The Rule of Law: Stepping Stone to Tyranny

By Fr. Robert J. Carr
©Catholic Online 2005

According to the US Supreme Court, the Ten Commandments cannot be on display inside a courthouse. Yet, again the statement is made that our country cannot endorse the laws that are the basis for the Judeo Christian tradition. Then on what are our laws based, if not the Ten Commandments?

The act of rejecting the Ten Commandments is one based in a false anthropology, one that believes that there is no God. This tenet has no validity in days when evolution proves to us that our ability to perceive reality is severely limited, hence the reason for faith and revelation. This false anthropology is to humanity what ignoring the law of gravity is to physics.

We have our own free choice and part of that free choice is to disobey whatever laws exist in this universe. However, when we disobey such laws, we suffer the consequences. One can presumably disobey the law of gravity and walk off the roof of a ten-story building. It is a free society and who are you to tell me that I cannot do that. Yet, when I find myself permanently disabled in the hospital and your tax dollars are paying for my rehabilitation then I created enough damage in my ignorance to cause misery in many other lives as well.

Just because we cannot see the immediate consequences of failure to obey the Ten Commandments does not mean they are not valid. Indeed, God says that those who suffer the consequences of rejecting His law are actually the generations that come after us. The problem is that those who consider themselves too educated to comprehend God cannot see a connection between the large numbers of our prison population, teen-aged pregnancy, street violence, terrorism, etc. and the rejection of Divine Law. What makes the situation worse is that we people of faith live under a form of tyranny by those who reject God.

The Ten Commandments are actually rooted in something that the learned and the clever have removed from our midst, charity. It is the person of faith who also understands the importance of personal charity. As Catholics we define it well in the corporal and spiritual works of mercy. However, our current system of law itself redefines charity to be financially based in social security systems. It redefines the agents of charity to be secular non-profit institutions and the government. It redefines the definition of charity to be based not in compassion and in personal responsibility but in rule of law. All of this actually destroys charity. When charity is removed from a society, then all that is left is tyranny.

The Supreme Court has continued its obedience to the tyranny of the university and the rule of law. Charity is further undermined because the Ten Commandments are further driven from our government. This will continue until the rule of law has morphed into a full-blown tyranny. Until that time, let us people of faith be strong and strengthened for we are the first line of defense against the march of tyranny.

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Fr. Robert J. Carr writes from Massachusetts. He is the Author of Evolution, Faith and the Future of Catholicism published by Lulu.