Back in 1904, Robert Hugh Benson published his lengthiest
novel, By
What Authority?, a fictional account of England under Elizabeth I. It’s so long that one purchaser claimed he
bought it but never read it, and so gave it a “one star” review on Amazon
without knowing what the book was even about.
It was just too big and cumbersome, according to him. (His loss.)
By the way, if you want to know something about the novel By What Authority? but you’re too weak
to hold the book itself, you might find So
Much Generosity, an “appreciation” of the fiction of Cardinals Wiseman
and Newman, and of Monsignor Benson, useful as a sort of “Cliff Notes” version. It’s not been reviewed yet, but it is small
enough to lift, so you can give it more than one star on Amazon.
To return to our subject, in the previous two postings in
this brief series (which concludes today), we looked at how we cannot know God’s
law by reason, we can only accept it on faith, and that we have not yet seen
any evidence that the rich have, as claimed, gained their wealth
dishonestly. Today we look at something
that transcends even knowledge of God’s law and proof that the rich have broken
it.
That is, even granting for the sake of the argument that we
can, one, prove that what we’re demanding be enforced is God’s law, and, two,
that we have hard evidence that “the rich” have, in each and every case gained
their wealth dishonestly, what is our authority for either demanding that the
rich be punished by the State as we prescribe, or for doing it ourselves?
We can get into a lot of trouble by asserting authority that
we do not, in fact, have. The Christian God
is, by all reports, a “jealous God.” He
does not appear to take kindly to people usurping His role or authority: “Vengeance
belongeth to me, and I will repay. And again: The Lord shall judge his people.”
(Hebrews, 10:30)
A serious warning follows this claim to divine authority. When human beings, whether individually or
through their institutions (such as the State) go beyond the bounds of the
natural law on which human law is based, and try to enforce the supernatural or
divine law, they effectively usurp God’s role. They thereby become subject to
His judgment: “It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.”
(Hebrews, 10:31.)
The bottom line here is that, however frustrated or angry we
might be at the unjust social structures and the results of their flawed
functioning, we are never justified
in taking God’s law into our own hands.
The proper response in social justice is to organize and restructure the
institutions of the social order so that they work for the benefit of all in
equitable fashion, not to take revenge on those whom we have labeled criminals
without any evidence or even rational basis for presuming that they have broken
a law that we cannot prove even exists.
If people are in extreme need, the State is justified as an
expedient in making a redistribution under its duty to care for the common
good. The solution to need, however, is not redistribution, but in reforming
our institutions so that people can become productive and meet their own needs
through their own efforts. We must be very
careful not to put ourselves in the place of God and demand a “justice” that we
cannot prove even exists.
We like to keep in mind the closing scene of the film, Judgment at Nuremberg. The German judge, Ernst Janning (played by
Burt Lancaster), was trying to justify what he had done in sending people to
the gas chambers. Germany was in danger,
the common good was threatened.
Janning’s excuse was, “You must believe me. We did not know it would come to this” (i.e., 12 million people slaughtered for
crimes against the State with no evidence that any crime at all had been committed). The American judge, Dan Heywood (played by
Spencer Tracy), ended the film:
“Herr Janning, it ‘came to this’ the
first time you sentenced a man to death you knew to be innocent.”
Without proof, everyone is innocent. We must prove
that someone is guilty. We cannot simply
assert it and claim God’s authority, or that of Der Volk, or the class struggle, or anything else, as our
justification. That only makes us far
worse than the people we are — falsely — accusing.
#30#
