The Role of Positive Human Law According to Aquinas | Fr. Wojciech Giertych, O.P.
The Thomistic Institute
The Thomistic Institute
4.8 • 873 Ratings
🗓️ 1 April 2024
⏱️ 57 minutes
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Summary
This lecture was given on January 26th, 2024, at the Pontifical Academy of St. Thomas Aquinas.
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About the speaker:
Fr. Wojciech Giertych, O.P. was born in 1951 in London, UK. He studied history in Poznań, Poland, entered the Polish Province of the Dominican Order in 1975, and was ordained in 1981. He then worked in Kraków, Poland as formator and professor of moral theology, and has been an invited professor of the PUST since 1994. He has been a member of the General Council of the Dominican Order since 1998. He has served the Order as Socius for Central and Eastern Europe and then Socius for Intellectual Life. Since 2005 he has been the Theologian of the Papal Household and lives in the Vatican.
Transcript
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| 0:55.9 | The role of positive human law according to Aquinas. |
| 1:01.2 | Now, the relationship between the moral order and the penal order of the state |
| 1:07.3 | is an issue that in many countries is generating conflicts. Quarrels about this |
| 1:13.6 | become red-hot when the political legal reaction to abortion is discussed and when strange |
| 1:21.6 | ideological positions are being thrust upon society. In many countries today it's no longer a debate whether abortion is to be |
| 1:31.1 | made legally permissible, but whether the already present legal availability of abortion may be restricted, |
| 1:39.8 | and if so, to what extent? Does the eventual move to change an existing political and legal compromise that leaves abortion |
| 1:49.9 | unpunished in some cases is the object of dispute. |
| 1:54.9 | Furthermore, it becomes clear that some political maneuvers are not always pure. There are politicians who bring up the issue of abortion |
| 2:04.5 | to us to divide the electorate and then they use the heated debate as a cover-up for their other |
| 2:11.5 | doings that are immoral and corrupt. In such situation, one often has the impression, maybe not necessarily so in the USA, but certainly |
| 2:23.3 | in my country in Poland, that in the minds of vociferous Catholics and many representatives |
| 2:30.3 | of the clergy, the only socially relevant moral issue that they see is that of abortion |
| 2:37.0 | and other dubious procedures discussed in bioethics, which they want to be made illegal |
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