CSDC 398

Authority must enact just laws, that is, laws that correspond to the dignity of the human person and to what is required by right reason. “Human law is law insofar as it corresponds to right reason and therefore is derived from the eternal law. When, however, a law is contrary to reason, it is called an unjust law; in such a case it ceases to be law and becomes instead an act of violence”.⁸¹⁶ Saint Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, I-II, q. 93, a. 3, ad 2um: Ed. Leon. 7, 164: “Lex humana intantum habet rationem legis, inquantum est secundum rationem rectam: et secundum hoc manifestum est quod a lege aeterna derivatur. Inquantum vero a ratione recedit, sic dicitur lex iniqua: et sic non habet rationem legis, sed magis violentiae cuiusdam”. Authority that governs according to reason places citizens in a relationship not so much of subjection to another person as of obedience to the moral order and, therefore, to God himself who is its ultimate source.⁸¹⁷ Cf. 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), 270. Whoever refuses to obey an authority that is acting in accordance with the moral order “resists what God has appointed” (Rom 13:2).⁸¹⁸ Cf. Catechism of the Catholic Church, 1899-1900. Analogously, whenever public authority — which has its foundation in human nature and belongs to the order pre-ordained by God ⁸¹⁹ Cf. Second Vatican Ecumenical Council, Pastoral Constitution Gaudium et Spes, 74: AAS 58AAS — Acta Apostolicae Sedis (official gazette of the Holy See)Volume 58 (1966) at vatican.va — scanned PDF (1966), 1095-1097; Catechism of the Catholic Church, 1901. — fails to seek the common good, it abandons its proper purpose and so delegitimizes itself.