Joseph Cardinal Höffner CHRISTIAN SOCIAL ... - Ordo Socialis

„open“ for the way of life of individual people and smaller social circles, for the right to life
of other nations, and especially for that order which stands above all states because it is given
by God.
For years, a dangerous confusion in convictions about moral value has been spreading in
many states. There is, of course, a legitimate pluralism in, for example, the realm of foreign
policy, economic policy, and social policy. Social groups and political parties will frequently
be of different opinions here without the common profession of the fundamental moral values
being thereby shaken. A state, however, that recognizes no fundamental moral values, but is
willing to content itself with a merely functional external order, would collapse.
§ 2 Holder of Governmental Authority
l. The Nation as Original Holder of Governmental Authority
According to the Christian understanding, God is the author of all power and authority, from
which it follows that the Christian doctrine of the state is far from in any way casting suspicion
on governmental authority, as, for instance, was the case with the égalité-slogan of the
French Revolution, which imagined a society of equal brothers without a father. Many would
like to draw the conclusion from this basic authority-affirming attitude that Christian social
teaching embraces an obstinate, right-wing conservativism and sees only in a monarchy resting
on God’s grace the form of government appropriate to it. This assumption is erroneous,
since political freedom in the Catholic doctrine of the state occupies a surprisingly large place.
This can be seen especially in the teaching on the original holder of governmental authority,
which can be summarized in two statements:
a) According to the Catholic conception, as held by the great sixteenth-century Spanish professors
of natural law in particular, governmental authority originally rests in the nation as a
whole, i.e., not in individual people per se, nor in the masses, but in the politically unified
nation as a state.
b) Since governmental authority cannot be exercised well „by the multitude itself“, its administration
must be conferred on „one or more“, from which the different forms of government
result. 12 The government thus receives its authority immediately from the nation as a
whole; for, as Francisco de Vitoria explains, the national community transfers „not some other
power, but its own authority to the king.“ 13 „The authority that the prince holds,“ Domingo
Bañez explains, „comes entirely from the people...And therein it distinguishes itself from
spiritual authority such as the pope possesses; for the spiritual authority of the pope is immediately
from God, whereas the temporal power of princes is immediately from the nation as a
whole...and that is the unanimous teaching of the students of St. Thomas. From this it follows
in turn that the prince does not have a greater power than the nation as a whole, but one that is
the same; for the latter transfers its authority to him.“ 14 Theologians add that, when it is transferred
to princes, governmental authority remains rooted in the nation as a whole as the original
holder. If the prince degenerates into a tyrant, the people are thereby justified in taking the
governmental authority back to themselves and in deposing the prince. On October 2, l945,
Pius XII also professed this liberal and fundamentally democratic conception of the state
which „prominent Christian thinkers at all times“ have held.
12
Francisco de Vitoria, op. cit. (Getino), II:183f.
13
Ibid., 187.
14
D. Bañez, Scholastica Commentaria in IIa IIae (Duaci, 1915), III:524.
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