Sir, - Rory O'Hanlon (September 8th) says that what he calls natural law - a law superior to civil legislation - is to be found in the "authoritative teaching of that [Catholic] Church on the great moral issues . . . expounded in the documentation emanating from the Pope . . ." He says it is this natural law which would, for example, have imposed "a moral obligation on the judges in the American states to refuse to implement the Fugitive Slave Act".
Mr O'Hanlon's choice of example does not support his argument. It was the Catholic Church and its Popes which sanctioned and encouraged slavery in the Americas, as they had in Europe. The writings of the Nobel Prize-winning economist, Robert William Fogel, and his research partner, Stanley L. Engerman, tell us this: "The Catholic Church not only rationalised the possession of slaves by others, but was itself a major owner of slaves.
"Even before the Jesuits began to encourage the importation of Africans into the New World, the Church actively promoted slavery. In 1375, Pope Gregory XI, viewing bondage as a just punishment for those who resisted the papacy, ordered the enslavement of excommunicated Florentines whenever they were captured.
"And in 1488 Pope Innocent VIII accepted a gift of 100 Moorish slaves from Ferdinand of Spain and then distributed them to various cardinals and nobles. Nor was it merely the conservative members of the hierarchy who countenanced human bondage. No less a humanist than Thomas More held slavery to be an appropriate state for the `vyle drudge', the `poore laborer', and the criminal. He therefore included slavery in his vision of Utopia."
There is indeed a morality which is superior to civil law, but the teachings of the Catholic church remain an unreliable place in which to seek it. - Yours, etc.,
North Great Georges Street, Dublin 1.