An insight into Catholic Legal Theory

Over the past two and one half years other MOJ contributors and I have addressed questions dealing with conscience, the authority of the state, the role of the law in society, and the proper place of religion in public life. I tend to think that our discussions and debate on these matters will continue. Earlier today I was reading a series of papers delivered at the annual meeting of the Thomas More Society in London and published in 1948. One of the papers given was written by the English Dominican Hilary J. Carpenter entitled “Law and Conscience.” As one who has criticized in the past the “mystery of life” passage and its exaggerated notion of autonomy and liberty authored by Justice Kennedy in Planned Parenthood v. Casey, e.g., HERE and HERE, I found Fr. Carpenter’s words prophetic about the future of law and how Catholic Legal Theory can provide relief to its troubled future which some of us have recognized. In his opening paragraph authored in the late 1940s, Carpenter had this to say:

The age in which we live presents a rapidly growing cleavage between law and conscience; and this cleavage is resulting inevitably in the destruction of both. It is due almost entirely to the subjectivism which has been steadily graining ground for the last four hundred years. Once private judgment is admitted as a principle in the conduct of human affairs the objective norms of human action cease to function as such, and both conscience and law are deprived of their vitality. As early as the sixteenth century an incipient subjectivism made its appearance in philosophy as well as in religion; it is possible, indeed, that the effort to segregate philosophy from religion was the source of the whole evil. For when religion has ceased to provide a philosophy of life it is no longer true religion, and its sanctions lose their compelling force. Moreover, philosophy unallied to religion is a ship without rudder; it follows the caprice of any intellectual wind that blows. The purpose and the very content of human nature is lost sight of; law becomes an unstable shadow of its real self; and conscience, left to stand alone, is not more than a blind guide leading the blind.

I find it extraordinarily ironic that within the past few days (as I commented on in a recent posting HERE) that an English parliamentary committee chair has this dim view of religion in public life: “It seems to me that faith education works all right as long as people are not that serious about their faith.” If Fr. Carpenter is correct in his view (and I think he is) that the separation of religion from public life will make the ship of state rudderless, it will be interesting to see in which direction Parliament travels if this MP's view prevails. It is also important to keep in mind that Fr. Carpenter did not restrict his counsel to the British Parliament.      RJA sj