On the Nature of Human Liberty

Deus, in adjutorium meum intende. Domine, ad adjuvandum me festina.
O God, come to my assistance. O Lord, make haste to help me.

"On the Nature of Human Liberty," is the title, in English of an Encyclical by Pope Leo XIII,who died in 1903.  I'm sharing a snippet here. Pope Leo XIII roundly condemned socialism and  encouraged the Church to be involved in political issues.

There is so much in his Encyclical on human liberty, but this bit grabbed me.

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.......the liberty of those who are in authority  does not consist in the power to lay unreasonable and capricious commands upon their subjects, which would equally becriminal and would lead to the ruin of the commonwealth; but the binding force of human laws is in this, that they are to be regarded as applications of the eternal law, and incapable of sanctioning anything which is not contained in the eternal law, as in the principle of all law. Thus, St. Augustine most wisely says: "I think that you can see, at the same time, that there is nothing just and lawful in that temporal law, unless what men have gathered from this eternal law." If then, by anyone in authority something be sanctioned out of conformity with the principles of right reason, and consequently hurtful to the commonwealth, such an enactment can have no binding force of law, as being no rule of justice, but certain to lead men away from that good which is the very end of civil society.

   Therefore, the nature of human liberty, however it be considered, whether in individuals or in society, whether in those who command or in those who obey, supposes the necessity of obedience to some supreme and eternal law, which is no other than the authority of God, commanding good and forbidding evil. And, so far from this most just authority of God over men diminishing, or even destroying their liberty, it protects and perfects it, for the real perfection of all creatures is found in the prosecution and attainment of their respective ends;  but the supreme end to which human liberty must aspire is God.