Return to St Thomas Aquinas and the Law of Nations

In this video, I discuss Pope Francis' message to the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences on March 7 and 8, 2024. Pope Francis, like Pope Leo XIII before him, recognizes the need to return to St Thomas Aquinas and his philosophy in order to understand domestic and international society, and to right order the same. This means understanding the ius gentium, or the Catholic tradition of the Law of Nations. This makes ever more relevant the work of John Eppstein and others who recognized the importance of protecting and improving the person, the family, culture, the nation (or people or ethnicity), the right relation of these to the State, and the right relation of states and nations in the international order.

Hugo Grotius and John Locke did not have the same view as the Catholics and so there developed a view of domestic and international society that made it easier for an ideology like Liberalism, which focuses on the individual, material gain and the accumulation of wealth, to take hold. That in turn concentrated wealth and power in the hands of those able to gain such, and those desirous of material gain. As Liberalism is devoted to the service of Mammon, the service to God is forgotten and has harmful effects in all societies struggling to follow the Natural Law. However, the Natural Law is knowable by all peoples, and hence forms a way by which to right order relations in society and between countries because the Natural Law is there to continue, protect, make prosperous, and bring harmony.

The Law of Nations offers us a way forward to rightly understand events (especially current events), and to craft the correct and best response. We must recognize that in the USA there are many nations: Blacks (formerly Negroes), Americans, Jews, Hispanics, Asians, and subgroups of each. Eppstein and the Catholics recognized these realities, and that displeased the powers of this world. They reacted by, among other things, boiling everything down to skin color. Concepts like "racial equality" were weapons turned against us, and now we are being erased with DEI and CRT. We cannot deal effectively with these things unless we understand what is happening and can gain a frame of reference knowable and understandable to others of good will and good faith. A good development is the rise of these concepts to some degree in international documents.

I have been talking about all of this for some time, and it looks like the Pope might be reading The American Proposition. Stay tuned for my piece on all of this. Below is a link to my books and also the Pope's message.

Books:

https://theamericanproposition.com/purchase-books/

Pope's Message:

https://www.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/messages/pont-messages/2024/documents/20240307-messaggio-laboratorio-pass.html#:~:text=Aquinas%20upholds%20the%20inherent%20dignity,virtue%20of%20the%20rational%20soul.