Pope Francis on the law

Abstract

In a post-modern, multicultural world, the present head of the Roman Catholic Church, similarly to his predecessor Benedict XVI, consistently promotes natural rights theory as a common, universal, moral heritage which determines and reflects on the individual, social and political orders of life. What underpins the Pope’s view is the philosophical anthropology that reflects the immutability of being in its duration and structures, and that exposes, more distinctly than promoted by his predecessors, the need for relatedness with other human beings. His theory of natural law, not only on a philosophical but also religious level, presupposes recognition of this concept on the basis of faith in revealed truth. For the Pope, this approach translates to recognizing the supremacy of morality over the law that may obtain universal qualities if it accepts its subordination to ethical values. For Pope Francis, such a prospective is a basis for dialogue between different cultures and religions. Simultaneously, it allows to formulate canons of common law in the public and private dimension, whose sources should be sought in the idea of dig- nity and in immutable human rights that arise from it. However in the context of the interpretation of some fundamental rights, it should be noticed that the emphasis present during transmission to the public is slightly different in terms of their contents, which causes numerous ambiguous comments. Undoubtedly, the theory of law proposed by Pope Francis arises out of the need to identify an effective counterbalance to the current culture of so-called subjective and shallow truths which implement individual, selfish projects of social, economic and political existence.