Ultra vires?

THE Latin expression simply means “beyond the scope or in excess of legal power or authority.” DILG Secretary Robredo cited it when commenting on the now controversial Ayala Alabang ordinance regulating the availability and use of contraceptives and the like.

I was deeply disappointed with this statement of Robredo who otherwise enjoys the prestige of being an exceptional politician, one who is competent and honest. That combination is not easy to find. But in this case, I feel Robredo needs to know certain things and cover his likely Achilles’ heel.

As a result of my article on law and legalism, I received a number of reactions that ranged from the serious and the valid to the ridiculous and the impertinent. In the middle were some reactions that contained both legitimate and wild points.

It’s quite obvious that our human laws obviously cannot capture everything that needs to be regulated in life, no matter how well crafted they are. There are certain things of conscience that our human laws cannot enter.

In fact, they mainly regulate the external and social dimensions of our life, even if we try our best to attune them to the finer matters of conscience. That’s just how things are. Though we have to be serious with our laws, we should never forget that they are not perfect. They will always be in the state of perfectibility, a dynamic affair, not static.

In short, our human laws cannot be the last word on how we ought to live and behave individually and collectively. They have to be crafted, implemented, then polished, revised, refined, etc. in a lifelong process of trying to conform them to the ultimate basis of our laws, which should be God’s laws, our knowledge of which also takes on a dynamic process.

Of course, given our human condition, we also just have to find a practical way of attaining an acceptable state of stability in the midst of all the dynamism involved in our life. Otherwise, there would be chaos. But our need for stability should not hinder but rather should foster our greater need for dynamism in an acceptable way.

Thus, to make our human laws the ultimate basis of what is right and wrong, what is fair and unfair, just and unjust, is to give our human laws “ultra vires,” opening them to all forms of legalism. We would be expropriating what is proper of God and making it our exclusive own. That would be funny.

Of course, the question of the involvement of God in our law-making is a very tricky one. Among the reactions I received to my previous article was one that sarcastically asked me, which God should we follow—the one of the Catholics, the Protestants, the Muslims, etc.”

Yes, we need to acknowledge the complexity of the question, but it does not mean we should avoid it. That would be doing an ostrich that buries its head in the sand when faced with a challenge. We just have to tackle that difficulty, no matter what it takes—of course, doing it as cordially as possible, avoiding violence and bitter zeal.

Since we can have different conceptions of God, we obviously have to go slow in our exchanges, but never to stop. Religious freedom should not be taken to mean that we just keep a kind of permanent détente among the different religions, or worse, that we shun the question of God.

While religious détente has some value and advantages, it should be understood as a practical, temporary means to keep peace and harmony in society. But it should not hinder the attainment of the fullness of religious freedom which always involves the lifelong search for the true God.

That is why, the role of religion and everything related to it should not be avoided in pursuing and developing our temporal affairs, like making the laws of our land. We have to debunk and outgrow that erroneous understanding of the doctrine on separation of Church and state that puts God out of the picture in our state affairs.

Putting God out would leave us in the cold, groping in the dark and relying simply on our own lights that at best can only be limited. Putting God out would lead us to the tyranny of the majority, the powerful, the rich. It cannot be fair for all. Affirmations of pursuing the common good would just be hot air.

We need to make a paradigm shift in our thinking and attitude towards our human laws and avoid “ultra vires.”