Ratzinger, Joseph, Western Culture Today and Tomorrow - Addressing Fundamental Issues, Ignatius Press, San Francisco, 2019.
Part III - 'Responsibility for Peace', Chapter 1: 'In Search of Peace', Sections 1 ('Europe at war and after the war') and 2 ('The deveolpment of the world situation after the war').
Address given by Card. Ratzinger on the 60th anniversary of D-Day (6 June 1944), when the Allies landed in Normandy, France, to free Europe from Hitler (suicided 30 April 1945, with Germany surrendering 9 May 1945.
The Nazi party had gotten hold of power in Germany and used the state, including its legitimate claims on citizens, arbitrarily for its purposes. Rom 13:1-7.
Both in Hitler’s Germany and Stalin’s Russia power was used to serve the party, a group, and the state became an instrument of injustice, lies and ‘darkening of consciences’.
Pius XI courageously unveiled the errors of Nazi ideology in his famous encyclical Mit brennender Sorge in March 1937, just months before the II World War broke out. In the document entitled after its opening words (‘...with deep anxiety and growing surprise...’) the pope addresses ‘the Catholics of the German Empire’ (40). He points out the aspects of that ideology contrary to our faith (7-9), reaffirms key tenets of Revelation (10-28) and firmly highlights God as the basis of morality (29) and appeals to objective, ‘natural law’ based on the rationality of all men even without direct reference to Revelation (30), including religious liberty and freedom of education (31).
The war against the Nazi regime broke the cycle of criminality, lies and injustice and brought back order, peace and justice, setting power at the service of the law. That’s why Ratzinger calls it ‘a just war’.
In his view, ‘a commitment to peace is above all a commitment to a form of law that guarantees justice for the individual and for the entire community’.
This commitment in Europe was formed thanks to the work of prominent Christians such as Churchill (nominal), Adenauer, Schuman and De Gasperi (all three Catholics).
In Ratzinger’s view, ‘the driving force behind’ the achievement and construction of peace was ‘the connection between political action and morality’, because ‘the inner criterion of all politics is found in those moral values which we do not invent but only recognize and which are the same for all men’. This is the concept that in the Catholic tradition has been called ‘natural law’.
The Christian faith had undergone a process of confrontation with and clarification after the Enlightenment from the XVII century onwards. The re-elaboration of Catholic thought in view of this challenge is still underway―an example being the Habermas-Ratzinger debate we analysed in the last session.
Now, however, our faith had to face the rise of nationalism at the end of the XIX century and the totalitarian ideologies and regimes that came about in the XX century, most eminently National Socialism in Germany and Marxist-Lenninist Socialism in Russia. In both cases the state (and the law) were subjected to and at the service of ‘the Party’.
Through these men and others who directly lived in those regimes like Bishop Clemens August Graf von Galen, Lutheran Pastor and theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Hans and Sophie Scholl and Fr. Alfred Delp in Germany; Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Father Aleksandr Men and Blessed Catholic Exarch Leonid Feodorov in Russia; Cardinal József Mindszenty in Hungary; Blessed Cardinal Alojzije Stepinac in Yugoslavia; or Father Jerzy Popiełuszko and Cardinal Karol Wojtyla in Poland, Christianity presented a very unequal battle in terms of material resources but unmovable in its spiritual consistency.
When on 13 May 1935 Stalin asked the Foreign French Minister Pierre Laval ‘how many divisions does [the pope] have’ he clearly did not think the representative of a religion counted much in realpolitik terms. Little did he guess that a Successor of Peter would be instrumental in the collapse of totalitarian socialism in Europe in the 1980s.
When a totalitarian ideology is presented with a section of reality that it cannot subjugate or control, its credibility as totalitarian trashes to the ground.
Among other elements, that of natural (rational) law is essential in combatting not only the totalitarian regimes of the XX century but also the new elites imposing the relativist, scientifist and other creeds to societies in the XXI.
It can be the basis too of dialogue and reconstruction for those societies that have become deeply divided in Africa (Somalia, Rwanda, Liberia, Congo today) and elsewhere (ex-Yugoslavia), as well as to face the contemporary scourges of terrorism and organised crime, and the current tendencies away from global exchange and cooperation in international relations, and political polarisation in Western countries.
Choose one contemporary context and explain how you would use the principles of natural (moral) law enunciated in the Catechism to help solve contested issues societies are facing.
1954 Man participates in the wisdom and goodness of the Creator who gives him mastery over his acts and the ability to govern himself with a view to the true and the good.
The natural law expresses the original moral sense which enables man to discern by reason the good and the evil, the truth and the lie:
The natural law is written and engraved in the soul of each and every man, because it is human reason ordaining him to do good and forbidding him to sin . . . But this command of human reason would not have the force of law if it were not the voice and interpreter of a higher reason to which our spirit and our freedom must be submitted.5
1955 The "divine and natural" law6 shows man the way to follow so as to practice the good and attain his end. the natural law states the first and essential precepts which govern the moral life. It hinges upon the desire for God and submission to him, who is the source and judge of all that is good, as well as upon the sense that the other is one's equal. Its principal precepts are expressed in the Decalogue. This law is called "natural," not in reference to the nature of irrational beings, but because reason which decrees it properly belongs to human nature:
Where then are these rules written, if not in the book of that light we call the truth? In it is written every just law; from it the law passes into the heart of the man who does justice, not that it migrates into it, but that it places its imprint on it, like a seal on a ring that passes onto wax, without leaving the ring.7
The natural law is nothing other than the light of understanding placed in us by God; through it we know what we must do and what we must avoid. God has given this light or law at the creation.8
1956 The natural law, present in the heart of each man and established by reason, is universal in its precepts and its authority extends to all men. It expresses the dignity of the person and determines the basis for his fundamental rights and duties:
For there is a true law: right reason. It is in conformity with nature, is diffused among all men, and is immutable and eternal; its orders summon to duty; its prohibitions turn away from offense .... To replace it with a contrary law is a sacrilege; failure to apply even one of its provisions is forbidden; no one can abrogate it entirely.9
1957 Application of the natural law varies greatly; it can demand reflection that takes account of various conditions of life according to places, times, and circumstances. Nevertheless, in the diversity of cultures, the natural law remains as a rule that binds men among themselves and imposes on them, beyond the inevitable differences, common principles.
1958 The natural law is immutable and permanent throughout the variations of history;10 it subsists under the flux of ideas and customs and supports their progress. The rules that express it remain substantially valid. Even when it is rejected in its very principles, it cannot be destroyed or removed from the heart of man. It always rises again in the life of individuals and societies:
Theft is surely punished by your law, O Lord, and by the law that is written in the human heart, the law that iniquity itself does not efface.11
1959 The natural law, the Creator's very good work, provides the solid foundation on which man can build the structure of moral rules to guide his choices. It also provides the indispensable moral foundation for building the human community. Finally, it provides the necessary basis for the civil law with which it is connected, whether by a reflection that draws conclusions from its principles, or by additions of a positive and juridical nature.
1960 The precepts of natural law are not perceived by everyone clearly and immediately. In the present situation sinful man needs grace and revelation so moral and religious truths may be known "by everyone with facility, with firm certainty and with no admixture of error."12 The natural law provides revealed law and grace with a foundation prepared by God and in accordance with the work of the Spirit.