Sir, - With reference to Mr Rory O'Hanlon's views (September 8th) I make the following observations. He argues that laws must be interpreted in accordance with a particular view of natural law. Relying on Evangelium Vitae and St Thomas Aquinas, he asserts that no law or judicial decision may offend "against the natural law whose source and origin is the law of God" and that where this occurs the offending law shall "not have the true character of law and should not be obeyed but should be resisted".
Are we to take it therefore, that when the Oireachtas enacts a law or the courts make decisions which "do not have the character of law" these laws can be disobeyed? This is an astonishing argument for a former judge of the High Court to advance, considering his oath of office to uphold the Constitution. His reliance on Aquinas misrepresents the saint's actual position. What Aquinas did say was that laws conflicting with the natural law lose their power to bind morally. He says that "if a ruler enacts unjust laws their subjects are not obliged to obey them . . . except perhaps in certain cases when it is a matter of avoiding scandal (i.e., a corrupting example to others) or civil disorder" ( Summa Theologica 1/II.96.4). This is a far cry from the radical claim made in the name of Aquinas by Mr O'Hanlon.
In fact, Aquinas himself acknowledged the inherent difficulty in divining what natural law is. To him natural law is our human understanding of God's plan for us; it is of its nature human and cannot therefore be an infallible guide to God's will.
The absurdity of Mr O'Hanlon's views is further demonstrated by the inherent inconsistencies and contradictions existing within the theocratic natural law tradition as distinct from the secular natural law tradition. In an Irish context, both Catholic and Protestant traditions fundamentally disagree as to what the divine law is. The two traditions adopt opposing natural law positions on the question of contraception, sterilisation and abortion. As Mr Justice Walsh pointed out in McGee v AG, "what natural law is and what precisely it imports is a question which has exercised the minds of theologians for centuries and on which they are not fully agreed."
To claim in a democratic society such as ours that a law may not be lawful by reference to a divine law is jurisprudential codology of the highest order! - Yours, etc.,
Lower Kimmage Road, Dublin 6W.