Authored by Ryan McMaken via The Mises Institute,
In the classic 1966 film, A Man for All Seasons, the family of Thomas More - chancellor of England and eventual Catholic saint -counsels Thomas to arrest power-mad Richard Rich because they suspect (correctly) Rich will betray Thomas and because "that man's bad." To this, More replies "there's no law against that." Another family member retorts: "yes there is - God law." More answers with: "then God can arrest him."
Robert Bolt, the learned atheist who penned A Man for All Seasons knew enough about Catholic philosophy to communicate important Catholic concepts with this scene.
Among these is the fact that, in the Catholic view, as voiced by Bolt's Thomas More, not every sin, moral defect, or character flaw justifies intervention by the state. The fact that Richard Rich was a betrayer and liar was not sufficient, More understood, to apply More's police powers as Chancellor of England. After all, for centuries, many Church leaders had long agreed that applying state coercion to cure every social ill was often a cure that was worse than the disease. As Thomas Aquinas notes: "Accordingly in human government also, those who are in authority rightly tolerate certain evils, lest certain goods be lost, or certain evils be incurred."
Moreover in response to the retort that "God's law" demands action, Aquinas notes that even God himself is tolerant of moral defects:
Human government is derived from the Divine government, and should imitate it. Now although God is all-powerful and supremely good, nevertheless He allows certain evils to take place in the universe, which He might prevent, lest, without them, greater goods might be forfeited, or greater evils ensue.
So, when More jokes that "God can arrest" Rich if He sees fit, More is giving voice to an already established strain of thought in Catholic thinking.
Moreover, Aquinas's views toward the state are relatively benign compared to others — Augustine, for instance — who viewed the state as a necessary but violent evil to be tolerated only because it might restrain the excesses of even worse criminals.
The Modern Preference for State Action on Everything
Needless to say, these ideas of a barely-tolerated and restrained state are long gone in the current crop of modern European bishops who rarely meet a new government program they don't like.
The latest case in point on this interventionist enthusiasm is this month's anti-market missive titled "Oeconomicae et pecuniariae quaestiones" ("Considerations for an ethical discernment regarding some aspects of the present economic-financial system").
Although often attributed in the media to the current Pope, this document really issues forth from the bowels of the Vatican bureaucracy and reflects not merely the Pope's thinking but a more general attitude among the European intellectual classes who compose such documents which are read by few, and quickly forgotten.
Nevertheless,...