You need to read more carefully. First, the statement I cited from the USCCB said nothing about the divine order but *the order of justice. *I even highlighted the phrase for you and you still got it wrong. Second, it was Aquinas who used the phrase “divine order”, although not as you rewrote it. The actual phrase (as I, um, highlighted) was the order of divine justice. The point that should have been evident was that “redressing the disorder” does not refer to the mere maintenance of law and order in the streets but refers rather to justice itself. Whether the USCCB considers retribution the solution to the disorder of justice is immaterial to the point. We (or at least I) have been addressing the meaning of the word “order” in the phrase “redressing the disorder.”
I’m actually reminded of the Abbot and Costello comedy skit “Who’s on first” as I read your replies these days.
I didn’t say that redressing the disorder was “the mere maintenance of law and order in the streets”. Come on. A bit of honesty in quoting me here please. I said that redressing the disorder equated with “the common good”. Law and order was maintained in Communist Russia or Iran today by merely applying strict party or ‘divine’ rules but where’s the justice?
Bishop Karol Wojtyla of Krakow (StJPII) wrote for Vatican II when describing the common good as “not simply the sum total of particular interests; rather it involves an assessment and integration of those interests on the basis of a balanced hierarchy of values;
ultimately, it demands a correct understanding of the dignity and the rights of the person” ( Centesimus Annus , 47). I’m going to post the full text of Thomas Aquinas on the Ends of the law to prevent your bad habit of manipulating the context!
"On the contrary, Isidore says (Etym. v, 21) that
"laws are enacted for no private profit, but for the common benefit of the citizens."
I answer that, As stated above (Article 1), the law belongs to that which is a principle of human acts, because it is their rule and measure. Now as reason is a principle of human acts, so in reason itself there is something which is the principle in respect of all the rest: wherefore to this principle chiefly and mainly law must needs be referred. Now the first principle in practical matters, which are the object of the practical reason, is the last end: and the last end of human life is bliss or happiness, as stated above (2, 7; 3, 1). **Consequently the law must needs regard principally the relationship to happiness. **Moreover, since every part is ordained to the whole, as imperfect to perfect; and since one man is a part of the perfect community, the law must needs regard properly the relationship to universal happiness. Wherefore the Philosopher, in the above definition of legal matters mentions both happiness and the body politic: for he says (Ethic. v, 1) that
we call those legal matters “just, which are adapted to produce and preserve happiness and its parts for the body politic”: since the state is a perfect community, as he says in Polit. i, 1.
Now in every genus, that which belongs to it chiefly is the principle of the others, and the others belong to that genus in subordination to that thing: thus fire, which is chief among hot things, is the cause of heat in mixed bodies, and these are said to be hot in so far as they have a share of fire. Consequently, since the law is chiefly ordained to the common good, any other precept in regard to some individual work, must needs be devoid of the nature of a law, save in so far as it regards the common good.
Therefore every law is ordained to the common good.
Reply to Objection 1. A command denotes an application of a law to matters regulated by the law. Now the order to the common good, at which the law aims, is applicable to particular ends. And in this way commands are given even concerning particular matters.
Reply to Objection 2. Actions are indeed concerned with particular matters: but those particular matters are referable to the common good, not as to a common genus or species, but as to a common final cause, according as the common good is said to be the common end.
Reply to Objection 3. Just as nothing stands firm with regard to the speculative reason except that which is traced back to the first indemonstrable principles,
so nothing stands firm with regard to the practical reason, unless it be directed to the last end which is the common good: and whatever stands to reason in this sense, has the nature of a law."
This is what redressing the disorder means to human justice.
