The Law's faith in Faith.
Friday, July 04, 2008
♥ Friday, July 04, 2008
The common law works in this way- nothing is being touched by it, until an incident which results in a trial judgment expands the current law further to include a certain scenario. What do i mean? There was never a reasonable man test, until Lord Atkin and his neighbour principle came in. With that test, came in the notion of a reasonable driver...and then what a reasonable contractor should do, and further on what the reasonable actions of a doctor should be so on and so forth. The metaphysical impositions of tort law started first with a principle, and with each case expanded to encompass the actions of persons in different walks of life, and today, the law seemed to have entered into the realm of the clergy as well.And thus the notion of the reasonable priest. What a priest would or should do in a case of an exorcism? If he did not check whether or not the person was suffering from a mental condition prior to carrying out the exorcism ritual, would he then be seen (by the law) as negligent? Whilst the priest's defence was that all he did were saying some prayers and that no such ritual actually took place (and thus no need to check whether or not she was suffering from some mental illness), the plaintiff's lawyer went on with the notion that as long the alleged evil spirit was expelled through the actions of the priest, exorcism would have taken place. So, put it into philosophical perspective: in the course of this trial, the innocuos and intangible actions of a prayer gets pulled out of that spiritual relam in to the conceptual analyses of the law on negligence. Where does faith and the law collide? Does it seem ridiculous that if a person's faith was exercised in the wrong protocol, and that had affected a person's emotional well being, the law should 'come down' on him? Hypothetically speakin, if person A in saying a prayer did not mutter certain words that according to the authority of religion must be said, and such actions somehow or another affected person B's state of mind would there be such a law that says 'you had better pray more completely the next time round!" We can stretch this to a point of ridiculousness, but the idea is the same- this trial is a reflection of the law's qualifying the unqualifiable, the conceptualizing of a person's faith in the language of the law on negligence. Whenever we touch on the idea of faith, we somehow allude to the fact that alot of it lies in what we can neither see nor touch nor even feel, alot of that lies in what maybe escapes logic. Faith and the law thus conflict when logic makes its attempt to become 'unescaped'- when the law says that logically speaking, as long a dialogue with an 'evil spirit' takes place, some form of exorcism must have been carried out (by sheer definition of the word 'exorcism'), regardless of the rituals that a priest must have undertaken. Prayers for deliverance, in very simplistic terms, is a subjective activity. The observation is subjective, the belief in the prayers to expel the certain spirit, the person's relationship with God are all subjective. Faith is premised on such subjectivity. Thus when the law's attempt to be objective actually kicks in, and the question of how the faith was exercised and whether or not it was done in an objectively right manner, we can almost anticipate the head on collision.I am not saying that the law should not intervene. I am saying that the law should not attempt to make tangible what human logic finds inexplicable.
