The Church has always considered different ways of understanding authority, taking care to defend and propose a model of authority that is founded on the social nature of the person. “Since God made men social by nature, and since no society can hold together unless some one be over all, directing all to strive earnestly for the common good, every civilized community must have a ruling authority, and this authority, no less than society itself, has its source in nature, and has, consequently, God for its author”.799John XXIII, Encyclical Letter Pacem in Terris: AAS 55 (1963), 269; Leo XIII, Encyclical Letter Immortale Dei, in Acta Leonis XIII, V, 1885, 120. Political authority is therefore necessary 800Cf. Catechism of the Catholic Church, 1898; Saint Thomas Aquinas, De Regno. Ad Regem Cypri, I, 1: Ed. Leon. 42, 450: “Si igitur naturale est homini quod in societate multorum uiuat, necesse est in omnibus esse aliquid per quod multitudo regatur. Multis enim existentibus hominibus et unoquoque id quod est sibi congruum prouidente, multitudo in diuersa dispergetur nisi etiam esset aliquid de eo quod ad bonum multitudinis pertinet curam habens, sicut et corpus hominis et cuiuslibet animalis deflueret nisi esset aliqua uis regitiua communis in corpore, quae ad bonum commune omnium membrorum intenderet. Quod considerans Salomon dixit: ‘Ubi non est gubernator, dissipabitur populus' “. because of the responsibilities assigned to it. Political authority is and must be a positive and irreplaceable component of civil life.801Cf. Catechism of the Catholic Church, 1897; John XXIII, Encyclical Letter Pacem in Terris: AAS 55 (1963), 279.
Political authority must guarantee an ordered and upright community life without usurping the free activity of individuals and groups but disciplining and orienting this freedom, by respecting and defending the independence of the individual and social subjects, for the attainment of the common good. Political authority is an instrument of coordination and direction by means of which the many individuals and intermediate bodies must move towards an order in which relationships, institutions and procedures are put at the service of integral human growth. Political authority, in fact, “whether in the community as such or in institutions representing the State, must always be exercised within the limits of morality and on behalf of the dynamically conceived common good, according to a juridical order enjoying legal status. When such is the case citizens are conscience-bound to obey”.802Second Vatican Ecumenical Council, Pastoral Constitution Gaudium et Spes, 74: AAS 58 (1966), 1096.
The subject of political authority is the people considered in its entirety as those who have sovereignty. In various forms, this people transfers the exercise of sovereignty to those whom it freely elects as its representatives, but it preserves the prerogative to assert this sovereignty in evaluating the work of those charged with governing and also in replacing them when they do not fulfil their functions satisfactorily. Although this right is operative in every State and in every kind of political regime, a democratic form of government, due to its procedures for verification, allows and guarantees its fullest application.803Cf. John Paul II, Encyclical Letter Centesimus Annus, 46: AAS 83 (1991), 850- 851; John XXIII, Encyclical Letter Pacem in Terris: AAS 55 (1963), 271. The mere consent of the people is not, however, sufficient for considering “just” the ways in which political authority is exercised.