, as it were, with some tie to natural and eternal law. Pope Leo XIII acknowledges that there are liberals that would seem more moderate or circumspect in their opinions, and it is to these theories that Leo XIII next turns in his encyclical Libertas praestantissimum.

(continued)

Freedom and Law: Pope Leo XIII's Libertas praestantissimum, Part 3

NATURAL LAW IS NOT ONLY THE FOUNDATION of the moral life of individual man, but also of his social combinations, his societies, in particular, the state. "What has been said of the liberty of individuals is no less applicable when considered as bound together in civil society." LP, 9. So Leo XIII turns from the true notion of individual, moral freedom--doing what one ought--to civil law and notions of civil liberties.

The law of the State, in fact, is nothing but the natural law writ in human law, at least for those kinds of cases where the positive law of the State concern "what is good or bad by its very nature," quod est bonum malumve natura, the so-called malum in se and the bonus in se.

For, what reason and the natural law do for individuals, that human law, promulgated for their good, does for the citizens of States. Of the laws enacted by men, some are concerned with what is good or bad by its very nature; and they command men to follow after what is right and to shun what is wrong, adding at the same time a suitable sanction. But such laws by no means derive their origin from civil society, because, just as civil society did not create human nature, so neither can it be said to be the author of the good which befits human nature, or of the evil which is contrary to it. Laws come before men live together in society, and have their origin in the natural, and consequently in the eternal, law. The precepts, therefore, of the natural law, contained bodily in the laws of men, have not merely the force of human law, but they possess that higher and more august sanction which belongs to the law of nature and the eternal law.

Quae vero de libertate singulorum dicta sunt, ea ad homines civili inter se societate coniunctos facile transferuntur. Nam quod ratio lexque naturalis in hominibus singulis, idem efficit in consociatis lex humana ad bonum commune civium promulgata. --Ex hominum legibus aliae in eo versantur quod est bonum malumve natura, atque alterum sequi praecipiunt, alterum fugere, adiuncta sanctione debita. Sed istiusmodi decreta nequaquam ducunt ab hominum societate principium, quia societas sicut humanam naturam non ipsa genuit, ita pariter nec bonum procreat naturae conveniens, nec malum naturae dissentaneum: sed potius ipsi hominum societati antecedunt, omninoque sunt a lege naturali ac propterea a lege aeterna repetenda. Iuris igitur naturalis praecepta, hominum comprehensa legibus, non vim solum habent legis humanae, sed praecipue illud multo altius multoque augustius complectuntur imperium, quod ab ipsa lege naturae et a lege aeterna proficiscitur.

LP, 9.

Bust of Leo XIII

With respect to these matters that are evil by nature or good by nature--those matters that relate to the laws that exist before men ever gather together as societies, those that have their origin in the natural and consequently the eternal law, e.g., the law against the intentional killing of an innocent life--the civil legislator has a duty before both God and men. The duty of the civil legislator, the charge, the burden, the "munus" on him, is to "keep the community in obedience by the adoption of a common discipline," obedientes facere cives, communi disciplina adhibita. It also has the complementary duty of "putting restraint upon refractory and viciously inclined men, so that, deterred from evil, they may turn to what is good, or at any rate may avoid causing trouble and disturbance to the State."* LP, 9.

There are other areas where the civil authority may pass laws that do not have the direct relationship with the natural or eternal law, but have only a more or less remote relationship to the law of nature, where the law of nature treats the subject matter only in a general and indefinite way. At the extreme, these laws may even involve matters that are morally indifferent. These matters are typically referred to as the area of the mala prohibita where something that is morally indifferent (e.g., driving on the left side of the road in most Western countries) is made wrong by law for purposes of the common good (preventing accidents by maintaining orderly use of the highways). It would also include areas where matters that are not, in themselves wrong in nature, are proscribed for reasons of the common good, the boni prohibita (e.g., laws against gambling, or laws prohibiting hunting during certain seasons). Even these may still be be generally referred to the natural law obligation of each person to contribute to public peace and prosperity and to life in common:

For instance, though nature commands all to contribute to the public peace and prosperity, whatever belongs to the manner, and circumstances, and conditions under which such service is to be rendered must be determined by the wisdom of men and not by nature herself. It is in the constitution of these particular rules of life, suggested by reason and prudence, and put forth by competent authority, that human law, properly so called, consists, binding all citizens to work together for the attainment of the common end proposed to the community, and forbidding them to depart from this end, and, in so far as human law is in conformity with the dictates of nature, leading to what is good, and deterring from evil.

LP, 9. In most cases, even these human laws bind in conscience because of their relationship to the natural, and therefore eternal, law.**

The natural and eternal law, however, places immediate constraints upon personal and communal behavior. It places restraint on the power of the legislator. There are certain matters that are outside the ability of the individual or the State to change. Neither the individual nor the State are autonomous from the natural law or eternal law. They act under, and not outside, the auspices of the natural and eternal law. LP, 10. In support of this notion, Leo XIII invokes the words of St. Augustine:

I think that you can see, at the same time, that there is nothing just and lawful in that temporal law, unless what men have gathered from this eternal law.

Simul etiam te videre arbitror in illa temporali [lege] nihil esse iustum atque legitimum, quod non ex hac aeterna [lege] sibi homines derivaverint.***

LP, 10.

The intrinsic limit on civil authorities (which is nothing other than the awareness that the State is not divine, but under God) translates to the principle that laws that contradict the natural law or eternal law have no force and effect. They are nullities:

If, then, by anyone in authority, something be sanctioned out of conformity with the principles of right reason, and consequently hurtful to the commonwealth, such an enactment can have no binding force of law, as being no rule of justice, but certain to lead men away from that good which is the very end of civil society.

Si quid igitur ab aliqua potestate sanciatur, quod a principiis rectae rationis dissideat, sitque reipublicae perniciosum, vim legis nullam haberet, quia nec regula iustitiae esset, et homines a bono cui nata societas est, abduceret.

LP, 10.

Later in his encyclical, Leo XIII reiterates the principle, with greater clarity and fervor:

But where the power to command is wanting, or where a law is enacted contrary to reason, or to the eternal law, or to some ordinance of God, obedience is unlawful, lest, while obeying man, we become disobedient to God. Thus, an effectual barrier being opposed to tyranny, the authority in the State will not have all its own way, but the interests and rights of all will be safeguarded - the rights of individuals, of domestic society, and of all the members of the commonwealth; all being free to live according to law and right reason; and this, as we have shown, true liberty consists.

Verum ubi imperandi ius abest, vel si quidquam praecipiatur rationi, legi aeternae, imperio Dei contrarium, rectum est non parere, scilicet hominibus, ut Deo pareatur. Sic praecluso ad tyrannidem aditu, non omnia pertrahet ad se principatus: sua sunt salva iura singulis civibus, sua societati domesticae, cunctisque reipublicae membris, data omnibus verae copia libertatis, quae in eo est, quemadmodum demonstravimus, ut quisque possit secundum leges rectamque rationem vivere.

LP, 13.

Pope Leo XIII concludes this portion of his encyclical thus:

Therefore, the nature of human liberty, however it be considered, whether in individuals or in society, whether in those who command or in those who obey, supposes the necessity of obedience to some supreme and eternal law, which is no other than the authority of God, commanding good and forbidding evil. And, so far from this most just authority of God over men diminishing, or even destroying their liberty, it protects and perfects it, for the real perfection of all creatures is found in the prosecution and attainment of their respective ends; but the supreme end to which human liberty must aspire is God.

Natura igitur libertatis humanae, quocumque in genere consideretur, tam in personis singulis quam in consociatis, nec minus in iis qui imperant quam in iis qui parent, necessitatem complectitur obtemperandi summae cuidam aeternaeque rationi, quae nihil est aliud nisi auctoritas iubentis, vetantis Dei. Atque hoc iustissimum in homines imperium Dei tantum abest ut libertatem tollat aut ullo modo diminuat, ut potius tueatur ac perflciat. Suum quippe finem consectari et assequi, omnium naturarum est vera perfectio: supremus autem finis, quo libertas aspirare debet humana, Deus est.

LP, 11.

There were those in Leo XIII's day (and there are those in our day) that resist this sort of notion: that liberty, both individual and communal, is circumscribed by, indeed, defined with reference to the natural law or eternal law. They err both by excess and defect. One group errs by excess in individual liberty, subscribing a false notion of individual liberty wherein the individual is by nature free to do what he pleases, instead of doing what he ought. These err by defect in arguing that the state, therefore, has no business "legislating morality." These are the liberals. Another group errs by ascribing to the State powers it does not have (for example, powers to take private property), thereby adopting a defective notion of the natural law as it relates to the individual. Therein we may place communists or socialists. It is to the first group--the liberals--and specifically their erroneous theories of law and society, that Pope Leo XIII next turns. And in doing so tramples on the conventional shibboleths of modern society often supported, not by reason, but by propaganda, and often held, not for reasons of conscience, but as rationalizations, as cover, for inordinate desires.

__________________________________
*It is apparent that with respect to certain acts against the natural law, such as abortion, homosexuality, and laws pertaining to marriage, the modern State has wholly lapsed in its duty. The abandonment of its fundamental duties raises the question of whether the modern State, as a result of such abandonment, is legitimate, and, if legitimate, brutally oblivious to injustice and in serious state of disrepair. If a legislator has a duty to pass laws that uphold fundamental moral norms derived from the natural and eternal law, and the executive the duty to enforce them, it follows that we have a right, by natural justice, to insist that they comply with those duties.
**To go further into this are of whether human civil laws bind in conscience, one gets into the area of gradations or distinctions in civil laws, and into the controversial areas of, for example, whether a human law, though unjust ought to be obeyed for purposes of the common good, whether a human law may be disobeyed or not enforced for prudential reasons, whether a law is being enforced or has fallen into desuetude and so we are not under an obligation to follow it, whether we are dealing with purely penal laws (leges pure poenales) in which case they do not obligate in conscience with respect to the act prohibited or proscribed, but obligated in conscience in the matter of the payment of penalty, and so forth. Pope Leo XIII is therefore speaking generally.
***The quote is from St. Augustine's dialogue De libero arbitrio (On Free Will), I.6.15.

Freedom and Law: Pope Leo XIII's Libertas praestantissimum, Part 2

CONTINUING WITH OUR REVIEW OF LEO XIII'S encyclical Libertas praestantissimum, we recall briefly our last post which ended with the thought that our natural human liberty has a defect because our reason may adjudge as good and the will may seek as good things that are not good, but are merely evils masquerading as good, seeming goods. Our natural liberty must be therefore be enlightened and strengthened by law so as to provide guidance to our reason about what is a real good. "[T]here must be law, that is, a fixed rule of teaching what is to be done and what is to be left undone." LP, 7. Since, as we have seen, judgment precedes choice, and reason is what guides judgment, "reason prescribes to the will what it should seek after or shun, in order to the eventual attainment of man's last end, for the sake of which his actions ought to be performed." LP, 7. "This ordination of reason is called law." Iamvero haec ordinatio rationis lex nominatur. Law is, then, this ordinatio rationis, the ordinance of reason, which guides reasoned judgment and determines the good which is to be sought. It follows that law is essential for the right ordering of reason, the right formulation of judgment, and hence for the right direction of the will.

Nothing more foolish can be uttered or conceived than the notion that, because man is free by nature, he is therefore exempt from law. Were this the case, it would follow that to become free we must be deprived of reason; whereas the truth is that we are bound to submit to law precisely because we are free by our very nature. For, law is the guide of man's actions; it turns him toward good by its rewards, and deters him from evil by its punishments.

Nihilque tam perversum praeposterumque dici cogitarive posset quam illud, hominem, quia natura liber est, idcirco esse oportere legis expertem: quod si ita esset, hoc profecto consequeretur, necesse ad liber tatem esse non cohaerere cum ratione: cum contra longe verissimum sit, idcirco legi oportere subesse, quia est natura liber. Isto modo dux homini in agendo lex est, eumdemque praemiis poenisque propositis ad recte faciendum allicit, a peccando deterret.

LP, 7.

For man, the supreme law is the natural law:

Foremost in this office comes the natural law, which is written and engraved in the mind of every man; and this is nothing but our reason, commanding us to do right and forbidding sin.

Talis est princeps omnium lex naturalis, quae scripta est et insculpta in hominum animis singulorum, quia ipsa est humana ratio recte facere iubens et peccare vetans.

LP, 8. Law, however, implies authority, as "authority is the one and only foundation of all law," tota [lex] in auctoritate nititur: all law rests upon authority. Law must be promulgated. Law requires sanction for its breach. Law therefore requires a "voice," a vox, an authoritative voice, a vox auctoritatis. LP, 8. Where is the vox auctoritatis legis naturalis to be found?

We know where it is not to be found. It is not to be found in man. When it comes to the natural law, man is not autonomous. Man does not make his own fundamental law. He is not the rule of his own actions. If he were, then he would not be bound by his own law. Selflaw is not law. As the jurist Ulpian noted long ago, a prince is not bound by his laws: princeps legibus solutus est. If man were the source of his own standards, his own prince, then he would be governed by whim: for what pleases the prince has the force of law, quod principi placuit legis habet vigorem. But man is not the prince of the natural law. There must be an authority, a voice outside of man to account for the binding nature of the natural law. If it were not binding, if it were self-prescribed, it would not be law. All, therefore, points to God as the vox auctoritatis the vox legis naturalis. The princeps is not man, but is the summus princeps, the summus rex, the summus Deus, God who is the Eternal Reason and Eternal Law.

It follows, therefore, that the law of nature is the same thing as the eternal law, implanted in rational creatures, and inclining them to their right action and end; and can be nothing else but the eternal reason of God, the Creator and Ruler of all the world.

Ergo consequitur, ut naturae lex sit ipsa lex aeterna, insita in iis qui ratione utuntur, eosque inclinans ad debitum actum et finem, eaque est ipsa aeterna ratio creatoris universumque mundum gubernantis Dei.

LP, 8. The natural law, which is nothing but the eternal law writ in a voice man can understand, is therefore the fundamental rule, the ratio ordinis, which man should follow in forming his reasoned judgments which direct his will to the seeking of good. The natural law, however, is not the only aid given man. "To this rule of action and restraint of evil," agendi regulam peccandique frenos, which the natural law is, "God has vouchsafed to give special and most suitable aids for strengthening and ordering the human will." "The first and most excellent of these is the power of His divine grace whereby the mind can be enlightened and the will wholesomely invigorated and moved to the constant pursuit of the good." LP, 8.

Pope John Paul II in Camden Park, Baltimore, Maryland

Here, the natural law and grace work hand-in-glove, "for grace works inwardly in man and in harmony with his natural inclinations." The author of grace is the author of the natural law. The Redeemer is the Creator. "As the Angelic Doctor [Thomas Aquinas] points out, it is because divine grace comes from the Author of nature that it is so admirably adapted to be the safeguard of all natures, and to maintain the character, efficiency, and operations of each." LP, 8.

What a marvel! That God who makes law is God who gives grace! What human legislator is so solicitous that he both gives the law and the means to fulfill it?

Every single man and woman is therefore bound by the natural law. The natural law is the voice of the eternal law in us, a voice which guides each of our individual actions, a voice which guides our natural or human liberty, which orders it to the good, and which leads us from mere natural or human freedom to moral liberty, which is liberty pure and simple.

We might briefly turn from the Pope to the wisdom of Benjamin Franklin in his Poor Richard's Almanack:

Would you live with ease, do what you ought, and not what you please.*

If "ease" is defined as freedom, then Ol' Ben is on point.

What is true for the individual liberty or freedom is true for a people, true for a civil society. In his Homily at Oriole's Park at the Camden Yards in Baltimore, Maryland on October 8, 1995, John Paul II had the following to say to America:

Surely it is important for America that the moral truths which make freedom possible should be passed on to each new generation. Every generation of Americans needs to know that freedom consists not in doing what we like, but in having the right to do what we ought.**

So it is from the individual to society to which Pope Leo XIII next turns in his encyclical Libertas praestantissimum.

(continued)
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*Benjamin Franklin, Poor Richard's Almanack: Selections from the Apothegms and Proverbs (USC Publishing, 1914), No. 658
**Pope John Paul II, Homily at Oriole Park at Camden Yards, Baltimore, Maryland, Sunday, October 8, 1995, 7. Available at http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/john_paul_ii/homilies/1995/documents/hf_jp-ii_hom_19951008_baltimore_en.html.

The Disfigured Face: Pope Leo XIII to the Rescue

TO RESTORE CHRISTIAN PHILOSOPHY was the aim of Pope Leo XIII, and the Magna Charta of his efforts was the Encyclical Aeterni Patris, presented to the world on August 4, 1879. We have reviewed in the last three blog postings, the errors of John Locke, Immanuel Kant, and G. W. F. Hegel. These three (and many others) spouted "false conclusions concerning divine and human things," which were nothing other than "intellectual sins." And since, "if [one's] intellect sins at all his will soon follows," these errors had been institutionalized in modern government and law, promoted by the academe, and swallowed whole, albeit in various levels of understanding, by the masses of men. AP, 2. Even the institution of the family--the domestic society--was among its victims. Among the "intellectual sins" and "false conclusions" was the rejection of ontologically-based ethics, ethics based upon being, upon man as he existed, upon his nature, a nature supplied him by God. The cure for these social and domestic evils, as Leo XIII saw it, was revival of Christian philosophy, and the place to find it in its most distilled, reliable form was in the philosophical work of St. Thomas Aquinas. For it was he who, in the words of Cajetan repeated by Leo XIII in his Encyclical, "in a certain way seems to have inherited the intellect of all" the "ancient doctors of the Church." AP, 17. St. Thomas in persona sua was a summa philosophiae. A return to the philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas was what Leo XIII viewed as necessary to bring society into proper order.

For the teachings of Thomas on the true meaning of liberty, which at this time is running into license, on the divine origin of all authority, on laws and their force, on the paternal and just rule of princes, on obedience to the higher powers, on mutual charity one toward another--on all these and kindred subjects--have very great and invincible force to overcome those principles of the new order which are well known to be dangerous to the peaceful order of things and to public safety.

The new world order, the novus ordo seclorum ushered in by Locke, by Kant, by Hegel, and countless others who had separated Faith from Reason, could only be overcome by Thomistic philosophical principles. What this meant in the discipline of moral philosophy is that we had to return to the ontologically-based eudaemonistic ethics of St. Thomas Aquinas, if there was ever to be any hope for the restoration of any peaceful, any sane order. Reason had to be first restored, so that Faith would follow.


Pope Leo XIII's Encyclical had tremendous influence, one that "would be difficult to overestimate." Cortest, 69. But there had been grass-roots efforts, so to speak, at Thomistic revival and in the efforts to apply natural law principles to the social problems that were confronting society. In some ways, the encyclical was confirming something that was already happening. However, the encyclical bore more fruit than most.

In a way difficult to understand in terms of today's indifferent reactions to encyclicals, Aeterni Patris bestowed a decisive impetus upon the budding Thomistic revival.

John F. X. Knasas, Being and Some Twentieth-Century Thomists (Fordham 2003), 2. The Italian Jesuit Luigi Taparelli D'Azeglio (1793-1862), for example, the man perhaps responsible for coining the term "social justice," co-founder of what was to become the influential journal Civiltà Cattolica, inventor of the violicembolo (symphonium), first rector of the restored Roman College, and author of numerous works on political and social philosophy, including the two-volume work on natural law and natural right, Saggio teoretico di diritto naturale appogiato sul fatto (A Theoretical Treatise on Natural Right Based on Fact), had experienced a "conversion" to Thomism, and had made it his life's work from that time to promote this philosophy and to instill it in a number of disciples. As Thomas Behr describes this work in his article on Taparelli:

Taparelli’s major work, the Saggio teoretico di diritto naturale appoggiato sul fatto, that is, the Theoretical Treatise on Natural Right Based on Fact, resulted from his responsibilities at the Collegio Massimo in Palermo where he had been assigned—indeed demoted—and had been given a course in natural law to teach. He could find no textbook that was not filled with misguided and often dangerous doctrines from thinkers such as Burlamaqui, for example, and other popularizers of Pufendorf and Grotius, not to mention those who divulgated the thought of Hobbes, Locke, or Rousseau. After spending his first year refuting those works, he felt compelled to put together his own treatise, between 1840 and 1843. Taparelli embarked on his project, braced with the conviction that German idealism and French eclecticism had succeeded in undermining Lockean empiricism and had made possible the rebuilding of metaphysics, and natural law from the ground up.

Behr,* 101. But there were those before and after Taparelli, among whom we can include Canon Vincenzo Buzzetti (1777-1824), a maestro at the Vincentian Collegio Alberoni in Piacenza, "who began his intellectual life as a disciple of John Locke, learned his Thomism and became convinced of its value . . . [coming] to recognize that the modern period had not produced the kind of philosophical guidance for Catholic theologians that would keep Catholic theology from tumbling into eclecticism." Romanus Cessario, O.P., A Short History of Thomism (Catholic University of America, 2005). Canon Buzzetti's pupils, the Jesuits Serafino Sordi (1793-1865) and his brother Domenico, would later become the teachers of, and along with Taparelli, influence the thought of the Pecci brothers, Giuseppe Pecci (1807-1890) and Vincenzo Pecci, the latter better known as Pope Leo XIII. Another that may be named is the German Jesuit Josef Kleutgen (1811-1883), who had a hand in preparing the first draft of Aeterni Patris, and whose role in advancing Thomistic philosophy earned him the name Thomas redivivus, Thomas reborn, and the praise of Pope Leo XIII, who eulogized him with the words, "erat princeps philosophorum," he was a prince of philosophers. Similarly, one can mention the Italian Jesuit Matteo Liberatore (1810-1892), editor of the Civiltà Cattolica beginning in 1850, and author of more than forty published works. The Dominican Tommaso Zigliara (1833-1893), a close friend of Leo XIII, author of numerous works on St. Thomas, and superintendent of the Leonine edition of the works of St. Thomas is another light of the early Thomistic revival.

The influence of St. Thomas on the thought of Leo XIII is clearly seen in his later encyclical, Libertas. Published on June 20, 1888, this encyclical's discussion of human law and its source in both the natural law and eternal law is nothing other than distilled Thomism.

Nothing more foolish can be uttered or conceived than the notion that, because man is free by nature, he is therefore exempt from law. Were this the case, it would follow that to become free we must be deprived of reason; whereas the truth is that we are bound to submit to law precisely because we are free by our very nature. For, law is the guide of man's actions; it turns him toward good by its rewards, and deters him from evil by its punishments.

Foremost in this office comes the natural law, which is written and engraved in the mind of every man; and this is nothing but our reason, commanding us to do right and forbidding sin. Nevertheless, all prescriptions of human reason can have force of law only inasmuch as they are the voice and the interpreters of some higher power on which our reason and liberty necessarily depend. For, since the force of law consists in the imposing of obligations and the granting of rights, authority is the one and only foundation of all law - the power, that is, of fixing duties and defining rights, as also of assigning the necessary sanctions of reward and chastisement to each and all of its commands. But all this, clearly, cannot be found in man, if, as his own supreme legislator, he is to be the rule of his own actions. It follows, therefore, that the law of nature is the same thing as the eternal law, implanted in rational creatures, and inclining them to their right action and end; and can be nothing else but the eternal reason of God, the Creator and Ruler of all the world.

L, 7, 8. Liberalism, nothing other than a false view of liberty, was in Leo XIII's eyes vicious and spiritually deadly because it constituted a treasonable abuse of man's liberty; indeed, it was not liberty at all, but it was the act of a man who was already enslaved in his rebellion.

Hence, these followers of liberalism deny the existence of any divine authority to which obedience is due, and proclaim that every man is the law to himself; from which arises that ethical system which they style independent morality, and which, under the guise of liberty, exonerates man from any obedience to the commands of God, and substitutes a boundless license.

L, 15. It was the eternal law, that in man is denominated the natural law, that was the ultimate standard of all individual morality and communal life, of civil society, of its political institutions, of its laws:

From this it is manifest that the eternal law of God is the sole standard and rule of human liberty, not only in each individual man, but also in the community and civil society which men constitute when united. Therefore, the true liberty of human society does not consist in every man doing what he pleases, for this would simply end in turmoil and confusion, and bring on the overthrow of the State; but rather in this, that through the injunctions of the civil law all may more easily conform to the prescriptions of the eternal law. Likewise, the liberty of those who are in authority does not consist in the power to lay unreasonable and capricious commands upon their subjects, which would equally be criminal and would lead to the ruin of the commonwealth; but the binding force of human laws is in this, that they are to be regarded as applications of the eternal law, and incapable of sanctioning anything which is not contained in the eternal law, as in the principle of all law.

L, 10. Pope Leo XIII's Thomism exercised itself in addressing the social concerns of the day. It was the ultimate foundation of his encyclical Rerum novarum, an encyclical dealing with the issue of capital and labor and the condition of workers, and which ushered in the whole series of Papal encyclicals dealing with social and economic issues. Beginning with Rerum novarum, these papal encyclicals--Quadragesimo anno by Pius XI, Mater et magistra by John XXIII, Octagesima adveniens and Populorum progressio of Paul VI, and John Paul II's Laborem exercens, Sollicitudo rei socialis, and Centesimus annus, and, most recently, Caritas in veritate by Benedict XVI. It is unfortunate that there is no government that has the goal to implement the social doctrine of the Catholic Church, which is nothing other than prudential application of the natural moral law to matters of civil society and economic life.

The legacy of Leo XIII's Aeterni Patris is great, too great to be summarized here. It will have to be a topic, perhaps, for another day. What is important is the commitment it shows to the thought of St. Thomas Aquinas, and to the notion of ontological ethics which the unholy trinity of Locke, Kant, and Hegel, in various ways, rejected. An ontological ethic will reject the liberalism of Locke, the perverse autonomy of Kant, and the bizarre deification of the State of Hegel.

In our next posting we will review the conclusions of Cortest in the final chapter of his book The Disfigured Face, one entitled "The Survival of Tradition."

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*Thomas C. Behr, "Luigi Taparelli D'Azeglio, S.J. (1793-1862) and the Development of Scholastic Natural-Law Thought as a Science of Society and Politics," Journal of Markets & Morality (Vol. 6, No. 1) (Spring 2003), 99-115.