Who is the Final Judge of the Temporal Order? Clerics or Lay Rulers?

It all depends on whether you are a Guelph or a Ghibelline. If we had a Catholic Pope, I'd be a Guelph since all political questions are moral questions.

From One Peter Five

By Timothy Flanders, MA

The Roman Pontiff has issued a letter to the Bishops of these United States, addressing the immigration controversy in the American Empire. He first affirms, quite rightly, the obligation of the spiritual work of mercy to shelter the immigrant:

The journey from slavery to freedom that the People of Israel traveled, as narrated in the Book of Exodus, invites us to look at the reality of our time, so clearly marked by the phenomenon of migration, as a decisive moment in history to reaffirm not only our faith in a God who is always close, incarnate, migrant and refugee, but also the infinite and transcendent dignity of every human person.

We know this obligation, for this is one of the reasons Catholics will burn in the eternal fires of hell, accord to the words of His Majesty the King of Kings:

Depart from me, you cursed, into everlasting fire which was prepared for the devil and his angels… I was a stranger, and you took me not in… Amen I say to you, as long as you did it not to one of these least, neither did you do it to me (Mt. xxv).

The Holy Father draws on the fact that Our King Himself and His Holy Family lived as immigrants, calling Pius XII’s Apostolic Constitution on the Care of Migrants, “the ‘Magna Carta’ of the Church’s thinking on migration,” quoting his predecessor as follows:

The family of Nazareth in exile, Jesus, Mary and Joseph, emigrants in Egypt and refugees there to escape the wrath of an ungodly king, are the model, the example and the consolation of emigrants and pilgrims of every age and country, of all refugees of every condition who, beset by persecution or necessity, are forced to leave their homeland, beloved family and dear friends for foreign lands.

Having set up the theological foundations, the Holy Father then expresses his concern in a balanced way:

[A]ll the Christian faithful and people of good will are called upon to consider the legitimacy of norms and public policies in the light of the dignity of the person and his or her fundamental rights, not vice versa.

I have followed closely the major crisis that is taking place in the United States with the initiation of a program of mass deportations. The rightly formed conscience cannot fail to make a critical judgment and express its disagreement with any measure that tacitly or explicitly identifies the illegal status of some migrants with criminality. At the same time, one must recognize the right of a nation to defend itself and keep communities safe from those who have committed violent or serious crimes while in the country or prior to arrival. That said, the act of deporting people who in many cases have left their own land for reasons of extreme poverty, insecurity, exploitation, persecution or serious deterioration of the environment, damages the dignity of many men and women, and of entire families, and places them in a state of particular vulnerability and defenselessness.

Nothing here should be controversial to any Catholic. All Catholics agree with everything that has been said up to this point and I hazard to say that every pious Catholic in the Trump Administration agrees with every sentence thusfar. However, the Holy Father then lodges an implicit critique of the Catholic Vice President of the American Empire, Mr. J. D. Vance:

Christians know very well that it is only by affirming the infinite dignity of all that our own identity as persons and as communities reaches its maturity. Christian love is not a concentric expansion of interests that little by little extend to other persons and groups. In other words: the human person is not a mere individual, relatively expansive, with some philanthropic feelings! The human person is a subject with dignity who, through the constitutive relationship with all, especially with the poorest, can gradually mature in his identity and vocation. The true ordo amoris that must be promoted is that which we discover by meditating constantly on the parable of the “Good Samaritan” (cf.Lk10:25-37), that is, by meditating on the love that builds a fraternity open to all, without exception.

For those Anglophone readers following the news from these States, the phrase “true ordo amoris” mentioned here is in reference to Mr. Vance making a statement about the “America First” foreign policy of the new Trump Administration in which he said the following:

It seems to me that the Holy Father and his spiritual son, J. D. Vance, are talking past each other.

As I understand him, the Holy Father is emphasising the ordo amoris in the spiritual life, whereas Mr. Vance is emphasising the ordo amoris in the civil, temporal order.[1] Because of the difference of context, they end up emphasising contrary views, but without contradiction.

The Parable of the Good Samaritan illustrates the ordo amoris in the spiritual life by showing that the image of God in man is a fundamental truth which guides every personal encounter with another person. The message of the Good Samaritan parable is that we are all “sons of Adam and daughters of Eve,” and we will go to hell if we reject the poor person who is in need of our help right here, right now, who cannot turn to anyone else. Any man who rejects such a poor person would indeed be committing a mortal sin (cf. “A Short Catechism on Almsgiving”).

But notice the context here: the spiritual truth that the Holy Father is discussing is played out in the personal interaction of one man to another. As the authors tell us, although every Christian should help the poor and especially this poor person in front of them,no Christian can help all the poor people. Hence in the aforementioned link we discuss this:

Are we bound to give to all who are in need?

No. St. Thomas observes that we are bound to love all men equally with regard to wishing them well (benevolence), but we can love with our actions (beneficence) only those who are nearby since “we cannot do good to all” (S.T. II-II q26 a6). Therefore, “we are not bound to relieve all who are in need, but only those who could not be succored if we not did not succor them” (II-II q32 a5).

St. Thomas makes the necessary distinctions. He seems to agree with what Pope Francis is saying by stating that we must “love all men equally” in terms of benevolence. Thus, if we were to encounter a poor man from whatever country, as the Good Samaritan did, our benevolence to all men would oblige us to succour him. This seems to be why Pope Francis makes the following warning:

But worrying about personal, community or national identity, apart from these considerations, easily introduces an ideological criterion that distorts social life and imposes the will of the strongest as the criterion of truth.

If the Good Samaritan worried about his national identity, he would not have succoured the man who fell among robbers. In the same way, if we as Christians reject a poor man whom we encounter – who cannot be otherwise helped but by us – we are in danger of hellfire as the Gospel says (Matthew XXV).

However, in the above quote from the “Almsgiving Catechism,” St. Thomas seems to move to what Mr. Vance appears to be getting at: managing an empire of 300,000,000+ people. Now the context is totally different. This is the second part of St. Thomas’s answer above: the ordo amoris as it relates to the temporal and civil order, which is the domain of the lay rulers to govern and manage. Because no country can succour all men everywhere, but must govern and provide for, as a matter of necessity, “only those who could not be succored if we not did not succor them.” In other words, its own citizens first.

Now the Holy Father seems to concede this point in his comments quoted above, but he appears to misunderstand what Mr. Vance seems to be saying. Both views need each other. If taken to the extreme, the “Good Samaritan” open borders would destroy every country. On the other hand, if America First was taken to the extreme, then no immigrants would ever be welcomed.

But all of this points to one thing: who is the governor of the temporal order?

Immigration policy is a political issue, decided by politicians, and no cleric is permitted to be a politician (outside the sovereign nation of the Vatican City, of course). Thus, Mr. Vance, and all Catholic politicians, are bound to give deference to the Holy Father (and all clerics’) political opinions, but they must also know that it is they, not the clerics, who make the final decision about the temporal order.

The clerics provide lay people with principles of Catholic government. The lay people alone have the authority to apply those principles to particular laws and policies. Only in the case of manifestly grave sin can a cleric intervene to “depose” or “excommunicate” a lay ruler. This is the doctrine of the Two Swords, which even Vatican II confirmed (again).

But immigration policy is one of those grey areas which admits a great deal of complexity, especially when governing an empire of hundreds of millions of souls. Of course, the fact that this empire even exists is completely contrary to Catholic subsidiarity, but I’ll refer to the reader elsewhere to delve into that question.