[DoctorThursday]

Time to post something from the archives. This was actually quoted in a Beta speech I heard at a convention. It is interesting and perhaps will be a surprise to some...

72. Although private societies exist within the State and are, as it were, so many parts of it, still it is not within the authority of the State universally and per se to forbid them to exist as such. For man is permitted by a right of nature to form private societies; the State, on the other hand, has been instituted to protect and not to destroy natural right, and if it should forbid its citizens to enter into associations, it would clearly do something contradictory to itself because both the State itself and private associations are begotten of one and the same principle, namely, that men are by nature inclined to associate. Occasionally, there are times when it is proper for the laws to oppose associations of this kind, that is, if they professedly seek after any objective which is clearly at variance with good morals, with justice, or with the welfare of the State. Indeed, in these cases the public power shall justly prevent such associations from forming and shall also justly dissolve those already formed. Nevertheless, it must use the greatest precaution lest it appear to infringe on the rights of its citizens, and lest, under the pretext of public benefit it enact any measure that sound reason would not support. For laws are to be obeyed only insofar as they conform with right reason and thus with the eternal law of God. [37]

(Quoted from the encyclical Rerum Novarum (1891) of Pope Leo XIII; emphasis added)

That [37] is a reference to something even more important. It is from an even older source, smack in the middle of the 13th century...

Human law is law only in virtue of its accordance with right reason:and thus it is manifest that it flows from the eternal law. And in so far as it deviates from right reason it is called an unjust law; in such case it is no law at all, but rather a species of violence.

(quoted from the Summa Theologica of St. Thomas Aquinas, I-II, Q.93, Art. 3 ad 2)