Sep 27 Sat
Should the power of the authority have no limits?
Pope Leo answered this question, following Saint Augustine, encouraging the members of the International Catholic Legislators Network “to infuse the earthly society with the values of God’s Kingdom” to allow for “authentic human flourishing.”
The Pope went further, asking, “How can we accomplish this?” After clarifying that human flourishing “depends on which ‘love’ (i.e., the world’s or of God’s) we choose to organize our society.”
He urged lawmakers “to work for a world where power is tamed by conscience, and law is at the service of human dignity.” One cannot help but hear resonances of “America the Beautiful,” in which, as a nation, we beg God to “confirm thy soul in self-control, thy liberty in law.”
Pope Leo’s reliance on the principle of limited government appeared previously while noting that the chief means for government leaders “to build harmonious and peaceful civil societies” is to “invest in the family... a small but genuine society, and prior to all civil society.”
Consequently, the aims of a political entity are not achieved merely by designating some authority to achieve them, but by supporting the “small societies” that the authority is appointed to serve, in the first place.
Pope Leo asserted that “an essential reference point is the natural law, written not by human hands, but acknowledged as valid in all times and places, and having its most convincing argument in nature itself.”
Thus, “if law is at the service of human dignity,” then human dignity can only truly be served when natural law places natural limits on positive law. Thus, the law should not go against the nature of things.
Pope Leo wants to draw attention to two possible transgressions of governmental limits.
The first is that totalitarian regimes are an affront to human freedom and an assault on human dignity.
The second is the flipside of the first. It’s that civil authority has a certain legitimacy of its own and does not only exist to serve the “small societies” – i.e., families – that are subject to it.
Earlier, in Quadragesimo Anno, we read that “government must not be thought a mere guardian of law and of good order, but rather must put forth every effort so that … both public and individual well-being may develop spontaneously out of the very structure and administration of the State.”
Still, “a fair freedom of action must be left both to individual citizens and to families, only on condition that the common good be preserved and no wrong is done to any individual.”
Thus, the State also has a real, proactive role to play in pursuing the common good, but this power is limited (non-totalitarian). The State’s responsibility is not just a defensive role in ensuring that obstacles don’t get in the way of families pursuing it.