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  • Note on the Problem of the Origin of Political Authority
  • Charles N. R. McCoy (bio)
Charles N. R. McCoy
St. Louis University
St. Louis, Mo.
Charles N. R. McCoy

Charles N. R. McCoy is a priest of the Archdiocese of St. Paul who received a Ph. D. in Political Science (University of Chicago) and in Philosophy (Laval). He is currently Associate-Professor of Government at St. Louis University and a contributor to American Political Science Review, Review of Politics, Thought, The Modern Schoolman.

Footnotes

1. Heinrich Rommen, The State in Catholic Thought (Herder, 1945), pp. 446–447.

2. Aristotle, Politics, III, 2 1281b 16–26; 1282a 28.

3. Summa Theologica, I–II, q. 105, a. 1.

4. Ibid., q. 90, a. 3.

5. Ibid., II–II, q. 50, a. 1, obj. 3.

6. Ibid., ad 3.

7. Ibid., I–II, q. 97, a. 3, ad 3.

8. Physics II, 2, 198b, 33–199a, 8.

9. Bellarmine, Controversiarum de membris ecclesiae, lib. III De laicis sive secularibus, chap. VI. Opera (Paris: Vivès, 1870) III, 10–12.

10. Ibid.

11. It is interesting that Professor Yves Simon presents Bellarmine’s theory as allowing that the respublica can manage political power for itself. The opposite opinion, he says, “does not seem to be borne out by (his) text”—this despite the explicit statement that “since the respublica cannot exercise this power for itself, it is bound to transfer it to one person or to a few.” At the same time Professor Simon admits that “in all cases of which Bellarmine can think … the duty to pursue the common good … entails also the duty to put it in the hands of a distinct governing personnel….” (The Philosophy of Democratic Government, University of Chicago Press, 1951, p. 168). If Bellarmine cannot, as Simon acknowledges, think of any case in which the respublica can exercise political power for itself, how does Professor Simon conclude that Bellarmine’s theory allows for just precisely that? It is, he tells us, because “all that Bellarmine demonstrates is that the transmission of political power from the multitude to the distinct governing personnel is not a matter delivered to the free choice of the multitude when, as he puts it, ‘the republic cannot exercise such power for itself’” (Ibid., p. 168; italics mine.) But does Bellarmine put it quite that way? He says not “when,” but “Since the republic, etc.” “Since” it cannot, Bellarmine, of course, does not treat of the conceivable case where it can: Science does not treat of the accidental as such. Certainly it may be said that there is some conceivable case in which the respublica can exercise political power for itself—this is simply the unnatural but possible case. Again we may recall Aristotle’s definition of the natural as that which happens always or for the most part. That it is natural for the respublica to exercise political power for itself is explicitly denied by Bellarmine.

12. Op. cit., I–II, q. 95, a. 2.

13. Nicomachean Ethics, V, 7, 1134b, 18–25.

14. Op. cit., I–II, q. 95, a. 2.

15. Bellarmine, op. cit.

16. Cf. Summa Theol., II–II, q. 57, a. 3.

17. Op. cit.

18. Thomas de Vio Cardinalis Caietanus, Scripta theologica, Vol. I: De comparatione auctoritatis papae et concilii cum apologia eiusdem tractatus, Vincentius M. Iacobus Pollet editionem curavit (Rome: Apud Institutum “Angelicum,” 1936, Paragraphs 562–564).

19. Summa Theol., II–II, q. 57, a. 3.

20. Ibid., I–II. q. 94, a. 5, ad 3.

21. I Polit., lect. 3.

22. Op. cit., I, q. 96, a. 4.

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