Health Care laws and Thomas Aquinas

Posted on September 21, 2012 by Jeff

I have the wonderful opportunity to belong to a reading group on Thomas’ Treatise on Law. For this week’s reading, we read questions 92 and 93 of the first part of the second book of the Summa Theologicae. Question 92 concerns the effects of law while question 93 concerns the eternal law.

In the effects of law, Thomas argues that law aims to make human beings good. That is, law seeks to make human beings virtuous, either by commanding virtuous actions, forbidding vicious actions, and permitting actions which are not in-themselves vicious.

When we think about the health care law that was recently passed, we have to recognize that its original aim was to make human beings virtuous, first by commanding that human beings are able to care for their own health through affordable health care. Second, it sought to forbid the rampant and egregious increases in health care costs. Third, it sought to allow freedom to individuals to chose their own health care carrier or provider.

Each of these goals align with the idea of a law that seeks to make human beings better. We can go further still: a law that requires health providers not to drop those who have poor health from insurance is necessary. It commands the virtuous action of supporting the common good and forbidding the vicious action of placing profits over the health and welfare of individual human beings. This dual command and forbiddance should be our guide in structuring health care.

The aspect of the law most challenged was that which would require all individuals to purchase health insurance. Without such a law in place, there would not be enough individuals paying premiums to support the health of all. Rather than violating freedom, however, this mandate again encouraged or commanded the placing of the common good over the individual good. It accords with natural law, then.

One of the great problems with American society is our refusal to place the common good before the good of our individual selves. Our hyperindividualism means that we believe each person should pull him or herself up by his or her boot-straps. Natural law, on the other hand, requires us to have a more realistic picture of the frailty of human life and the commonality we share as members of one community.

Stand Your Ground

Posted on April 3, 2012 by Jeff

The Stand Your Ground Law in Florida states:

776.012 Use of force in defense of person.—A person is justified in using force, except deadly force, against another when and to the extent that the person reasonably believes that such conduct is necessary to defend himself or herself or another against the other’s imminent use of unlawful force. However, a person is justified in the use of deadly force and does not have a duty to retreat if:

(1) He or she reasonably believes that such force is necessary to prevent imminent death or great bodily harm to himself or herself or another or to prevent the imminent commission of a forcible felony; or

(2) Under those circumstances permitted pursuant to s. 776.013.

This law has come under some speculation since the shooting of Trayvnor Martin by George Zimmerman on February 26th 2012. I do not want make judgments about the shooting here — I certainly have an opinion, but I’m not on the ground and I do not know all the facts of the case.

Rather, I want to reflect on the justice of this law. What the law does is it stops someone from being prosecuted or investigated if the person acted in self-defense. Normally, if you harm or kill someone in self-defense, you could be tried and use self-defense as your legal defense for why you harmed or killed another. What this law does is stop you from being tried.

Thomas Aquinas believes that self-defense adheres to the natural (moral) law. All beings seek to preserve themselves — we have “inclinations” (in Thomas’ words) to protect our lives and preserve them. Natural law is using our reason to understand these inclinations and not to violate them, for they lead to fulfillment or flourishing here on earth. So, we have a duty to protect ourselves from harm.

Yet, it seems to me that Stand Your Ground Laws do more than allow one to protect one’s self. They, in essence, prevent the necessary reflection on our actions. By saying that someone should not be prosecuted for acting in self-defense, the law removes the need to evaluate one’s actions or one’s motivations. Yet, such evaluation is also an inclination that human beings have from the fact that they are human beings. Thomas Aquinas is not the only one to claim this; Mary Midgley makes a similar claim in her Beast and Man, that what makes us human is our ability to make moral evaluations.

In fact, as I argue in my forthcoming book, Reason, Tradition, and the Good, our way of life in modernity strips us of the possibility of such evaluation. So a Stand Your Ground Law results simply from the system of ethics and law in the contemporary world. It is a result from denying what is most truly human about our lives. Whether Zimmerman acted justly or not, society has a duty to encourage Zimmerman to evaluate his actions and motives; just as society has a duty to help us all learn how to evaluate our actions and motives.

Uplift Human Personality

Posted on January 16, 2012 by Jeff

Dr. Martin Luther King wrote the Letter from Birmingham Jail on April 16th, 1963. It’s a momentous letter that calls on all Christians and all people to end the unjust social structures and practices that kept African-Americans from fully participating in the public realm and living fulfilling lives.

Almost 50 years later, it’s message still rings true. We know that African-Americans fair worse in the United States than do almost all other ethnic groups. We also know that, toward the end of his life, Dr. King turned his attention toward broader social justice issues. He was assassinated in Memphis because he was there to support striking trash collectors.

The Letter from Birmingham Jail remains an important piece for subversive Thomists. Among other things, Dr. King speaks of the natural law. He re-iterates St. Augustine’s famous phrase that “an unjust law is no law at all.” The question arises, “What makes a law just?” Dr. King answers with the most subversive answer of all:

A just law is one that uplifts human personality.

Read those words again: uplifts human personality. St. Thomas states that law is for the perfection of the human person. It’s hard to think of that in relation to Thomas for many, and especially in relation to the Catholic Church and religion in general. But religion is about bringing us closer to God — leading us back to God. What could be more uplifting that that?

Dr. King’s letter, though, is not about simply bringing us back to God. It’s about the obligation that Christians have to change those laws that degrade human personality. It’s about making laws that uplift human personality — that make us better people. Essentially, that is the goal of Catholic Social Justice. It’s the goal of the Occupy movement. Let’s make it our own goal as well.

The Need for Housing

Posted on October 18, 2011 by Jeff

I imagine that you know someone who is either underwater in their house or perhaps has lost their house. You may even know someone who is homeless.

The housing crisis has raised serious moral issues: what are the duties of people who take out loans to understand the loan and to understand the laws and circumstances that make a loan possible? To what extent should those who took out loans for houses they would not otherwise be able to afford to understand the mechanics banks used to make such loans possible? How can a hopeful home owner mitigate the excitement of owning a house to clear his or her mind to understand the contract and see that this loan is too good to be true?

And if someone did get themselves and their families into a bad situation and ended up homeless, do we as a society have any obligations to that family to see that they have some shelter? To the adults that signed the loan? And what about to the children who had no say in the loan?

These questions are difficult questions to answer, and we often get lost in the legal technicalities of who is responsible for what. In the United States, we believe that each individual is responsible for herself and must take care of herself and live with the consequences of her actions.

This idea is admirable and fine, but it misses one thing — need!

What should be the human response in the face of need? Can we separate the individual response in the face of need from the community response in the face of need?

It seems to me only one answer suffices — the proper response in the face of need is to mitigate, even alleviate, that need.

We did a lot in this society to bail out banks and lending institutions, but we fail to respond to the truly human need that faces us everyday. Portland, OR, for instance, is trying to pass city ordinances that take away needed shelter from those who are homeless. At a basic human level, such ordinances violate the natural law — the law that says we must uplift human personality. And any law that bails out banks but fails to provide the means for individuals and families to stay in their houses, and any people who say that it’s their responsibility not to have taken out the loan or to make their payments, are missing out in the basic call of natural law — to do good and to avoid evil. That is, they are lacking the correct response in the face of need.

I hope and pray that one day, need will be at the center of these discussions.

Police Violence Against Occupy Boston: The Whole World is Watching!

Posted on October 11, 2011 by Joan

Following a march of approximately 10,000 students, union members and others in Boston yesterday, police converged on Occupy Boston protestors last night who were outside the permitted protest area. Approximately 200 police–some in riot gear–destroyed tents, confiscated cameras, medical supplies, food, and other property, and arrested over 100 protestors and observers (including the director of the National Lawyers Guild). Police dragged some handcuffed protestors on their stomachs and beat others. (A fairly good article on it: http://chronicle.com/blogs/brainstorm/inside-the-crackdown-at-occupyboston/40136).

The protestors are determined to keep the occupation going and more arrests and violence by police is expected tonight. Please call the Boston mayor’s office at 617.635.4500 to protest the arrests and violence against peaceful protestors and demand that it stop. There is also a link to donate bail money at http://occupyboston.com, as well as a statement from the protestors.

In a statement to the media today, the mayor of Boston stated: “Civil disobedience will not be tolerated.” –Reuters (http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/10/11/us-wallstreet-protests-boston-idUSTRE79A0P320111011).

These protestors were not trying to get arrested. It is one thing to ceremoniously cross the line at a military base and be smoothly led away. This was not that kind of an action. The protest was so massive that it had become next to impossible to confine it to the permitted area and had spread beyond it. Central to the Occupy Boston protest’s method of expressing its views was its commitment to remaining throughout the night. The police action was a severe infringement upon their basic right to freedom of speech, and it was furthermore carried out in a threatening and violent way against peaceful demonstrators. I have heard that the protestors were not wanted in the park area where they were arrested because it had been spruced up recently with new plants. What kind of a society do we live in, if keeping a park looking neat and pretty is given priority over treating people with basic dignity and respect? Or, more to the point—if maintaining an unjust and flawed economic system is given priority over human rights?

When a law infringes on people’s ability to speak out in accord with their consciences, it is not a just law—it is no law at all. Last Sunday at Occupy Lexington, a couple had brought a sign referring to “Matthew 21.” I didn’t know what Matthew 21 referred to, but apparently it is the passage in which Jesus does some property damage at a protest, throwing the money-changers out of the temple and toppling their tables. If calm, well-ordered protests get suppressed by the Boston police in the way that we saw last night, one can only imagine that the Boston police would have done to Jesus.

Please speak out against this mistreatment of peaceful protestors, donate to the bail fund, and keep Occupy Boston in your thoughts and prayers.

Subversive Thomism

Living Justly and Loving Kindness in a World on the Brink of Collapse

Tag Archives: Natural Law