CSDC 393

The Church has always considered different ways of understanding authority, taking care to defend and propose a model of authority that is founded on the social nature of the person. “Since God made men social by nature, and since no society can hold together unless some one be over all, directing all to strive earnestly for the common good, every civilized community must have a ruling authority, and this authority, no less than society itself, has its source in nature, and has, consequently, God for its author”.⁷⁹⁹ John XXIII, Encyclical Letter Pacem in Terris: AAS 55AAS — Acta Apostolicae Sedis (official gazette of the Holy See)Volume 55 (1963) at vatican.va — scanned PDF (1963), 269; Leo XIII, Encyclical Letter Immortale Dei, in Acta Leonis XIII, V, 1885, 120. Political authority is therefore necessary ⁸⁰⁰ Cf. Catechism of the Catholic Church, 1898; Saint Thomas Aquinas, De Regno. Ad Regem Cypri, I, 1: Ed. Leon. 42, 450: “Si igitur naturale est homini quod in societate multorum uiuat, necesse est in omnibus esse aliquid per quod multitudo regatur. Multis enim existentibus hominibus et unoquoque id quod est sibi congruum prouidente, multitudo in diuersa dispergetur nisi etiam esset aliquid de eo quod ad bonum multitudinis pertinet curam habens, sicut et corpus hominis et cuiuslibet animalis deflueret nisi esset aliqua uis regitiua communis in corpore, quae ad bonum commune omnium membrorum intenderet. Quod considerans Salomon dixit: ‘Ubi non est gubernator, dissipabitur populus' “. because of the responsibilities assigned to it. Political authority is and must be a positive and irreplaceable component of civil life.⁸⁰¹ Cf. Catechism of the Catholic Church, 1897; John XXIII, Encyclical Letter Pacem in Terris: AAS 55AAS — Acta Apostolicae Sedis (official gazette of the Holy See)Volume 55 (1963) at vatican.va — scanned PDF (1963), 279.