Freedom's Conscientious Limits: The Natural Law

IN OUR LAST POST WE QUOTED that part of the Compendium which stated that the proper exercise of personal freedom demands not only specific conditions of economic, social, political, and cultural order to be properly exercised, but that, moreover, these must be conformed to the natural law, since "[b]y deviating from the moral law man violates his own freedom, becomes imprisoned within himself, disrupts neighborly fellowship, and rebels against divine truth.'" (Compendium, No. 137) (quoting CCC, § 1740)

The natural law is therefore behind all of man's economic, social, political, and cultural life. It follows that the natural law is an essential part of the social doctrine of the Church. Indeed, the natural law is an essential part of man's freedom, for any action outside of the pale of the natural moral law is by definition a movement from the real, from what is, to the unreal, to what is not. As John Paul II vividly taught us in his Encyclical Veritatis splendor, there is an intrinsic connection between freedom and living in the truth. The negative is likewise true: there is an intrinsic connection between living in falsehood and slavery.

Freedom is not boundless. It must be exercised responsibly which means according to rule. Who can advocate an irresponsible freedom? As Solzhenitsyn pointed out in his famous Harvard Commencement Address (June 8, 1978), an "irresponsible freedom" granted "boundless space" is "destructive," and leads, moreover, society into "the abyss of human decadence."*

To avoid this fall into the "abyss of human decadence," therefore, we must exercise freedom responsibly. This means that freedom must conform itself to the judgment of conscience. Freedom is therefore restrained by conscience. Indeed, to place freedom under the judgment of conscience "leads to the acceptance of responsibility for the good accomplished and the evil committed." (Compendium, No. 139)

Conscience is therefore the lode star of freedom. Focus on the pole star of conscience keeps society from falling into the "abyss of human decadence," as Solzhenitsyn warned. But conscience serves a double purpose since it also keeps us out of the abyss of Hell. "Quidquid fit contra conscientiam, aedificat ad gehennam," the Fourth Lateran Council taught. That which goes against conscience, conduces one to Gehenna, a place where--one might to one's edification recall--both body and soul are destroyed. (Matt. 10:28)

If for both society and soul's sake freedom must be exercised responsibly, and this means in accordance with conscience, then what is to inform the conscience? Can conscience dispense with conscience? Surely not. Is conscience under no law? Surely not, for to judge means there is some law by which to judge. And if conscience is necessarily under some law, whose law, man's or God's?

If conscience is to be regarded as nothing more than vox hominis, the voice of man, then man is the measure of all things, and the law that governs conscience is nothing other than "self-law," a declaration of autonomy from external or objective rule. Conscience would then be nothing but the application of arbitrary rule. Conscience thought of in this way is, as Newman called it, in his famous Letter to the Duke of Norfolk, "counterfeit."** It is, in fact, rebellion.

Tower of Babel (Breughel)

Such a notion of conscience cannot support life in common. "Those who proclaim themselves to be the sole measure of realities and of truth cannot live peacefully in society with their fellow men and cooperate with them." (Compendium, No. 142) So there is an ominous harbinger of things to come when a Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy can say, in what his much more sensible fellow Justice Scalia mocked as "the famed sweet-mystery-of-life passage," that "[a]t the heart of liberty is the right to define one's concept of existence, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life." (Planned Parenthood v. Casey)

No, Justice Kennedy. The "right to define one's concept of existence, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life," is not at the heart of liberty, it's at the heart of slavery.

Conscience, Justice Kennedy plainly forgot, is not the voice of man, it is vox Dei, the voice of God. And this suggests that God, and not man, is the measure of all things. There is then a measure or rule outside ourselves to which we must conform. And this outside measure or rule--which finds its source in God and his eternal law and as it applies to man-- is known as the natural law.

For this reason, the Compendium states that the "exercise of freedom implies a reference to a natural moral law, of a universal character, that precedes and units all rights and duties." As if bullet points, the Compendium insists on the following:

• The natural law is "nothing other than the light of intellect infused within us by God."***
• By the natural law we "know what must be done and what must be avoided."†
• "This light or this law has been given by God to [man in] creation."††
• The natural law consists in the participation of God's eternal law, "which is identified with God himself."
• The natural law is called "natural" "because the reason that promulgates it is proper to human nature."
• The natural law "is universal, it extends to all people insofar as it is established by reason."
• The natural law, in "its principal precepts," is presented "in the Decalogue," that is, the Ten Commandments, "and indicates the primary and essential norms regulating moral life."
• The natural law's "central focus is the act of aspiring and submitting to God, the source and judge of everything that is good."
• The natural law's "central focus" also includes the "act of seeing others as equal to oneself."
• The natural law "expresses the dignity of the person and laws the foundations of the person's fundamental duties" to both God, to himself, and to man."
  

(Compendium, No. 140)

The natural law is the law among all people, and it traverses all culture, all convention, all human law. It is the law under all laws, over all laws, and within all laws. It is "immutable," constant, a reliable lode star, even "under the flux of ideas and customs," though it is also flexible, and "its application may," where exceptionless or absolute norms are not at issue, "require adaptations to the many different conditions of life according to place, time, and circumstances."††† (Compendium, No. 141)

It is true that man can reject the natural law, and in the main our society seems to have rejected its guidance. But "[e]ven when it is rejected in its very principles," the Compendium states quoting the Catechism, "it cannot be destroyed or removed from the heart of man. It always rises again in the life of individuals and societies." (Compendium, No. 141) Indeed, the "natural law, which is the law of God, cannot be annulled by human sinfulness."

Not only is it true that man can reject the natural law, it is also true that we can simply be ignorant of the natural law. The voice of the natural law is sufficiently quiet that particular individuals or whole societies fail to hear it. "Be still and know that I am God," says the Psalter. (Psalm 46:10 [45:11]) The "stillness" rule applies to the natural law: "Be still and know the natural law." And most of us are not still enough to hear the natural law. Most of us listen to other, louder voices: selfish regard, the poisons and conventions of our culture, the stupid, trite, and shallow aphorism of the day, the rule of expediency. Additionally, our inner ear is muffled by the ease of torpid conscience, the inconvenience even sacrifice demanded by a life lived by principle, or by an all-too-frequent acedia in moral life.

Since most of us are not still enough, listen to other voices, or have a sort of lint in our heart's inner ear, the natural law's "precepts . . . are not clearly and immediately perceived by everyone." It is therefore the case that, as a matter of practical necessity in a world that has lapsed after the Fall, religious and moral truths can be known "with facility, with firm certainty, and without the admixture of error" only "with the help of Grace and Revelation."

As Matthew Arnold said in his poem, "Pis Aller":‡

Man is blind because of sin,
Revelation makes him sure;
Without that, who looks within,
Looks in vain, for all's obscure.

The natural law is not only the recipe for individual morality, it is the recipe for social life. The natural law is, in fact, the foundation upon which the Church's social doctrine is built, and is the foundation upon which every society bar none must be built.

The natural law "lays the indispensable moral foundation for building the human community and for establishing the civil law that draws its consequences of a concrete and contingent nature from the principles of the natural law." (Compendium, No. 142) Without the natural law, in vain do men build their societies, found their governments, and attempt constitutions devoted to life, liberty, or the pursuit of happiness.

"Unless the Lord builds the house, its builders labor in vain." (Psalm 127 (126):1) Build a society without reference to the natural law, build a society of relativism and moral pluralism without reference to God and his law, and you have built not on Mount Zion. Rather, you have built its ersatz, a fake substitute, a tower of Babel. And we all know what happened to that tower.

They who did labour Babels tower to'erect,
Might have considered, that for that effect,
All this whole solid Earth could not allow
Nor furnish forth Materials enow;
And that his Center, to raise such a place
Was far too little, to have been the Base;
No more affords this worlds, foundation
To erect true joy, were all the means in one.
But as the Heathen made them several gods,
Of all God's Benefits, and all his Rods,
(For as the Wine, and Corn, and Onions are
Gods unto them, so Agues be, and war)
And as by changing that whole precious Gold
To such small copper coins, they lost the old.

If we think like Justice Kennedy, we have traded precious Gold of the natural law, for the small copper coin of relativism, and with the loss of capital and the loss of coin, we have sold ourselves to slavery. And all this not even for a mess of pottage, but for such enormities such as contraception, abortion, homosexual marriage, and pornography.

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*"Harvard Commencement Address," by Alexander Solzhenitsyn in Lewis Copeland, et al, eds., The World's Great Speeches 4th ed. (Mineola: Dover Publications, 1999), 837.

**John Henry Newman, A Letter addressed to His Grace the Duke of Norfolk (New York: Catholic Publication Society, 1875), 75, 82.
***Quoting Saint Thomas Aquinas, In Duo Praecepta Caritatis et in Decem Legis Pracepta Expositio, c. 1. ("nihil aliud est nisi lumen intellectus insitum nobis a Deo")
†Id. ("per quod cognoscimus quid agendum et quid vitandum")
††Id. ("Hoc lumen et hanc legem dedit Deus homini in creatione")
†††As an example, the distinction between extraordinary medical care (which one is not required to render a person) and ordinary medical care (which one is) varies "according to place, time, and circumstances." Similarly, the right to a living wage and what that means varies "according to place, time, and circumstances." Some norms--like the prohibition against murder or adultery--are exceptionless and do not admit of change "according to place, time, and circumstances."
‡See The Need for Revelation: "Pis-Aller" by Matthew Arnold.

Veritatis Splendor: Part 31--No More "As if God Does Not Exist"

THE NATURAL LAW, as real and as significant as it is, is not the entirety of reality. Man was not made for bread alone, and neither did God intend for man to remain shrouded from grace and the supernatural life, living a life of reason alone. In fact, in practice, man cannot live by reason alone: he must also live on every word that comes from the mouth of God. (Matt. 4:4). Man will not flourish without the Word of God, and he knows the Word of God on account of the fact that the Word of God became flesh.

The West is the unfortunate heir to the intellectual foibles of the Reformation and the Enlightenment, which put a rift between reason and faith, and hence morality and faith. The centuries since this rift first was conceived have not been kind to the moral life of man. Indeed, this rift has developed to the point of being a chasm, a chasm of secularism which separates faith from morality, and the result of which man lives "as if God did not exist," "als ob es Gott nicht gäbe," "veluti si Deus non esset." It is as if Grotius's tentative "etsi Deus non daretur"* has become enfleshed, enshrined, sacralized,and institutionalized in our systems of government, part of what man is expected to conform. A convention has been foisted upon us to behave in public in particular as if God does not exist.

The dichotomy between faith and morality is what is behind the loss of freedom and truth. It is a destructive error:

This separation represents one of the most acute pastoral concerns of the Church amid today's growing secularism, wherein many, indeed too many, people think and live "as if God did not exist." We are speaking of a mentality which affects, often in a profound, extensive and all-embracing way, even the attitudes and behavior of Christians, whose faith is weakened and loses its character as a new and original criterion for thinking and acting in personal, family and social life. In a widely dechristianized culture, the criteria employed by believers themselves in making judgments and decisions often appear extraneous or even contrary to those of the Gospel.

VS, 88.

In a way, we have all become practical atheists, and the patterns and settings of our daily life presuppose no God. It is an abhorrent state of affairs, one that must not be allowed to exist. One that must be reversed. If not reversed, man shall lose the light of freedom.

It is urgent then that Christians should rediscover the newness of the faith and its power to judge a prevalent and all-intrusive culture. As the Apostle Paul admonishes us: "Once you were darkness, but now you are light in the Lord; walk as children of the light (for the fruit of the light is found in all that is good and right and true), and try to learn what is pleasing to the Lord. Take no part in the unfruitful words of darkness, but instead expose them... Look carefully then how you walk, not as unwise men but as wise, making the most of the time, because the days are evil" (Eph 5:8-11, 15-16; cf. 1 Th 5:4-8).

VS, 88.

St. Ignatius of Antioch

Christians cannot be satisfied to conform themselves to the secular culture which is practically atheist. On the contrary, they are called to a vigorous exertion, an exertion that will come with the re-discovery of the Christian faith as something which encompasses one's entire life in a radical transformation which occurs when one follows Christ in an absolute trusting abandonment:

It is urgent to rediscover and to set forth once more the authentic reality of the Christian faith, which is not simply a set of propositions to be accepted with intellectual assent. Rather, faith is a lived knowledge of Christ, a living remembrance of his commandments, and a truth to be lived out. A word, in any event, is not truly received until it passes into action, until it is put into practice. Faith is a decision involving one's whole existence. It is an encounter, a dialogue, a communion of love and of life between the believer and Jesus Christ, the Way, and the Truth, and the Life (cf. Jn 14:6). It entails an act of trusting abandonment to Christ, which enables us to live as he lived (cf. Gal 2:20), in profound love of God and of our brothers and sisters.

VS, 88.

John Paul II calls the faithful to engage in a revolution of sorts, not, of course, a violent revolution. It is a revolution that demands fidelity to law, to the commandments, to the moral precepts which must frame the life of humankind, whether in private or in public:

Faith also possesses a moral content. It gives rise to and calls for a consistent life commitment; it entails and brings to perfection the acceptance and observance of God's commandments. As Saint John writes, "God is light and in him is no darkness at all. If we say we have fellowship with him while we walk in darkness, we lie and do not live according to the truth... And by this we may be sure that we know him, if we keep his commandments. He who says ' I know him' but disobeys his commandments is a liar, and the truth is not in him; but whoever keeps his word, in him truly love for God is perfected. By this we may be sure that we are in him: he who says he abides in him ought to walk in the same way in which he walked" (1 Jn 1:5-6; 2:3-6).

VS, 89.

What is required is witness, and witness in two senses. The first is witness in a sense of confession: in word and in deed. The second will come from the first, and this is witness in the sense of martyrdom, either real martyrdom, "red martyrdom," or that quasi-martyrdom,"white martyrdom," that comes as a result of the confession of Christ under difficult circumstances short of death.

Through the moral life, faith becomes "confession", not only before God but also before men: it becomes witness. "You are the light of the world", said Jesus; "a city set on a hill cannot be hid. Nor do men light a lamp and put it under a bushel, but on a stand, and it gives light to all in the house. Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven" (Mt 5:14-16). These works are above all those of charity (cf. Mt 25:31-46) and of the authentic freedom which is manifested and lived in the gift of self, even to the total gift of self, like that of Jesus, who on the Cross "loved the Church and gave himself up for her" (Eph 5:25). Christ's witness is the source, model and means for the witness of his disciples, who are called to walk on the same road: "If any man would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me" (Lk 9:23). Charity, in conformity with the radical demands of the Gospel, can lead the believer to the supreme witness of martyrdom. Once again this means imitating Jesus who died on the Cross: "Be imitators of God, as beloved children", Paul writes to the Christians of Ephesus, "and walk in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God" (Eph 5:1-2).

VS, 89.

Naturally, this Christian witness will not be popular. The popular decadent culture, the powers that govern it, those that reap its benefits (adulterers, homosexuals, capitalists, financial fraudfeasors, pornographers, abortionists, technocrats, the huge pharmaceutical companies who profit on contraceptive pills, those involved with public, secular anti-Christian education, the media, political liberals, warmongers or what Eisenhower called the miltary-industrial complex, multiculturalists, and the whole panoply ofpurveyors of the modern relativist or anti-Christian ethos), those who have much invested in it, those who feel insulted by someone who dares accuse them of wrong, will react with great hostility. "And you shall be hated by all men for my name's sake," the Lord said to his disciples, "but he that shall persevere unto the end, he shall be saved." The scriptural warrant for the Christian witness of truth against a hostile world is well-documented. See Matt. 10:22; cf. Matt. 24:9; Mark 13:13; Luke 21:17; John 15:19; Proverbs 29:27. And being charitable will not reduce their vituperation:

From Syria even to Rome I fight with wild beasts, by land and sea, by night and by day, being bound amidst ten leopards, even a company of soldiers, who only grow worse when they are kindly treated.**

It is perhaps odd that John Paul II, like St. Ignatius of Antioch (38-50 through 98-117 A.D.), swings to an excursus on martyrdom in the middle of his encyclical on human morality, but a short reflection on what martyrdom means readily shows why.

We will explore John Paul II's excursus on the relationship between Christian morality, its witness, and martyrdom in our next blog posting.

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*On Grotius and his "etiamsi," see Natural Law: Ecstasis and Telos.
**St. Ignatius of Antioch, Letter to the Romans, 5.

Veritatis Splendor: Part 10-Libertas et Lex

LIBERTAS ET LEX, freedom and law, not libertas sive lex, freedom or law. It is a great modern error to place freedom and law in opposition. In a nutshell, placing human freedom and law based on an objective moral order in opposition is to set ourselves as fashioners of right, as sole judges of good and evil. It is, at heart and quite ironically, not a very modern way of thinking. It may be said to be the oldest, wrongest theory in the book.

Literally. So it is that John Paul II takes to a brief reflection of the second chapter of Genesis: "You may eat freely of every tree of the garden," God tells man, "but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat." Freedom is engaged with restriction, with law; liberty is coupled with obligation; there is a boundary to freedom beyond which one is no longer free. Also tied to law is a sanction: if man violates the law, if he eats of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, "you shall die." VS, 35; Gen.2:16-17. Along with this death, of course, is the death of authentic freedom.

What is the message of this "imagery" of the Book of Genesis which speaks to us in its specific genre so rich with symbolism and theological underpinnings?

With this imagery, Revelation teaches that the power to decide what is good and what is evil does not belong to man, but to God alone. The man is certainly free, inasmuch as he can understand and accept God's commands. And he possesses an extremely far-reaching freedom, since he can eat "of every tree of the garden". But his freedom is not unlimited: it must halt before the "tree of the knowledge of good and evil", for it is called to accept the moral law given by God. In fact, human freedom finds its authentic and complete fulfillment precisely in the acceptance of that law. God, who alone is good, knows perfectly what is good for man, and by virtue of his very love proposes this good to man in the commandments.

VS, 35. It is rank falsehood to suppose that authentic freedom and authentic law are in opposition. To hold freedom and moral law in opposition (or to collapse moral law into freedom) is "[C]ertain moral theologians have introduced a sharp distinction, contrary to Catholic doctrine, between an ethical order, which would be human in origin and of value for this world alone, and an order of salvation, for which only certain intentions and interior attitudes regarding God and neighbor would be significant. . . . No one can fail to see that such an interpretation of the autonomy of human reason involves positions incompatible with Catholic teaching."
--John Paul II, Veritatis Splendor, 37.nothing less than giving man the power to determine good and evil, which is a false freedom because it is a freedom from truth, and not a freedom in truth. God's law is not reductive of human freedom, but it is the necessary precondition of human freedom. Without God, man is not free. Outside of God, man is not free. If human freedom were able to make truth without reference to God, then such freedom "would enjoy a primacy over truth, to the point that truth itself would be considered a creation of freedom." VS, 35. The result of this is that through freedom man lays claim to "a moral autonomy which would actually amount to absolute sovereignty." VS, 35. It is not freedom, but rebellion; a foolish rebellion, moreover, which leads into slavery. This notion of moral sovereignty is, it goes without saying, also deeply repugnant to Christ's teaching.

John Paul II spent the first part of the encyclical insisting that freedom ought not to be thought as separate or opposed to truth. In this part of the encyclical he opposes himself to a related tendency, and that is the tendency of separating morality from religion or faith. In this related error, one opposes man's "innerwordly" behavior (intent, interior attitudes, subjective states) and his external behavior so that the two sort of travel in separate, uncommunicative planes or dimensions. But John Paul insists strongly that there can be no separation between faith and morality, just like there can be no separation between freedom and truth.

John Paul II
Do not divide the "ethical order" from the "order of salvation"

It is opposed to Catholic doctrine, the Pope says, to entertain the belief that there is an "ethical order, which would be human in origin and of value for this world alone," and another order, and "order of salvation, for which only certain intentions and interior attitudes regarding God and neighbor would be significant." VS, 37.

The separation of morality, a matter relegated to reason alone, from salvation, a matter involving faith alone, is condemned by the Pope as outside the authentic Christian tradition. We have become accustomed to separate and compartmentalize reason from faith, so that each have their own separate chambers, their own separate spheres. Such a notion stems, at least in some of its manifestations, from Luther's false distinction between faith and works. Since for Luther salvation was a matter of faith alone, and works were not pertinent to salvation, the internal disposition of faith was emphasized in his doctrine as preeminent over the external acts of man. As a consequence, morality was minimized and made irrelevant to the matter of salvation. Pecca fortiter, sed fortius fide! Sin boldly, but believe more boldly still! Luther scandalously wrote. Such a man who has said this (Luther) has separated the moral life from the religious life. There is tendency, then, as a result of this line of thinking, to divide the moral world, which is secular, from the world of faith, religious. Morality thus became separate and apart from the religious life, and individual moral acts became less important and a man's "fundamental option" became important, and absolute or exceptionless norms are rejected in the name of "proportionalism," which was a sort of pseudo-consequentialism or pseudo-utilitarianism.

The moral theologian Livio Melina explains how the separation of morality from religion introduced by Luther's novel and erroneous teachings of sola fide and sola gratia crept into the theories of Catholic theologians and threatened the traditional Catholic view of the intimate relationship between faith and morals, between faith and works. Though Melina's analysis is somewhat technical, it encapsulates the error the Pope is referring to, and traces, further, its originating source and its shows what consequences result from adopting this line of thinking.

The separation of faith from morals stems, in Melina's view, from Luther's erroneous theories of justification, which separated faith from works, and made works irrelevant to the issue of salvation.*

Thus, on the level of this secularized morality, it may be necessary and even obligatory, according to Luther, to perform actions against the divine law. Hence these would be only a lesser evil to be entrusted to the divine mercy. In a historical situation marked by sin, the divine law has an elencthicus value in that it refutes the claim that one is just through one's own works. In this sense, the law is absolute but impracticable for sinful man. It also has a secondary value, civilis or politicus, in that it promotes harmonious social intercourse, but then it no longer obligates in an absolute way. The passage from the perspective of personal morality to that of social utility brings with it concurrently a transformation from the prudence of a genetrix virtutum (mother of virtues) stamp to that of the gubernatrix artium (the principle of government by technical calculation). . . . Therefore, in the Lutheran perspective, morality, disjoined from its connection with salvation and from a rootedness in faith, finds two roads open to it: on the one side, it becomes social utilitarianism, on the other philanthropic altruism. . . .

This sort of thinking had crept into the thought of Catholic theologians (such as Joseph Fuchs), who differentiated between a this-worldly ethic (Weltethos) and an order of salvation (Heilsethos). Livio Melina explains the issue and why it is important that the Pope address it. Although the quote is lengthy, it merits being included in full:

The separation of morality from the salvation context therefore represents an important [negative] factor in the development of modern ethics. It has also had repercussions with regard to Catholic moral theology. In fact, the acceptance of the rational autonomy of morality, and consequently of the proportionalist method, was brought about through a theological distinction, in my opinion one strongly inspired by the Lutheran concept described above. This involves a differentiation, of which mention is made in Veritatis splendor at no. 37, between a this-world ethical order (Weltethos) and and "order of salvation" (Heilsethos).**

The order of salvation is linked to the moral goodness of the person and his "transcendental" attitude toward the Good as such. It is in this interior and formal sphere of intention, of his acceptance or not of God and of his brothers, that the eternal destiny and the salvation of man is played out. And this is also the sphere in which moral absolutes may be advanced that are valid without exception, but that may be referred precisely only to general attitudes. At this level a fundamental freedom is operative, one that has reference to the free choice of the subject as a whole and is therefore athematic: the level, in a word, that it is usual to call "fundamental options."

The order of this-worldly ethical action, which moves on a horizontal plane, is linked instead to the area of the rightness of concrete actions. It is found in proportion that actions promote a better state of affairs in this world, and hence it depends on a rational calculation of the advantages and disadvantages deriving from the action. On this level of action, taken in its exteriority, the calculating reason is completely autonomous in establishing particular norms for actions that will have only general and indicative value and which are always to be further evaluated in concrete circumstances. On the level of the "category" of actions, it would not therefore present ethical norms that are "specifically Christian." An error in this area would not have consequences in the order of salvation but only negative consequences on the exterior plane.

There derives from this a cascade of ecclesiological consequences of the greatest seriousness: if the moral area that concerns salvation is the transcendental one of the goodness of the person and not that of the rightness of the acts, then Sacred Scripture has nothing "revealed" to tell us about this-worldly activity but only exhortations about general attitudes. These have only a "paranetic," exhortative, and not instructive character. Consequently also, tradition and the magisterium could not claim any specific authority concerning concrete norms for acting, a task that would belong exclusively to autonomous reason. Salvation would, in fact, be decided in a fundamental transcendental option and not in the concrete choices involved in particular actions.***

The "order of salvation" operates in one plane, the "order of ethics" in another: "good" is separate from "right," and never the twain shall meet. There are no absolute, exceptionless norms in the "order of ethics," where the issues of "right" and "wrong" are governed by autonomous reason. Religion deals only with generalities, and it is a mistake to suggest that Scripture, or the teachings of the Church, or, for that matter, God, ought to be involved with concrete life in the "order of ethics," where man is essentially autonomous. What is important, in terms of salvation, is one's general attitudes, one's "fundamental option," whether one is "good" or "bad," and not whether one is "right" or "wrong" in the area of ethics, and so long as that generally remains open to God and to neighbor, one need not concern oneself with some sort of "legalistic" and "slavish" obedience to individual commandments.

Obviously, this separation of faith and morals is repugnant to the Church's traditional teaching which are based upon those of Jesus, especially as reflected in the Gospel story of the interaction between the rich young ruler and Jesus. This artificial separation between the "ethical order" and the "order of salvation" has the following effect:

This has then led to an actual denial that there exists, in Divine Revelation, a specific and determined moral content, universally valid and permanent. The word of God would be limited to proposing an exhortation, a generic paraenesis, which the autonomous reason alone would then have the task of completing with normative directives which are truly "objective", that is, adapted to the concrete historical situation. Naturally, an autonomy conceived in this way also involves the denial of a specific doctrinal competence on the part of the Church and her Magisterium with regard to particular moral norms which deal with the so-called "human good". Such norms would not be part of the proper content of Revelation, and would not in themselves be relevant for salvation.

No one can fail to see that such an interpretation of the autonomy of human reason involves positions incompatible with Catholic teaching.

VS, 37.

Here, then, is the reason the Pope has issued the encyclical: to address the modern tendencies, particularly among some modern Catholic theologians, which separate freedom from truth, and the order of ethics (morality) from the order of salvation (faith), and rend man into life in two incommunicative orders:

In such a context it is absolutely necessary to clarify, in the light of the word of God and the living Tradition of the Church, the fundamental notions of human freedom and of the moral law, as well as their profound and intimate relationship. Only thus will it be possible to respond to the rightful claims of human reason in a way which accepts the valid elements present in certain currents of contemporary moral theology without compromising the Church's heritage of moral teaching with ideas derived from an erroneous concept of autonomy.

VS,37.

The Pope insists, like Jesus did to the rich young man, that freedom cannot be severed from moral truth, that moral truth is accessible to man, that the moral is an objective, normative order. He insists, further, that the order of ethics, of concrete action in the here-and-now, is not something foreign to or separate from revealed teaching. Faith (and moral theology) and ethics (and reason) are not two separate worlds, but are inextricably intertwined, like body and soul.

Freedom, truth, reason, faith. The Pope would have them all. The Pope will not give short shrift to any, will not oppose one to the other, or will not separate one from the other. They are all conjoined, and what God has joined no man ought to put asunder.

_______________________________________
*The Lutheran view of separating works from salvation, of course, and the erroneous moral theories advanced by certain Catholic theologians that rely on it, are directly opposed to Christ's teaching to the rich young man. That is why John Paul II spent such a significant time meditating on the interaction between Jesus and the young Jew.
**As an example, Melina cites to Joseph Fuchs, "Moral Truths--Truths of Salvation?, chap. 4 of his Christian Ethics in a Secular Arena (Bernard Hoose and Brian McNeil, trans.) (Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press, 1984), 48-69.
**Livio Melina, Sharing in Christ's Virtues (William May, trans.) (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 2001), 94-96.

Long on Porter: Turning Subjective

JEAN PORTER IS OF THE VIEW THAT human rights can only be defended on theological grounds. She is not convinced that human rights have any solid philosophical ground. It is not only that, in her view, rights came out of the theological tradition (largely through the work of canon lawyers resting on the work of the scholastics) and then were appropriated by Enlightenment thinkers and later secularists. But in her view there is no persuasive philosophical basis in either Enlightenment or secular thought that can support with universal approbation a concept of human rights. "I have yet to see a persuasive philosophical argument," she says, "developed on grounds that would be compelling to all, for a doctrine of human rights." Long, 173 (quoting Porter).

But despite Porter's belief that human rights lack philosophical basis, and despite its original theological basis which has largely been rejected, Porter acknowledges that we have inherited a reasonably hale notion of human rights as part of our "secular patrimony," one which has de facto become the lingua franca of international discourse. "The language of rights has become part of the shared patrimony of the race," Porter asserts. Long, 174 (quoting Porter). In her view, there is much good in this. And the pragmatic advantage of this state of affairs is justification enough to embrace, and even bed with, the notion of subjective rights. We need not care whether our rich fiancé got his money from a family of bootleggers or from the invention of the light bulb or even whether his family stole it from a bank: the important thing is that he's got the money and we can spend it if we marry him.

Long harbors doubts about Porter's attitude on human rights, and has doubts about her justification of them. Porter rejects the Rawlsian formula of "overlapping consensus" since she finds it "very strange" that different and even contradictory presuppositions on morality and religion can ever give birth to such a consensus. She is likewise not convinced that there is "foundationalist justification for a universal morality," "compelling to all persons of good will," that would give rise to sufficiently specific moral norms so as to be practically useful. She, however, sees the justification in "species-specific patterns of behavior, which provide an indispensable touchstone for evaluating moral theories." Long, 174-75 (quoting Porter).

Man is a Crossword Puzzle: How do we fill him in?
Porter's "species-specific patterns of behavior" do not provide a clue.

Despite his generally respectful regard for Porter's work, Long here unleashes on Porter. He sees Porter's reliance on "species-specific patterns of behavior" as essentially contentless, "lacking sufficient specificity to provide the foundation for genuine political or social solidarity." At most the "species-specific patterns of behavior" yield us "rhetorical meta-language of law," language which we beat our opponents over the head with in the catch-as-catch can of modern "rights talk," a "rights talk" which Mary Ann Glendon (one-time American ambassador to the Vatican and Harvard law professor) described in her book Rights Talk; A Nation Under Lawyers.

The "species-specific patterns of behavior" appears to be more a sociological, empirical construct than a jurisprudential, philosophical one. And for that reason yields no norms. Thus, "species-specif patterns of behavior" shows that parents often educate their young, but it tells us nothing about what sort of education the young ought to receive: are they to be taught theism, animism, communism, secularism? Of these latter questions "species-specific patterns of behavior" provide no guidance. Similarly, it is a "species-specific pattern of behavior" to live in "family units." Are these to be monogamous, lasting unions between a man and woman? Or are we to allow serial or simultaneous polygamy? Family unions between two men or two women? Or even more broadly life in common? Again, "species-specific patterns of behavior" do not give us answers to these important questions. It is this complete inability to specify right and wrong, good and bad which drives Long to label this Porterian construct "Maritain's argument on stilts." Long, 175.

Manifestly then, "rights" talk does not seem in itself a path toward civic peace, but toward endless disputation. . . . [A] right [to be] a just claim--and here it must be said that this is true even if the just claim in question if founded on something permanent in human nature-presupposes judgment from above regarding the hierarchy of ends, and from beneath regarding prudence (whereby one identifies the practical issue as subject to the claim in question). This is true regarding "right" of self-determination itself, which of course is only genuinely right when exercised in some ways and not others, and is only even socially tolerable if exercised within certain limits. And what sets these limits? To say "other rights" will be jejune, because each of these, too, is limited.

Long, 175. In short, "species-specific patterns of behavior" do not fill in the cross-word puzzle that is man, at best they give us some empty boxes, empty boxes which alone are meaningless . These empty boxes need to be filled in with letters that answer questions both across and and down in intelligible and right ways. The fact is that "species-specific patterns of behavior" do not allow us a vehicle by which to know what what is normative and what is not.

Focus on rights cannot get us to the issue of what is normative and what is not in political discourse or life in common. This is because the determination of just claims of right is something that is obtained by going "outside of the genus of rights," and this whether the right is objective or merely subjective. We must turn to a "contextualizing narrative provided by [a] unified teleology" of man. Long, 276. The good must be defined before the right. The right does not define the good. But Porter, largely because she seems to have despaired of a philosophical demonstrable basis of the natural moral law, seems to have despaired of finding a public basis of the good. She is, at root, fideistic, and, as such, falls into the trap that there is no version of the good, and accordingly no objective version of right, that can "compel acceptance by any rational person, whatever his or her beliefs or moral convictions." (Long, 176, quoting Porter). If reason (and a fortiori Faith) cannot be the basis for compulsion, then what can compel? Power? Whim? We are left in intellectual no-man's land. Our political discourse, then, will be abandoned of both religion and reason. Hence do we find it so famished.

What follows the loss of inscape of natural teleology and metaphysics, however, is as earlier argued the loss of an analogical point of reference for Christians and non-Christians, and the only one on which discourse and common action is feasible: namely, the truth, and the truth proportionate to human nature inclusive of the praeambula fidei.

Long, 177.

In other words, the natural law is what must be at the heart of political discourse. The natural law and nothing other. The natural law and nothing less. This means a natural law that considers "close-in" teleologies and an adequate and correct account of the hierarchy of natural ends and prudential judgment. One, moreover, that acknowledges natural theology, that recognizes God as a provident Creator. Finally, one that is open to the possibility of some order beyond the proportionate or proximate end of nature, to a final and supernatural beatific end. Reason is naturally ordered to God. Reason takes us to the praeambula fidei, the threshold, the jumping off place, of supernatural Faith in the Trinity. Law based upon reason, that is the natural law, ought to do likewise.

It is not Porter, and it is not Maritain that provide us the means of secular consensus by their fall into "rights" talk. Long's sets out what ought to be the Catholic view on political discourse:

What does this mean for secular consensus? It means first that the speculative truths implied by or contained within the natural law provide a point of analogous reference for believer and nonbeliever, and are naturally knowable; secondly it also implies that the Church is our tutor in the natural law, for the simple reason that, although the truths of the natural law are knowable apart from revelation, their full existential appropriation and applications require advertence to truths only accessible through revelation. There are truths prior to the promulgation of any secular order, both natural and revealed supernatural truths, and knowledge of these necessarily affects prudence, including political prudence. This does not mean that the Church has one univocal political program, but it does mean that the zone of charitable political discourse is a function of natural moral law and of the Gospel of Christ. It is for precisely this reason that the social and legal tolerance of political states toward the Church tends toward Christianization, and that the rejection of the Church tends toward persecution and suppression. The dynamic is no different now than it was in the early days of the Roman empire.

Long, 178.

There is, when it comes right down to it, no such thing as a "secular consensus," if by such we mean the exclusion of God as Provident Creator, and the exclusion of the possibility of God as Trinity. If we do not open up to the theonomic feature in the natural law, one that through reason sets us right up to the threshold of faith, we disembowel, or perhaps better inanimate, any hope for achieving political discourse:

The danger elsewise is that natural law becomes a juridic realm that, being construed as lacking any real publicly applicable ethical content beyond species-specific recurrent functions, is nonetheless used to ward off either the full doctrinal legacy of natural law--from close-in teleologies of bodily nature with their ethical implications, on to the praeambula fidei--or even to ward off the directive teachings of divine revelation itself. The affirmation of such a juridic realm seems, not an embrace of the full ontological density of natura as a theonomic principle, but rather a significant methodological evacuation of the ontological density of nature liable to leave the public square in the possession of a naturally minimalist and proceduralist theory.

Long, 180.

What is required? A philosophical conversion. An epistemological "re-turn." For there to be any hope of achieving the common good and of a participatory process that is just, we must abandon the philosophical darkness and hence political and jurisprudential darkness in which we find ourselves.

[T]his end requires setting aside the antirealist premises of modernity and postmodernity: We properly know not phenomenal objects, not merely linguistic tropes or usages, no mere concepts, nor even merely a concrete person in grace lacking any impress of natural order, but rather we know, even in the concrete, beings with natures.

Long, 182.

Freedom and Law: Pope Leo XIII's Libertas praestantissimum, Part 6

FREEDOM OF RELIGION, OF SPEECH AND THE PRESS, and of conscience are considered to be staples of modern political and civil organization in the Western and Western-style democracies. Though there is an authentic freedom of worship, of conscience, and of speech and the press, there is, in Pope Leo XIII's view, also an inauthentic or counterfeit freedom of religion, conscience, and speech, one based upon a misunderstanding of man. The misunderstanding stems from man's supposed autonomy from the natural law and the divine law. Some advocates of such extensive civil rights insist that these freedoms are beyond the reach of the natural or divine law: that these are temples where no man or even God can reach, or, what is the same thing, that such untrammeled freedom of religion, conscience, and speech are themselves mandated by the natural or divine law and so the natural law or divine law precludes any curb--individual or social--upon their exercise.

In his analysis of these liberties or freedom, Leo XIII does not begin with the liberty or freedom, but with its related virtue or good. Thus, with respect to the liberty of worship, he starts with the virtue of religion. LP, 19. With regard to the liberty of speech and and related liberties, he begins with truth. LP, 23. In approaching the rights of conscience, he begins with the duty of man to God. LP, 30. The only means of understanding these freedoms or these liberties is to understand their end. These freedoms are not without their end or purpose, and it is only in reference to their end that they, and any proper limits to them, can be understood. As Pope Leo XIII had earlier indicated, freedom does not consist in the liberty to do wrong, but freedom is the liberty to do right. The freedom of worship is the freedom to worship rightly. The freedom of speech is the freedom to speak truthfully. The freedom of conscience is the freedom conscientiously to determine and follow objective good. Another way of looking at it is to analyze the freedoms from the perspective of their analogous duty. The freedom of worship is tied to the duty to worship the one true God, and not idols of our own making. The freedom of speech is tied to the duty to speak the truth, and not to lie. The freedom of conscience is tied to the duty to form one's conscience in accordance, not with whim, not based upon subjective preference, but upon the foundation of an objective moral reality.

The liberty of worship that Leo XIII analyzes is a one that is based "on the principle that every man is free to profess as he may choose any religion or none." LP, 19 (emphasis added). In assessing this freedom, Leo XIII points to what is "without doubt" man's "chiefest and holiest" duty, officiis . . . sine dubitatione maximum ac sanctissimum, which is the duty "to worship God with devotion and piety." LP, 20. Moreover, the choice of worship is not up to individual whim: the natural law and reason both give guidance here, and impose an affirmative moral duty on man:

And if it be asked which of the many conflicting religions it is necessary to adopt, reason and the natural law unhesitatingly tell us to practice that one which God enjoins, and which men can easily recognize by certain exterior notes, whereby Divine Providence has willed that it should be distinguished, because, in a matter of such moment, the most terrible loss would be the consequence of error.

LP, 20. Consequently, a liberty of religion that is framed as a liberty where "every man is free to profess as he may choose any religion or none," is palpably false. The choice of religion is not an autonomous choice, a choice or exercise of will with no duty but to ourselves and to our whim. It is a choice with a duty, a duty imposed by reason and the natural law. The duty is to the true God. The suggestion that man has the liberty of religion defined as a liberty to manufacture an idol of his own hand, or, if he is more sophisticate, and idol of his own mind, is to suggest that "the power is given him to pervert or abandon with impunity the most sacred of duties, and to exchange the unchangeable good for evil." LP, 20. The sort of notion of religious liberty that Leo XIII condemned is the one espoused by Justice Anthony Kennedy in the "sweet-mystery-of-life" (so-sarcastically referred to by Justice Scalia) passage in the case of Planned Parenthood v. Casey, and which he has been justly ridiculed as "New Age jurisprudence" (Robert Bork), "open-ended validation of subjectivism" (William Bennett), "gaseously" written (George Will), or a "thing of almost infinite plasticity" (Michael Uhlman), or as the editors of First Things called it, the "notorious mystery passage":

At the heart of liberty is the right to define one's own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life.

Justice Holmes, in his famous dissent in Lochner v. New York, stated that the "14th Amendment does not enact Mr. Spencer's Social Statics." Well neither, one should have thought, did the 14th Amendment enact Sartre's existentialism. I would call Justice Kennedy's "sweet-mystery-of-life" passage as--fittingly--nauseous, "nauseous words past mentioning or bearing." (Byron) For Leo XIII, these are the words of a man--probably through sheer philosophical ignorance or obtuseness or mindless acceptance of convention--which adopt Lucifer's "rebellious cry," and consequently substitutes "for true liberty what is sheer and most foolish license." LP, 14. One can virtually hear the voices of demons a-Maying, dancing as in a Mayfest around a phallic maypole, and chanting in dissipated glee and the rising of he coming mayhem:

La nausée reprend le pouvoir
La nausée reprend le pouvoir
La nausée reprend le pouvoir
La nausée reprend le pouvoir

Neo-Pagans celebrating the "Sweet-Mystery-of-Life"
before the Nausea sets in

The natural law obliges man to search for the truth in religious doctrine, to use all his tools at his disposal to seek for the truth, including both reason and prayer, and, if found, adopt and embrace the religion one believes to be true. That is the liberty protected by liberty of religion. There is no natural right to create our own religion, to create our own god, and to manufacture our own reality, as if religion is nothing other than ordering a Martini instead of a Bellini.

There is a concomitant duty upon the State equally to recognize God, to render homage to God, and to profess that religion which alone is true. Leo XIII labels as "manifestly false," the notions that "the State has no duties toward God, or that such duties, if they exist, can be abandoned with impunity." LP, 21.

[C]ivil society must acknowledge God as its Founder and Parent, and must obey and reverence His power and authority. Justice therefore forbids, and reason itself forbids, the State to be godless; or to adopt a line of action which would end in godlessness-namely, to treat the various religions (as they call them) alike, and to bestow upon them promiscuously equal rights and privileges.

Quamobrem Deum civilis societas, quia societas est, parentem et auctorem suum agnoscat necesse est, atque eius potesta tern dominatumque vereatur et colat. Vetat igitur iustitia, vetat ratio atheam esse, vel, quod in atheismum recideret, erga varias, ut loquuntur, religiones pari modo affectam civitatem, eademque singulis iura promiscue largiri.

LP, 21. There will be, Leo XIII warns, a loss of liberty that will be engendered by a false notion of liberty of worship which relativizes all religions, which acts indifferently toward them, which advances a notion that religious truth and cult is what we craft and not what we discover. Religion conduces to pure morals and pure morals to liberty. Praetermittimus quantum religio bonis moribus conducat, et quantum libertati mores boni. LP, 22. In fact, if Leo XIII is to be believed, our false notions of freedom of religion and the rejection of any strict obligation, both individual and communal, to God and to objective truth in religion will lead to our demise because it will corrupt morals: "Reason shows, and history confirms the fact, that the higher the morality of States; the greater are the liberty and wealth and power which they enjoy." LP, 22.

(continued)

Brownson on Natural Law: The Church as Custodian and the State

THE CHURCH IS THE CUSTODIAN OF THE NATURAL LAW, and so it has a divinely appointed role in helping form, or undergird the secular law. The secular law, though it has its own area of competence, must in all regards be subordinate to the Natural Law. The notion of two separate and independent spheres of activity--one secular, the other sacred--is simply false. There is no bifurcation of the law in moral man and political man, though in the immoral political man there may be. The notion of pure separation of Church and State is, from a Catholic viewpoint, unacceptable. It presents a recipe for a schizophrenic polity, working at odds, much like the body politic with its corpus callosum severed, and so the left hemisphere of the brain is unable to communicate to the right hemisphere of the brain. Such a man, like such a body politic, operates under serious disadvantage or disorder.

A political philosophy of pure secularism, being practically atheist, is sinful and constitutes a state of rebellion against God. Likewise, the modern legal notion that human law need not be subordinate to, or validly deferent to, the natural law is a false, in fact evil, legal philosophy. The notion that positive laws can have authority or validity independent of, or even in conflict with, the content of the natural law is a false doctrine. The modern politician and legislator, not unlike the emperor of old, must acknowledge the teaching Church, the ecclesia docens, that is the priesthood. "For the Emperor," St. Ambrose wrote in his sermon against Auxentius, "is within the Church, not above it." Imperator enim intra ecclesiam non supra ecclesiam est. (Sermo contra Auxentium de basilicis tradendis, No. 36). The politician, the legislator, the judge, the governor or president--replace emperor with any civil or political office you wish--is within the Church, not above her, and, even if outside her, certainly has not right to act against her. Lift up your gates, you rulers and all peoples, and let the King of Glory into the halls where your laws are made and the courts where they are enforced. Anything else is bound to lead to injustice and to tyranny.

Lift up your gates,
O ye princes, and be ye lifted up,
O eternal gates: and the King of Glory shall enter in
Who is the King of Glory?
The Lord of hosts, he is the King of Glory.

Psalm 23 (24): 9-10.

This is Brownson's message in this excerpt taken from his writings.

"The priesthood, as Catholicity teaches, is the sole depository, guardian, and interpreter of the law of God, and therefore represents for us the sole and absolute legislature, not, of course, by virtue of the humanity of its members, but by divine constitution, appointment, and assistance. The authority of the priesthood, then, extends to the whole of practical life, and that practical life is moral, therefore good, only inasmuch as it is submissive or obedient to the law as they promulgate and declare it. There is, then, and can be, no order of life, individual or social, that has or can have any autonomy in the face of the Church, or that is or can be pronounced morally good, save in so far as subject to her and informed by obedience to her as representative of the authority of God as universal, absolute legislator. This, if we understand the author [Gioberti], is what his own dialectics require us to assert. Secular culture, then, in order to be moral, in order to have any right to be, must be the product of sacerdotal culture, receive its law and its informing spirit from the Divinely authorized priesthood, and be in all things dependent on it, and subject to it. Hence, the schism we spoke of in the beginning is not to be healed by a union of secular culture with the sacerdotal, but by the absolute subjection of the former to the latter, because the former, in so far as it does not proceed from the latter and depend on it, proceeds from human activity, not subject to the law of God, and therefore is not moral."

[From Brownson's Works, "Vincenzo Gioberti" (H. F. Brownson: Detroit, 1898), Vol. 2, p. 128.]

Brownson on Natural Law: The Obligation to Believe?

IN THIS CONTROVERSIAL excerpt, Orestes Brownson insists that assent to the Gospel is required by both divine law and the natural law. This is because it is not unreasonable to believe in the Gospel, but is reasonable. From a purely human faith standpoint, then, there is an obligation to believe in God, and, for those who have heard the Gospel, a duty to believe in Jesus Christ and his Church, which duty, to be fulfilled, ultimately relies upon a gift of God, that is, grace. For the act of faith, though reasonable, is ultimately a supernatural act, beyond our natural capacity and intelligibility, and the act therefore requires accompanying supernatural grace.

"We also admit, and contend, that 'faith is the gift of God,' not merely because it is belief in truth which God has graciously revealed . . . but because no man can believe, even now that the truth is revealed, without the aid of divine grace, that is to say, without grace supernaturally bestowed. Faith is a virtue which has merit; but no virtue is possible without the aid of divine grace has merit; that is, merit in relation to eternal life. The grace of faith is absolutely essential to the eliciting of the act of faith.

But this considers faith in as much as it is divine faith, a gift of God, and lying wholly in the supernatural order, not as simply human faith, in which it depends on extrinsic evidence or testimony, and the obligation of a man under the simple law of nature to believe,--the only sense in which, in this discussion, we consider it. Unbelief, in those to whom the Gospel has been preached, is a sin not only against the revealed law, but also against the natural law, which it could not be, if the Gospel did not come accompanied with sufficient evidence to warrant belief in every reasonable man."

[From Brownson's Works, "The Church Against No-Church" (H. F. Brownson: Detroit, 1900), Vol. 3, p. 369.]