cormacburke.me.ke - English, Law

Law and Morality

webmaster — Wed, 21 Sep 2011 11:28:03 +0000

Law and Morality
In the modern world, morality and law are almost universally held to be unrelated fields and, where the term "legal ethics" is used, it is taken to refer to the professional honesty of lawyers or judges, but has nothing to do with the possible "rightness" or "wrongness" of particular laws themselves.
This is a consequence of the loss of the sense of any "truth" about man, and of the banishment of the idea of the natural law. It undermines any sense of true human rights, leaves the individual defenseless against unjust laws, and opens the way to different forms of totalitarianism. This should be easy enough to see for a person open to the truth; but many people's minds have set into superficial ways of thinking, and they will not react unless they have been led on, step by step, to deeper reflection and awareness
The right relationship between law and morality

Constitutional rights and wrongs (The Sunday Tribune, Dublin, October 1993)

webmaster — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 14:30:29 +0000

An article and Editorial of your issue of September 19th have just come to my notice. Commenting on a recent High Court Judgment of Mr. Justice Rory O'Hanlon, you take me to task for a negative view of contraception given in my book "Covenanted Happiness" (which Justice O'Hanlon quotes in his judgment). The implication, it would seem, is that I offer an outdated theological understanding of conjugal sexuality, unacceptable to modern concepts of human freedom and rights.

Law and Conscience (Position Papers 1995)

webmaster — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 14:30:02 +0000

Let us first recall a few elementary ideas about both conscience and law, and then consider some aspects of their inter-relationship.

Conscience can be described as a personal interior faculty pointing to the right and wrong of one's actions. It is what the moral theologians call the proximate norm of morality. Vatican II speaks of it as the interior voice "always summoning man to love good and avoid evil, speaking to his heart, saying: do this, avoid that" (GS 16).

Law and Medicine in the Service of the Person and Society

webmaster — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 14:29:32 +0000

(A lecture given in Wellington, New Zealand, 1994, to a combined meeting of the SS. Cosmas and Damian Guild and the St. Thomas More Society)

LAW, THE INDIVIDUAL AND SOCIETY

webmaster — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 14:29:03 +0000

Law makes for order. Absence of law for disorder. Man in his individual life as well as in his social life, needs order. Therefore man needs law.

Law, conscience and the jurist (Position Papers, April 1995, pp. 111-116)

webmaster — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 14:28:24 +0000

Let us first recall a few elementary ideas about both conscience and law, and then consider some aspects of their inter-relationship.

Conscience can be described as a personal interior faculty pointing to the right and wrong of one's actions. It is what the moral theologians call the proximate norm of morality. The Second Vatican Council speaks of it as the interior voice "always summoning man to love good and avoid evil, speaking to his heart, saying: do this, avoid that" (GS 16).

Renewal, Personalism and Law (Onclin Chair Lecture, Louvain 1995)

webmaster — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 14:27:56 +0000

Renewal.

Social Structures and Laws based on Christian values

webmaster — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 14:27:22 +0000

University Congress Lecture: Strathmore University, Nairobi, March 2000

A broad topic has been assigned to me - "Social Structures and Laws based on Christian values" - and my intention is to speak rather broadly to it.

The Medicinal Power of Justice (Strathmore University Lecture, 2003)

webmaster — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 14:26:53 +0000

Allow me to begin with some personal details that are not altogether irrelevant. My father being a doctor and I a priest, I have always considered that medicine and the priesthood particularly qualify as service professions - professions dedicated to the service of others. I am also a lawyer, both civil and canonical; but must admit that only in more recent years have I come to consider that the law too has every title to rank as a unique service profession. It is not that I deliberately excluded it before from my idea of major service professions; I just did not positively include it in the list. Now I do, most positively.

The pastoral character of Church law (Homiletic and Pastoral Review, March, 1988, pp. 26-32)

webmaster — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 14:26:27 +0000

The Second Vatican Council, to quote the opening words of its first document, "set out to impart an ever-increasing vigour to the Christian life of the faithful" (SC 1). The renewal envisaged by the Council was to be pastoral; in other words, it was to be a renewal of the Church's role in caring for souls, as it carries on the work of Christ the Eternal Pastor (cf. CD 1). A pastorally renewed Church, according to the mind of the Council, should therefore be a Church where souls are cared for better, where the care they receive is more according to the fullness of Christ's design.