Choose a topic from Part 2B:
1. Right means what is just. A right is what isowed. Subjectively, a right is a moral power in a person to do, topossess, or to demand something. Now, right is the object of thevirtue of justice. Justice is the virtue that requiresthat right be done, and that rights in persons be observed and notviolated.
2. Right is founded on law. Natural right restson the natural law, which, as we have seen, is the eternal morallaw as knowable by sound human reason without the aid of divinerevelation. Thus an innocent man's right to life is a naturalright. Positive right rests on positive law, that is, lawenacted and set down in positive ordinance. Positive law isdivine (as in the Ten Commandments) or human, asin the written code of a nation. Human law is civil orecclesiastical according as it is the written code ofstate or Church; Church law is canon law ordiocesan law according as it is for the whole Church orfor a diocese.
3. International law or the law of nationsexpresses the rights of nations towards one another; it restsultimately, as all laws do, on the eternal law of God. It isdistinct from the natural law, for it has a different and morerestricted field of application.
4. The right of dominion is the right ofownership, whether of goods, or of jurisdiction,that is, of justly controlling the activities of others andrequiring obedience. There is a special right of control orjurisdiction called paternal right; this belongs to afather with reference to his children. In husband and wife, thereis domestic right. In citizens, by reason of civil law,there is civic right.
"Try to turn your heart from the love of things visible and bring yourself to things invisible. For they who follow their own evil passions stain their consciences and lose the grace of God.
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Thomas á Kempis
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"O Lord, my God, who will seek you with simple and pure love, and not find that you are all one can desire, for you show yourself first and go out to meet those who seek you?
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St John of the Cross, OCD - Doctor of the Church
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"Shun too great a desire for knowledge, for in it there is much fretting and delusion. Intellectuals like to appear learned and to be called wise. Yet there are many things the knowledge of which does little or no good to the soul, and he who concerns himself about other things than those which lead to salvation is very unwise.
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Thomas á Kempis
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