Catholics talk about natural law, but what’s it all about?
Basically, it’s a system of principles that guides human life in accordance with our nature and our good, insofar as those can be known by natural reason.
It thereby promotes life the way it evidently ought to be, based on what we are and how the world is, from the standpoint of an intelligent, thoughtful, and well-intentioned person.
It’s much the same, at least in basic concept, as what classical Western thinkers called life in accordance with nature and reason, and the classical Chinese called the Tao (that is, the “Way”).
We might think of it as a system that aims at moral and social health and well-being—which, like physical health, can at least in principle be largely understood apart from revelation.
For that reason, natural law has seemed to many Catholic thinkers the obvious basis for a society that would be pluralistic but nonetheless just, humane, and open to the specific contributions of Christianity.
There’s something to that view. Grace completes rather than replaces nature, so natural law includes basic principles of Christian morality.
Also, political life depends on discussion and willing cooperation based on common beliefs. It would be best if those beliefs reflected the whole truth about man and the world—and politics were therefore Catholic—but people who run things today don’t accept that and don’t seem likely to do so any time soon.
Even so, it might be possible for a governing consensus to form around the principles or at least concept of natural law.
The idea of government in accordance with man’s nature and natural good could then give discussion a reference point and some degree of coherence even though disagreements over important issues would remain. Continue reading
Sources:
- The Catholic World Report, from an article by James Kalb, a lawyer, independent scholar, and Catholic convert who lives in Brooklyn, New York.
- Image: The Evening, Caspar David Friedrich, Wikimedia Commons.
