Eternal law, natural law, human law.
Eternal law, natural law, human law.
Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre teaching Pope Leo XIII encyclical Human Liberty (Libertas Praestantissimum, June 20, 1888)
Against the Heresies: Papal Encyclicals Condemning Modern Errors Infecting the Church and Society (1997), transcription of pp. 140-142
Right Reason is Ordered to the End
…What, then, is the definition of the law? Pope Leo XIII gives a definition:
"The 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 all his actions ought to be performed. This ordination of reason is called law."
It is the road sign on the route that we must follow. It is also what justifies the law. It makes it possible to distinguish between good and bad laws, those that direct our reason well and those that do not. A bad law is not a law: it is no longer an ordinatio rationis, because it goes against reason. One must disobey it. We read:
"In man's free will, therefore, or in the moral necessity of our voluntary acts being in accordance with reason, lies the very root of the necessity of law. 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 are free by our very nature. For, law is the guide of man's actions; it turns him towards good by its rewards, and deters him from evil by its punishments."
Eternal Law, Natural Law, Human Law
In this first part of the encyclical, the Pope applies himself to explain the reason for the law in relation to freedom. It is then that the distinction appears between the eternal law, the natural law, and human law. The natural law is that:
"...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."
And human law is nothing else but the application of the natural law to society by the authorities. The Pope adds:
"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."
So the natural law depends intimately upon the eternal law, the law that is in God, the supreme legislator:
"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."
The Necessity of Human Law
These considerations are very important, because they establish the necessity of our obedience to law. The law isn't arbitrary; [e]ven the eternal law is not the decree of an arbitrary and obscure will, but the work of divine wisdom; the natural law isn't arbitrary, since it corresponds to the good of our nature; neither is human law, as it must be in conformity with the natural law]; it must always correspond to the superior law, and, consequently, to the eternal law.
Human laws, ecclesiastical laws as well as those of the civil authority, must be in conformity with the law of the Creator who made nature itself. This is what must guide our obedience:
"For what reason and the natural law do for individuals, that human law, promulgated for their good, does for the citizens of States."
But there are some enactments of the civil authority:
"...which do not follow directly but somewhat remotely, from the natural law, and decide many points which the law of nature treats only in a general and indefinite way. 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 itself."
Hence there is a wide domain that must be specified by the authorities, whence the need of a civil code of law, as there is the canon law in the Church, which must always be in relation to the fundamental law, which is at once both the natural law and the eternal law. Human law can never prescribe things contrary to the eternal law:
"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."
Memorize this magnificent definition of moral liberty in society, what civil liberty consists in, and notice the necessary relation between civil law and the eternal law:
"...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 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."
This is what makes the force of civil laws:
"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."
It would not even be a law!
Commentary
Along with 2ndSmartestGuy and many other people, I exhort those who understand the scale and scope of the crimes, "Do NOT comply."
It’s a call to conscientious, rational non-compliance with crimes being committed by corrupted civil authorities who fully understand the illicit control-and-cull program they are funding and directing, and also non-compliance with crimes being committed by millions of ordinary people who erroneously believe what they are doing is for the common good, or understand that what they’re doing is bad and wrong, but follow orders — given by the corrupted civil authorities — and commit the acts anyway.
Sometimes readers express grief and frustration at the seeming inadequacy of acts of noncompliance.
I think it’s important to recognize that acts of non-compliance are not only a refusal to participate in evil.
Non-compliance is not passive.
Acts of non-compliance with evil are, at the same moment, positive, affirmative acts that uphold and embody obedience to the true law that has been temporarily eclipsed by Satan and rampant sinfulness and corruption among the ruling classes of human societies.
Each act of non-compliance with the evil intrinsic to disordered, inversive civil laws that reward crimes and punish virtue — each moment in which you are not lying, succumbing to fear, wearing a mask, keeping distant from family and friends, undergoing a lethal injection, and each moment you are not badgering other people to lie, be afraid, put on a mask, isolate themselves, or undergo lethal injection — is a moment in which you are actively advancing the good of man on earth and the good of individual souls on the rocky path to eternal salvation.
Acts of non-compliance uphold and embody obedience to sound civil, human law that conforms with the natural law and eternal law, with the Decalogue and teachings of Christ.
Acts of non-compliance contribute to the resurrection of the submerged, eclipsed law.
