Throughout his papacy, Paul John Paul II stressed the necessity
for Catholics to learn from their “elder brothers,” the Jews, both
so Catholics would better understand their world and also so they
could better understand their own Catholic faith. Throughout
his own life, Pope John Paul II learned five lessons about law from
his Jewish brothers and sisters. First, he learned that law
should be made not as men are inclined to make it, “carried away on
the tumultuous wave of self-interest and instinct,” but that law
must be made as God makes it. Second, in the spirit of God,
law must be motivated and activated by love. Third,
consistent with this spirit of love, law must see those it impacts
with loving eyes. It must recognize in each person it impacts
“the dignity of the human being, made in the image of God,” a
dignity that entitles each person to “universal, inviolable,
inalienable rights,” and out of that recognition, law must seek to
“acknowledge, respect, and promote” that dignity. Fourth,
Pope John Paul II learned that law must seek to be centered in
truth. Fifth and finally, John Paul II learned that this law
of love necessarily hungers for community and seeks “to work for
the common good.”
This paper discusses how these lessons are, in fact, taught by
the Jewish experience with law and then mirrored in law as
communicated by Christ and embraced by the Church. Having
sought to capture the meaning of law in the hands of God, the paper
considers the implications these lessons offer for law in the hands
of men generally and more specifically in the American political
experience.