Rev. Patrick H. Reardon Long accustomed to the thesis that governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed, it is not easy for Americans to think that governments may also speak with a higher authority. Indeed, the “consent of the governed” is so commonly withheld these days that it may pass as part of our birthright. For the same reason, it is difficult for Americans to believe that the art of government has any necessary relationship to a higher order at all, such as the order of the moral law. So clearly have we come to distinguish legal concerns from moral concerns that a real separation of the two is pretty much taken for granted. Anyone today who ...
