On the Nature of Law: Divine, Natural, Ecclesiastical, Civil, Positive

According to St Thomas Aquinas, a Law is

•A precept of Right Reason

•For the Common Good

•Promulgated by the legitimate Authority.

Thus an attempt at a law that is either impossible, or unreasonable, or not directed to the Common Good, or not validly promulgated, is not a law at all but an abuse of authority which we are under a moral obligation to resist, otherwise we are participating in the sin by compliance with the offence against justice.

The law subsists in several categories, the later ones "inside" the earlier.

•First is Divine Law which flows from the Nature of God Himself and the Nature of Reality..

•Within this is Natural Law which flows from the nature and structure of Creation, and within this the nature and structure of Man, body and soul.

•Within this again is Ecclesiastical Law, which derives from Christ's establishment of His Church.

•Ecclesiastical Law contains general principles and

•Particular or

•Positive Law which derive from the lawful authority, derived from Christ, of appointed lawmakers within the Church. In general, these are collected and set out in the code of Canon Law.

•Civil Law is that part of Positive Law that "Renders unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's". A Civil Law that contradicts or nullifies Ecclesiastical or Natural or Divine Law is ipso facto invalid.

Holy Mother Church helps us not least by providing Positive Laws to guide our daily conduct, and then enforcing them. In recent years, ,ost unfortunately, very little is being done to enfore some of the more unpopular laws, for example against artificial contraception.

I am not writing this to criticise the Church, but to point to a fact which necessitates our being extra vigilant that we hear the authentic voice of the Bride of Christ, which can be none other than a faithful echo of that of the Bridegroom.

In the very nature of things, a Law cannot contradict one on a higher level of this hierarchy. An attempt to promulgate a Positive Law that contradicted the Natural or the Divine Law would be ipso facto invalid. Thus no conceivable Positive Law could legalise direct abortion.

I submit that contraception in itself contradicts the highest category, Divine Law, inasmuch as it usurps Divine Authority in the matter of the creation of immortal souls destined for an eternity of bliss.

Artificially increasing one's fertility would seem to contradict at least the Natural Law. One can be sure of pleasing God if he stays within the Commandments that He has instituted.

M.Ó Fearghail