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Rules, goods, and discernment
What is the meaning of the rules?




Author: P. Fernando Pascual, L.C | Source: Catholic.net



Do not park in a double row. Do not eat without washing your hands before? Deliver the income statement on time. Keep the car insurance up to date. Read a document before you sign up for an Internet page. 

We continually Find rules, norms, laws, mandates, that shape the mode of action, and that have levels of minor or greater importance. It is not the same to avoid noises when wiping your nose to respect the red of the traffic light.

The rules, at their different levels, make sense when they are properly prepared, when they serve to avoid evils or dangers when they promote goods or improvements in people and societies. 

For that reason, a rule of law would be harmful if it ordered something unfair. For example, laws that impose racial segregation in public life. Or rules that prevent a store from putting signs in a language used by a major minority.

When it comes to action, we sometimes experience certain conflicts. If you do not park in double row, and there is no other option, the child who has a hemorrhage can get aggravated and enter the hospital with severe damage. 



So In many villages, there is a healthy condemnation of cold "legalism", because that legalism, instead of promoting good, leads to ridiculous situations, such as fine firefighters for having parked in a forbidden place while shutting down a fire…

The ancient World, with Aristotle, and the medieval world, with St. Thomas, among other authors, explained the importance of a ripe discernment to find when respect for a ruler promotes good and when such respect could be harmful by preventing another good from Greater importance.

Teaching the foregoing will turn us away from unhealthy legalism and drive us to live wisely and sensibly in everyday life. Because Sometimes you can postpone an appointment by "transgressing" the given word if you have discovered that it is better to visit a sick relative at the same time…








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