The real purpose of our laws

By Fr. Roy Cimagala

MAKE no mistake about it. Our human laws are meant to lead us to our ultimate goal which is none other than to be with God, to be holy as God is holy, etc. Irrespective of their immediate temporal purpose, our laws should lead us little by little to become God’s image and likeness as we are meant to be. They in the end should serve the fundamental religious purpose of our life. That should always be the constant purpose of our laws.

All the other objectives of our laws, let alone their technical requirements, serve only as an occasion, a reason or motive for this ultimate purpose. Setting aside this ultimate purpose would empty our laws of their real legitimacy, making them rife for all kinds of manipulations and maneuverings by some shrewd men who may enjoy some power at a given moment.

We have to realize that it is Christ who ultimately gives the real meaning and purpose of our laws. We have to disabuse ourselves from the thought that our laws can be based only on our common sense, or on our own estimation of what is good and evil according to the values of practicality, convenience, etc., or on our traditions and culture, etc.

While these things have their legitimate role to play in our legal and judicial systems, we have to understand that they cannot be the primary and ultimate bases. It should be God, his laws and ways that should animate the way we make laws as well as the way we apply and live them. After all, being the Creator of all things, he is the one who establishes what is truly good and evil.

With the way today’s legal and juridical systems worldwide are drifting toward extreme positivism that simply bases itself on our perceptual experiences and people’s consensus and systematically shutting out any input from faith and divine revelation, we need to remind ourselves that God’s law is in fact the foundation, the inspiration and the perfection of our human law.

In other words, without any reference to God’s law, our human law cannot help but be out on a limb. For all the brilliance, wisdom and success a Godless human law can have and accomplish, it can only go so far. It cannot go the distance required by our human dignity. Sooner or later, it will fail and fall into forms of injustice, many of them so subtle that injustice can be committed under cover of our human law.

A clear example of this latter case is the law on abortion. It is a lot worse than the so-called extrajudicial killing we are hearing about these days. Abortion is clear murder of the most defenceless members of our human society—the infant while still inside the mother’s womb.

Of course, we have to understand that to make God’s law the foundation, inspiration and perfection of our human law is not going to be easy. It would require effort to plunge deep in our understanding of God’s law which is full of mysteries, which will always have something new to say even if we would already know its essential part.

This will require constant study and reflection, a lot of prayer and consultation, the habit of reading the changing signs of the times in the context of our faith, and also that basic attitude of always deferring to the authority of the Church magisterium who has been given the divine authority to teach and interpret God’s revelation.

Email: roycimagala@gmail.com