{"id":328302,"date":"2016-05-29T03:00:31","date_gmt":"2016-05-29T01:00:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/kenya-maria-voces-views-on-law-in-contemporary-society\/"},"modified":"2024-05-16T15:04:13","modified_gmt":"2024-05-16T13:04:13","slug":"kenya-maria-voces-views-on-law-in-contemporary-society","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/kenya-maria-voces-views-on-law-in-contemporary-society\/","title":{"rendered":"Kenya: Maria Voce\u2019s views on Law in Contemporary society"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Giving law a human face and seeking justice founded on the values of fraternity<\/strong>. This was Maria Voce<\/a>\u2019s strong message, as a lawyer herself and President of the Focolare Movement,<\/a> addressing an audience of 300 people gathered on the 25th<\/sup> of May at the Faculty of Law at the Catholic University of Eastern Africa (CUEA) in Nairobi, Kenya. Her audience was composed of students studying law and social sciences, professors, members of the Faculty and staff of the University. In her talk \u201cLaw in contemporary society<\/em><\/strong>\u201d Maria Voce explained how through the evolution of society, correct behaviour had become organised in systems within communities, and as states achieved political identity these systems were incorporated in their Constitutions, codes and other laws. According to the President of the Focolare<\/strong>, with the coming of Christianity, \u201ca superior law come to the fore as a reference point. It is a law that comes from God, who is Just and was given to humanity through Jesus. It is the law of love.\u201d

\"CUEI_10\"<\/a>

\u00a9 CSC Audiovisivi – Ver\u00f4nica Farias<\/p><\/div> Maria Voce then dwelt on the development of the African legal system where she observed that \u201cthere is a very strong communitarian tendency in which the individual is never considered in an isolated way, but always as a member of a community (family, clan, bloodline or tribe) to which the person owes duties of responsibility and from which they receive help, support and protection.\u201d She affirmed, furthermore, that the<\/strong> spirituality of communion<\/a> lived by Focolare members is beginning to influence the building up of the social fabric and the rules that govern human communities. To explain this she referred to a few points of the spirituality of unity. The first<\/strong> is the discovery of God who is Love<\/a>. \u201cThis understanding led us to practise the \u201cgreater righteousness\u201d. If justice is to give to each his own \u2013 we said to ourselves \u2013 since everything belongs to God, give everything to God and you will be righteous!\u201d The second<\/strong> is the commitment to do the Will of God <\/a>which \u201cleads us to discovering the foundation of legality, understood as consistency between what we do and the fundamental choice that we have made, the choice of God-Love.\u201d And the third<\/strong>: love of neighbour<\/a>. For Maria Voce, \u201cWe cannot ignore this if we wish to actively recognise the dignity of each person and their inviolable rights.\u201d

\"CUEI_09\"<\/a>

\u00a9 CSC Audiovisivi – Ver\u00f4nica Farias<\/p><\/div> Speaking of <\/strong>mutual love<\/a>, she reminded her audience that \u201chuman persons are social by nature and need other people just as the others need them.\u201d She added that \u201cmutual love is the law of collaboration which, by enabling us to discover each person as a gift of love, is the cement of society and the equilibrium of law.\u201d She ended saying,<\/strong> \u201cWe are encouraged by the experience of the Movement which seems like the proof of a hypothesis about life woven from personal relationships founded on the principle of unity. It witnesses that it is possible to establish a legal system based on the new commandment as the fundamental law for relations between people.\u201d After her talk, the Dean of the Faculty of Law, Dr Maurice Owuor<\/strong>, emphasised the relevance of Maria Voce\u2019s speech explaining that \u201clove is a value that can sustain our laws.\u201d\u00a0 He affirmed that \u201cwe should place greater emphasis on educating citizens to values such as love, fraternity and obeying the law not out of fear of sanctions but because it is a good thing in itself.\u201d There followed an open forum for comments and questions<\/strong>.\u00a0 In answer to a question regarding the effects of justice on the common good, Maria Voce affirmed, \u201cit is not the law that contributes to the common good, but the person who contributes to promoting just laws.\u201d And she left the students with a challenge: \u201cMy hope is that many of you can work to establish many good laws.\u201d <\/p>\n

Willy Niyansaba<\/em><\/p>\n

\n

Complete text of Maria Voce’s address: Law and Contemporary Society<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cMay you create many good laws for the common good\u201d was the encouragement given by Maria Voce to the students in the Faculty of Law at the Catholic University of Eastern Africa during her talk on the 25th May.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":34,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"give_campaign_id":0,"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[893],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-328302","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-focolare-worldwide-2"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/328302","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/34"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=328302"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/328302\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=328302"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=328302"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=328302"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}