The American legal system was founded on principles totally opposed to the crimes committed by the Inquisitors
I believe they were engaged in administering "Canon Law" when doing such things
Posted on 10/27/2020 11:45:25 AM PDT by CondoleezzaProtege
The nomination of Amy Coney Barrett to the United States Supreme Court would make her, if confirmed, the sixth Roman Catholic on the nine-person court.
The Catholic Church has already contributed much to the United States’ legal system - including “the whole idea of law in general,” Fr. Pius Pietrzyk, OP, told CNA.
“It’s the development of canon law (the law that governs the Church) that gives both the United States and Europe their modern notions of law..."
While aspects of canon law were present since the early days of the Church, the use of the term ‘canon law’, as rules and laws governing ecclesial matters rather than civil ones, started around the 12th century, according to New Advent. While the code of canon law has been updated numerous times, it is the longest still-functioning rule of law in the West.
“Even the idea of a professional legal class, that is of lawyers, finds its root in the professionalization of law and the development of the Church's canon law, in the 12th century.
More generally, he added, the Catholic tradition has always understood that faith and reason work together...
Stephen Payne, dean of the Columbus School of Law at The Catholic University of America, said it is this emphasis of reason in the Catholic tradition that makes Catholics good lawyers and judges.
Payne added that the U.S. legal system also includes ideas that come from natural law, a concept emphasized in the Catholic tradition that has roots in the thought of St. Thomas Aquinas and even further back to Aristotle.
According to the Catechism of the Catholic Church, natural law is “present in the heart of each man and established by reason….It expresses the dignity of the human person and forms the basis of his fundamental rights and duties.” ...
(Excerpt) Read more at catholicnewsagency.com ...
Too bad they have a commie Pope.
The American legal system was founded on principles totally opposed to the crimes committed by the Inquisitors
I believe they were engaged in administering "Canon Law" when doing such things
Human abuses and misapplications of the law does not negate the law itself.
“But the Catholic faith has done more than just lend some of its features to civil law; it has also broken new ground. It was Catholic conscience confronting the evils of New World colonialism that led vicariously to the development of the modern system of international law.
In 1511 a Dominican priest on the island of Hispaniola (modern-day Haiti and the Dominican Republic) launched a fiery volley against Spanish exploitation of the natives, which prompted King Ferdinand of Spain to convene a council of theologians and to draft legislation for the humane treatment of his new subjects. Though most of the new laws were poorly enforced in the faraway colonies, they did “set the stage for the more systematic and lasting work of some of the great theological jurists of the sixteenth century. Chief among these is Father Francisco de Vitoria (1486–1546), the Thomist scholar whose explication of just war theory essentially rejects a European “right” to conquer the inhabitants of the New World in the name of civilization or Christianity. The alleged abuse or neglect of life and property by Native Americans, Vitoria taught, was not in itself sufficient grounds for waging war on them or subjugating them. Native Americans were fully human and as such were entitled to rule themselves, no matter what a European power, even the papacy, said. Such teachings, which were inspired by the Catholic natural law tradition and the Catholic understanding of the unity of the human race, contributed much to the emergence of international law.”
“But perhaps the single most important contribution of Catholicism to Western law is the one that is so fundamental that it is the easiest to overlook: concern for the victim...”
If you’re genuinely curious. This is a much more thorough exposition.
THE CATHOLIC CONTRIBUTION TO WESTERN LAW
Not much. Law existed long before the Catholic Church (e.g. Roman Law).
WRT fundamental principles - separation of church and state is a fundamental American legal concept, and the Catholic Church is against that - rather the Catholic Church is to have special privileges and special influence on the government according to Pius IX in the 1864 Syllabus of Errors. Here are two examples of errors from the encyclical ...
“The Church ought to be separated from the State, and the State from the Church.” (No. 55, separation of church and state)
“In the present day it is no longer expedient that the Catholic religion should be held as the only religion of the State, to the exclusion of all other forms of worship.”
Again, those two propositions are ERRORS according to Pius IX. NO thanks, not for me. Nothing to be gained here except division and strife.
Bingo.
IMO, the presence of so many Catholics on the SCOTUS has less to do with any sort of Catholic legal tradition or philosophy and more to do with the fact that over the past 60 years or so, Catholic education K-12 has done a better job than the teachers’ union-controlled public school system in developing students with the liberal-arts background and critical-reasoning skills useful in catapulting to the top of the legal profession. I believe that 6 of the 9 are products of Catholic education K-12: the GOP appointees (minus Alito) plus Sotomayor.
See also: “The Religious Foundations of Western Law”
https://scholarship.law.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2541&context=lawreview
Actually the 7th. Gorsuch was raised Catholic all his life, went to a Catholic university, and started going to his wife’s Episcopal church because he couldn’t marry her in the RCC.
So essentially, it’s 7 Catholics and two Jewish.
No protestants, no Baptists, no evangelicals need apply.
And only 400 years too late. Rursus prosperum ac felix scelus virtus vocatur; sontibus parent boni, ius est in armis, opprimit leges timor.
No it’s because traditionally Protestants didn’t ignore the religious and foundational dimensions of Western law either. That’s changed. The average Evangelical has zero clue what role even the Protestant Reformation had in shaping the ongoing legal tradition already at work in the Western world.
Sadly.
Nope. Not true.
I think it has to do more with Catholicism being biggest on the upper east coast and in Mexican areas. Most of the Supremes come from the cloistered east coast and the Ivy League self-licking ice cream cone.
Ergo, we wind up with a lot of Catholics on the court. Same with Jews in America.
The Religious minorities of America dominating the courts has more to do with the upper east coast culture having an outsized footprint on America.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ancient_legal_codes
4000 years ago. And the religion was in the Middle East and it wasn’t Christianity, nor Judaism either. For reference if Mosaic law (e.g. the 10 Commandments, etc.) actually came from Moses then that would have been about 1300BC (3300 years ago).
Catholic grammar schools place an emphasis on grammar and diagramming sentences. I went to grammar school, not elementary school. I know the difference between the indicative and the subjunctive. That makes a difference in a contract. I wish somebody would tell Laura Ingraham, Sean Hannity, and Chris Wallace to stop saying “If he was” instead of “If he were”. I don’t understand why those sub literates are paid so much money.
You’re leaving out a huge chunk of Western development in between.
You’re forgetting origins.
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