I came
across an interesting discussion by Jonah Goldberg about (among other things)
what he refers to as “Hidden Law” [link].
He means the intricate complex of
customs, attitudes, prohibitions, licenses, etc., that arise from culture,
family, and shared experience that shape, and are shaped by, the vast majority of our interactions with
each other. It is not imposed (directly, anyway) by any
official authority, particularly not the state, and is far more effective than
any formal laws or statutes for maintaining an orderly and prosperous
society. Leftists are particularly prone
to deny or try to override this law, but such recklessness is by no means
limited to the left. Goldberg is arguing
(as I have in other places, here for instance, albeit using different language) that we disregard this Hidden
Law at our peril.
Jonah
Goldberg is a secular commentator, and I do not share all his views or
concerns. I take serious
issue in
particular with a passage he quotes from Jonathan Rauch that uses assisted
suicide as an example; I may be naïve, but I’m not convinced that there was a
long tradition of doctors “helping people to die”, at least not in the sense he
seems to mean. Also there is a huge
(decisive, in fact) difference between letting someone die and causing them to
die (and let me add that letting them die by withholding food
and water is in fact causing them to die).
Having
said that, it’s very helpful to understand, in a particular way for Catholics,
the reality to which this term refers.
It illuminates not only much of Catholic teaching, but also helps us to
understand some important ways in which God interacts with His creation. The concept of the Dignity of the Human
Person, for instance, is inseparable from our gift of Free Will, and from our right to exercise it within appropriate bounds, which we see
formulated in the Principle of Subsidiarity, the right to form associations
such as labor unions and fraternal groups, and so on [link]. We can see
that the Church has long recognized in the working out of all sorts of
individual human decisions the same thing to which the term Hidden Law refers
(with the important addition, in the Catholic understanding, of God’s Grace).
One thing
that comes through, both in Catholic teaching and the secular understanding of this
unwritten law, is an emphasis on human individuals, not on things, institutions,
or programs; it relies on people, properly prepared to conduct their own lives and
to order their relations with each other.
I see a correspondence in the way God is revealed both in Sacred
Scripture and in His Church. God always
seems to act through individual people, doing their human best (in most cases)
under His guidance. The Bible is all about people, that is, persons, starting
with Adam and Eve, through Noah, Abraham and the other Patriarchs, David and
the other kings, Elijah and the prophets up through the God-Man himself, Jesus,
with whom we are explicitly called to have a personal relationship. Jesus (born of a woman, Mary) chooses to act
through his Apostles, whose names are all carefully preserved, and whose
authority has been personally handed on to their successors, the Bishops. A constant feature of the formal passing on
of authority from the earliest days has been the laying on of hands, one man physically
touching another. Furthermore, a very
large part of Catholic practice has always been the Cult of the Saints, whose
individual lives are held up for emulation and who are called upon,
individually, to intercede for us with the Father. It amazes me how many people I know
personally who have met Blessed John Paul II or Blessed Mother Theresa (often
both), and this in a church of one billion people. Isn’t it interesting that the Catholic
Church, probably both the largest and oldest existing Institution in the world,
depends so much, and focuses so much, on individual human beings?
It’s for
this reason that I have become increasingly critical of a reliance on programs
and structures, and of those who put their faith in those rather than the action
of God’s Grace working through those who
love him. There is certainly a place for
such things, but in a supporting role, not a leading one. Jesus says: "The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath" (Mark 2:27). If it's true that it's an inversion of right order to give a Divine Institution such as the Sabbath precedence over people, how much more so it must be of merely human institutions.
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