Article III: On The Offices Of Those In Whose Hands Is Executive Power

2289. • To the present order chiefly pertain: 1. Ministers of princes, and Prefects of provinces; 2. Leaders of the military; 3. Syndics or rectors of communities. - Concerning each, a few things.

I. Concerning Ministers. - Standing between the prince and the people, MINISTERS owe to the prince truth and service in all things which look to good government; but to the people they owe the faithful and equitable execution of the common law. Whence they make themselves guilty of infidelity: 1) if they conceal from the prince, whose eyes and hands they are, those things the knowledge of which right administration requires for itself; 2) if they bring contempt or hatred of the government upon the people by vicious administration, whether by too great negligence or severity, or by injury to distributive justice in the application of the law, or in the distribution of burdens or favors; 3) if they execute commands certainly unjust. For where the injustice of the command is certain and grave, execution ought to be deferred, until the prince or Superior, having been reverently admonished, corrects the error. But if, admonished, he refuses to correct it, or if admonition is impossible, surely God must be obeyed, and not men.

And these same things, proportion being preserved, are valid concerning Prefects of provinces, concerning delegates to foreign princes, and concerning all other ministers of the executive Power.

2290. • II. Concerning leaders of the military. Leaders of the military, besides suitable KNOWLEDGE and SKILL, which they are held to acquire and to have, are bound by several other obligations, both toward the prince and toward the soldiers.⁶

1. Toward the Prince (and the nation), they ought to preserve inviolate FIDELITY and JUSTICE. - Whence, they cannot desert military service, especially in time of war, except by the consent of the prince. They are held to fight strongly; they would be perjured if they fled over to the enemies, or entered clandestine counsels with them. - They would sin against justice by pretending absent soldiers to be present, or by retaining the pay of dead soldiers.

2. Toward soldiers, as good fathers of families they ought to keep watch that nothing be lacking to them, whether as to soul, or as to body: let them impede, as far as it can be done, single combats, drunkennesses, quarrels, impurities, thefts. They sin gravely if, without necessity, they prescribe military exercises on Sundays and feast days, especially at the hour of Mass; for they impede the soldiers from performing the principal duty of religion. - Likewise, they sin gravely if they rashly enter battle, or expose the life of soldiers without a just cause. Recall what was said concerning Duel and War (n. 745 sqq.).

2291. • III. Concerning Syndics. "The Syndics of Communities, and their assistants, have their obligations, and indeed most grave ones; since they have been deputed by law as rectors and guardians of Communities, namely that they may protect their goods and rights and the observance of laws, if these are just. - Therefore, they sin gravely and are held concerning damages, if, acceptors of persons, they choose unsuitable men for public offices; if they do not restrain the wicked; if, when able, they do not impede scandals; if they squander the goods of the Community; if they hold the things which belong to religion as almost nothing; and coerce its free exercise, pervert rights, or furnish assistance to those who usurp them.

Concerning these things, sometimes, though prudently, public administrators are to be questioned by the confessor; for not rarely such men confess, as it is said, the sins of Charles, and are silent about the sins of Caesar: that is, they confess the things which they committed as private persons, not those which they perpetrated as deputed to public offices.⁷ - This the Most Holy Lord, Our Lord Pope LEO XIII specifically reproves, solemnly declaring:⁸ "it is not lawful to follow one form of duty privately, another publicly, namely so that the authority of the Church is observed in private life, and rejected in public. For this would be to join honorable and base things, and to make a man fight with himself, whereas, on the contrary, he ought always to be consistent with himself, and in no matter nor in any kind of life to fall away from Christian virtue."

But here the more general question, and one especially useful for practice, comes to be treated:

2292. • QUESTION. WHETHER A PRAETOR, or another PREFECT of the republic, can sometimes commit an UNJUST LAW to execution?

Resp. By reason of obtaining a greater good, or avoiding a greater evil, the execution of an unjust law sometimes becomes lawful. But for this it is required: 1) that the object of the law not be intrinsically evil; 2) that the one injured in his own right, because an unjust law is observed, can and wishes to assent to the injury of his right, or at least that, with the order of charity so commanding, he is not reasonably unwilling.

Wherefore: 1. It is not lawful for the praetor or judge to urge the application of an unjust law, if its execution has been committed to their discretion.

2. If any law is opposed to the rights and liberty of the Church, its execution, when the Church contradicts in the particular case, can in no way whatever be urged, not even under the pretext of obtaining a greater good, or avoiding a greater evil, since the Church alone is judge of those things which are more fitting for herself.

3. If the execution of an unjust law becomes a little harmful to some third party, but its neglected application very harmful to the praetor or judge, the law can be urged: especially if the damage to the third party cannot be avoided, because, one praetor failing, another will not be lacking who will furnish his effort (cf. n. 526).