Necessity of the Foundation of Natural Law for Civil Law as the Failsafe of Total Subjectivism

Authority must recognize, respect and promote essential human and moral values. These are innate and "flow from the very truth of the human being and express and safeguard the dignity of the person; values which no individual, no majority and no State can ever create, modify or destroy," (JP II Evangelium Vitae 70). These values do not have their foundation in provisional and changeable "majority" opinions, but must simply be recognized, respected and promoted as elements of an objective moral law, the natural law written in the human heart (cf. Rom 2:15), and as the normative point of reference for civil law itself. If, as a result of the tragic clouding of the collective conscience, scepticism were to succeed in casting doubt on the basic principles of the moral law, the legal strucuture of the State itself would be shaken to its very foundations, being reduced to nothing more than a mechanism for the pragmatic regulation of different and opposing interests.
from Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church by the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace