Thank you CB for having the decency and honesty to call it what it is. I just wish I grew up with more Catholics like you. Faithful but not afraid to call a crime a crime, regardless of who commits it.
Perhaps the reason you do not see eye to eye with most Catholics is because there may be a fundamental deontological difference between the way Catholics view morality and the way most Protestants do. Protestants tend to be legalistic and rule oriented just as they are with their treatment of Scripture. Catholics, at least those who are knowledgeable, are more ontological in perspective. This case, if nothing else, does highlight the distinction.
Here is another, but different, example that may be helpful for understanding the difference.
According to Catholic teaching a man who steals food to feed a starving family is not guilty of theft because each person has a natural right to the necessities of life. It is wrong for some to have more than they need especially when the abundance of those deprives others of the right to have what they need to live. Balancing injustice is not considered theft.
A purely legalistic interpretation would, as you do, claim that “a crime is a crime” and the poor man with the starving family should be treated as a thief. This view would be based upon a misapplication of justice because it is founded upon and derives from an unjust condition.
Going back to the difference between the typical Protestant vs Catholic view, a Protestant would view the rule or law having primacy. God is compelled to follow the moral rules, like everyone else. A Catholic would insist that it is the being and goodness of God that has primacy, that will, act and order comes from who God is. We trust God as Being because He is Goodness itself not because he is under some external compulsion to follow the rules like everyone else.
A good way of trying to understand the difference between legal policy, moral code and the benevolent will of God is in terms of
courts of appeal. Since God is the Creator and source of all that exists, then God is the source of all goodness and of what is morally good. The natural moral law is the operative expression of God’s goodness in nature. Living things have a natural end or good towards which they tend. For human beings the natural good is the life and well-being of each individual. Beneath the natural moral law, but derived from it, come the legal proscriptions of each polity which promulgates laws to govern the citizens under its jurisdiction. A just government bases its laws on natural moral law because it respects the natural welfare or good of its citizens. An unjust government denies or ignore the natural rights of at least some of its citizens.
The problem with viewing civil law as having ultimate authority is that it would then be impossible to question whether any particular law is a just or unjust one. If civil laws have ultimate authority then any law promulgated by any government would be just by definition.
If you want to insist on the ultimate authority of civil law, then you would be placed in the rather compromised position of claiming that Mary and Joseph, by taking Jesus to Egypt were acting criminally when they disobeyed Herod’s order that male children under a specific age were to be killed. From this it is clear that a crime is not a crime simply because it is so under some civil jurisdiction.
The order of appeal is from civil jurisdiction to natural moral law to the authority of God as Creator.
You could argue that taking the Jewish child from his parents was against a just civil law but, even if not, it was against the natural moral order and was therefore wrong. You might be right as far as that goes. However, notice that God is the final court of appeal. He has supreme authority over all creation as its creator. Ultimately, the Pope’s actions will be judged by God on their own merits. It is all well and good for you to make pronouncements as to the rightness or wrongness of the Pope’s actions, but notice you are not the one in the authoritative position to make that declaration, God is. We’ll have to wait and see what God has to say about the matter at the final judgement.
Personally, I would hesitate in trying to make some authoritative claim simply because we do not have access to all of the facts. If God revealed something by way of personal revelation to the Pope concerning His plans for the boy, then our uninformed opinions on the matter are of little worth.
