Veto by Annoyance

Last week, I mentioned two different Catholic legal obligations: follow the law, and fight unjust laws.  There’s a reason I mentioned following the law before righting injustice—we don’t like to think about it as much.   While there might not be so many complaints over laws telling us to not kill others, when it comes down to it, paying our taxes, walking at a crosswalk and following the speed limit seem to have almost no moral value as compared to signing the most recent petition to stop impressing children into armies in Africa.

But more than that, laws can just be annoying!  When I’m in a hurry to get home, or running late to class, the last thing I want to think about is that when I break the speed limit, I breaking the law as surely as if I snuck a Snickers bar out of a 7-Eleven.  However, as I alluded to last week, the Council Fathers of Vatican II have strong words about that exact activity:

“Others think little of certain norms of social life, for example those designed for the protection of health, or laws establishing speed limits; they do not even avert to the fact that by such indifference they imperil their own life and that of others” (Gaudium et Spes 30).

After all, remember last week when I said Romans tells us we should follow the law not just because we’re afraid of fines, but because we are bound by our very conscience (Romans 2:5).  And the moment conscience is brought into, we should recall Fourth Lateran’s comment, “He who acts against his conscience loses his soul.” 

I find a lot of irony when I hear someone say we should value democratic ideals so much that we send our military overseas to kill those who lack a legislature, but then drives home at 95 mph. I guess on the highway, the vaunted democratic process gets thrown out the car's open window.

Of course, this veto by annoyance becomes even more obvious when you think of alcohol.  When I was in college, the legal drinking age of 21 was simply annoying.  Perhaps it’s even bad public policy. Unfortunately, St. Augustine said “an unjust law is no law at all,” not “an annoying law is no law at all” or “bad public policy is no law at all.”  If every time we found a law annoying or bad public policy, most every business would suddenly find themselves tax-exempt entities. 

Now, certainly, we might claim that the drinking age of 21 is unjust—that our fundamental human rights as persons are being violated by not being able to have a beer on a Saturday night before the Earth gets around sun 21 times from the time we were born.  I’m sure the 12-year-old children who have been forced to fight in the Lord’s Resistance Army in the DRC feel the pain of our violated liberty. Sadly, when I was in college, I must have missed the liquor store sit-ins to resist the tyranny imposed by the oppressive Alcohol Law Enforcement.  In another striking moment of solidarity-by-Fried-Chicken, people might have been willing to drink a fraternity’s free beer to protest injustice, but no one was willing to go to jail.

So certainly, in a Democracy, every citizen should actively, And indeed, an unjust law is no law at all.  But remember, it takes a law being unjust before we can simply repudiate it and feel ourselves from the duty they impose.  As a Catholic, we generally find a good way to uphold the rule of law by following it.

And when law and justice are at odds, I hope we find a better way to fight injustice than at a frat party, hiding from ALE, holding on desperately to our right to Veto by Annoyance.