This picture is of a mother and child from Nicaragua sitting at their kitchen table in 1984. This is probably a working class family with a very small annual income. The two things that stand out in this picture are the picture of the Last Supper on the left and the picture on the right is of Che Guevara. This family lived under the decrees of Che who was a proponent of liberation theology. Liberation theology incorporated leftists’ policies into the teachings of the Catholic Church. Nicaragua is one of the many Latin American countries who were not only majority Catholic, but also were led to by the liberation theology movement passed by authoritarian leaders.  Politics is an important part of human society, because it represents the governance and welfare of people. Laws and government are important to civil society, because it is a means of governance, stability, and social order. I think this picture represents the universality of politics and government over time. Early governments were mostly tyrannical and authoritarian and over the course of human history societies evolved into more democratic states. Latin America is an example of a region plagued by civil unrest over the past several decades as many of its countries have been involved in political unrest.

Many governments who have tried to exclude religion from the public sphere have suffered the consequences of political corruption, war, famine, etc. According to St. Thomas Aquinas, there are four types of law: Eternal, Natural, Human and Divine. Over the centuries, when man has taken God out of the law and refined man’s character in the law, the results of human history testify to what happens when man erases God from the natural law.

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