Joseph Cardinal Höffner CHRISTIAN SOCIAL ... - Ordo Socialis

„justice“ according to this law or an executioner who executes such a sentence is a criminal,
and is so at all times and in every cultural area. When during the Boxer Rebellion (1900-01)
the slogan ‘no mercy will be given’ sprang up, the Berlin university professor Friedrich
Paulsen wrote:“ There would be no German officer who would command such a bloody deed
(the murder of prisoners) and no German soldier who would carry it out...And what is to happen
with the wounded...? Should we make it a principle that the sons of our people...kill the
wounded? Again, I am convinced that the horror of such bloodshed would itself offer resistance
to the command.“ 32 Actions that contradict „ universal natural law and its all-embracing
principles“ are „criminal,“ according to the teaching of the Second Vatican Council, as are the
„orders commanding such actions,“ and „blind obedience cannot excuse those who yield to
them“ (Gaudium et spes, 79). An example of this is the elimination of an entire people or of a
national minority.
§ 4 The Properties of Natural Law
The law of man’s essence, natural law possesses three properties: universal validity, immutability,
and knowability.
1. Universal validity. because natural law results from a human nature that is the same for all
people, it obligates everyone. It has indeed been affirmed that the irrational, inconceivable,
and creative character of political decision lifts the statesman, like the artist, above the mass
of other people and thus above the law. According to Christian thought, this thesis is not only
false, but also fateful in its consequences for the nation and for humankind. Without universal
validity, natural law would no longer be natural law.
2. Immutability. Whereas positive laws are subject to change because of their dependence on
the current conditions and can be fully abrogated if need be, the fundamental principles of
natural law are immutable since they rest on the consistency of human nature. They can be
neither rendered void, nor changed, nor mitigated through privileges or dispensations. In the
Middle Ages, certain theologians did indeed attempt to ground natural law, not in the essence
of man created by God, but in the will of God who, without transforming human nature, could
change the norms of natural law and, for example, order „hatred of God, theft, and adultery“(William
of Ockham† 1349. This moral-positivistic thesis), which is also found in Peter
Abelard († 1164) and Duns Scotus († 1308), mistakes the ontological foundation of natural
law which ultimately rests on the essence, not the will, of God. The immutability of natural
law in no way contradicts the historicity of man, since natural law rests on the transtemporally
valid, metaphysical constitution of man’s essence. Individual people and humanity living in
space and time are subject to historical change, but metaphysical human nature is not. Thus,
for example, the claim to vitally necessary commodities resulting from man’s right to life
takes a form different for the infant from that for the adult, but is in both cases the same natural
right. The institutions of natural law that are adapted to the current social conditions are
also accustomed to change with these conditions, as is the case, for example, with private
ownership. The principles of natural law themselves, however, are transtemporally valid and
therefore immutable.
3. Knowability. It is not infrequently affirmed that natural law contains „purely formal propositions“
(Johann Sauter) which only subsequently have to be made concrete in a laborious
way. In reality man gains the essential insights of natural law originally and immediately „in
the fundamental social situation of the family community“ (Johannes Messner), be it a question
of the extended patriarchal family of former cultures or of the two-generation family of
32 Cited in. V. Cathrein, Moralphilosophie. I. 414.
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