ARTICLE III: ON THE OBLIGATIONS OF MAGISTRATES AND CITIZENS

452. • A. On Magistrates. Principles. I. They ought to know the things which pertain to their office, for example laws.

II. They are bound to seek and guard the common safety of all.

453. You will resolve. They sin:

1° Who, altogether ignorant of laws and not powerful in judgment, procure or assume some office for themselves, with danger of inflicting harm on those concerning whose controversies they are going to pronounce sentence, or whose business they are going to handle.¹

2° Who foster quarrels or lawsuits for their own gain.²

3° Who pronounce an unjust sentence, yielding to popular prejudices, or courting popular favor, or seeking the utilities of private persons, with damage to the innocent.³

4° Who permit the rights of conscience to be violated, the children of the poor being taken away by masters from ancestral Religion against the laws.⁴

5° Who promote or take care that men not suitable be promoted to offices because they are men of their own party;⁵ or indeed suitable men, but with the promoted, by wages agreed upon to the prejudice of the public treasury; and likewise those who take care or permit themselves to be promoted by this same pact.

6° Who either permit the public treasury to be pillaged, by entrusting public money to fraudulent men,⁶ or pillage it themselves, while, for example, they expose public money to dangerous businesses from which they hope profit for themselves, or on occasion of contracts which they enter with private persons in the name of the republic they bargain or procure something unjustly for themselves.

7° Higher magistrates, namely Presidents and Governors, if, uniquely seeking their repeated election, in distribution of offices and in laws either to be approved or vetoed they especially consider whether they are going to procure more votes for themselves, and to that end neglect the advantages of most citizens.⁷

8° Who do not take care that laws be committed to execution, and do not guard public tranquillity and order.⁸

454. • Yet they do not sin if, when asked and from office, or according to the laws, they do something which of itself is licit, but either because of adjuncts yields to the detriment of Religion, or is little consonant with the laws and mind of the Church, although not forbidden. For 1) they do these things not in their own name, but in the name of the law; and 2) they neither intend the evil effect from a cause not evil in itself, nor are they compelled to impede it with the loss of their office or with their own danger. Besides, they would try this in vain; for what citizens seek by force of law they will certainly obtain by recourse to others, especially superior magistrates. Therefore a Catholic magistrate will be excused who commands that a child be shut up in a prison, with testimony sworn before him according to the laws that the child is vagrant, or that the parents are vagrant, although he knows that by this arrangement the child is to be instructed there according to the principles of the sects. Nor does he sin who receives the matrimonial consent of citizens and refers this into the records, not solicitous concerning impediments of the Church; for in this case he usurps no spiritual authority, but only testifies concerning the consent furnished. Therefore the Cardinal Prefect of the Sacred Congregation de Propaganda Fide wrote back to Bishop Kenrick on July 30, 1851, that he was not to be disturbed for this cause. Nevertheless Catholic magistrates seem to sin who easily receive Catholics approaching them to contract matrimony, while there is a supply of a priest, since they add courage to sinners; but if, having been admonished, those who seek to enter nuptials are unwilling to desist, they are not guilty of fault because they furnish a merely civil service.¹

455. • B. On Legislators. Principles. I. They are bound to be skilled in the matters to be treated in the assembly of legislators,² or certainly to acquire skill in these, lest they either themselves give a vote rashly and with danger of harm to the republic or to private persons, or persuade others to give one.

II. They are bound principally to seek the public utility, and only then the utility of those by whose votes they were elected.³

456. • You will resolve. They sin:

1° Who promote the utilities and advantages of certain places for catching votes, with public detriment.⁴

2° Who, unless others obligate themselves to furnish votes for matters which have no public utility, refuse to vote for matters which concern all.⁵

3° Who squander public money in things of no moment.⁶

4° Who neglect to carry out those things which would bring very many advantages to the republic, or reject profitable things from party zeal.⁷

5° Who spend time in useless disputes, with expense to the fisc.⁸

6° Who give votes after a certain pact concerning payment has been entered.¹

7° Who take care that laws be made and unmade, that they may consult their own affairs with detriment of others.²

8° Who in the Senate cast votes concerning those designated by the President or Governor for some public office, from party zeal by voting for the unworthy or rejecting the worthy.³

9° Catholic legislators confirming by their vote whatever is opposed to the doctrine of the Church, for example that divorce from the bond of matrimony may be given because of adultery or another cause. But they are not to be blamed because they furnish their service for making laws by which the rights of all citizens are vindicated according to the Constitution.⁴

457. • C. On Citizens. Principles. I. Although it is licit for citizens to exercise all those rights which belong to them from the Constitution, nevertheless it is necessary to preserve both order and the laws of charity.⁵

II. In choosing magistrates and legislators public utility must be kept before the eyes, and votes must be given according to merit, so that he who seems more suitable and useful be preferred.⁶

III. Concerning those who discharge a public office it is not licit to speak rashly, nor maliciously to carp at things done by them; yet it is licit to scrutinize these, and to speak and write publicly about them, insofar as the laws permit, so that judgment may rightly be made concerning them, and the public utility may be provided for.⁷

IV. Nothing is to be attempted by the judgment of individuals against the authority of laws.⁸

458. You will resolve. They sin:

1° Who, led by money, favor, hatred, or zeal for private utility, confer votes on the unworthy.⁹

2° Against charity and justice, those who announce in public papers the hidden delicts of some persons which do not harm others, or in their speeches or conversations, so that they may repel them from some office or deprive them of it.¹⁰ Whether and when these are bound to restitution, see n. 715.

3° Who maliciously carp at the acts of magistrates, so that they stir up envy against them.¹¹

In what cases those of whom there is speech under 2° and 3° can be punished by our law, see apud Kent.¹

4° Who, with the authority of laws spurned, usurp to themselves the supreme right of life and death, as happens more often in this region, and generally rashly, namely under pretext and not by true title of necessity and common safety. (Lynchers) Kenrick.²

459. • Quaer. Is it ever licit to resist legitimate temporal authority?

Resp. Resistance is one thing passive, another active.

Passive resistance, or the simple refusal of obedience, obligates when something is prescribed which is contrary to a law from which either you can never be excused (as if there is question of a negative precept of the natural law), or at least here and now you are not excused; - it does not obligate, but is licit, when something is prescribed which here and now can both be furnished and omitted without sin; suppose because, although it is not illicit, nevertheless it exceeds the power of the one prescribing, or is useless to the common good, or is opposed to distributive justice, equality not being observed in the imposition of burdens. Except if per accidens, for example by force of the natural law, a precept of this sort would have to be observed, suppose because it cannot be neglected without scandal, or disturbance of public order, or grave damage to the common good.

As regards active resistance, or rebellion, these two things are certain: First, a case of rebellion, or of active resistance to legitimate authority, is not given when the community itself (not private persons), by force of the pact by which it was legitimately constituted, and in cases expressly determined in the pact, takes power away from someone in order to transfer it to another; for in these cases, the title perishing, the power ceases to be legitimate. The other is that it is not licit to rebel against a legitimate prince, as is clear from proposition 63 condemned in the Syllabus. See p. XLV. But whether a prince ceases to be legitimate when he has habitually become a tyrant in governance is disputed. Against those affirming stands the fact that much graver evils are wont to follow from active resistance than from tyranny, and that today, at least, in fact there is lacking one who may judge between the Prince and the nation. H. A. Tr. VIII. 13.

You shall not kill.¹

460. • This precept, insofar as it is negative, primarily indeed prohibits homicide, that is, the unjust killing of a man; secondarily, however, and consequently, every unjust lesion, wounding, or mutilation of the body, whether one's own or another's. But insofar as it is virtually affirmative, it commands the conservation of life.

Simple homicide is to be distinguished from qualified homicide, namely one having another species of sin annexed. Of this kind is 1° sacrilegious homicide, either by reason of the person killed, or by reason of the place in which the killing is done; 2° parricide, namely the slaughter either of parents or of children, or of a brother or sister, or of a spouse, or even of a Prince; 3° robbery-murder, namely killing or wounding from the will of plundering; 4° magical poisoning, when namely by the help of the demon bodily evil, or even death, is inflicted on someone.

But those things which will be established concerning killing, whether licit or illicit, will have to be applied, with due proportion observed, to mutilation or to any bodily lesion.

We must treat 1° of the killing of oneself; 2° of the killing of one's neighbor; 3° of the duel; 4° of war.