Author: Thomas Storck

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Recent Discussions of Religious Liberty

The forthcoming Portuguese translation of Thomas Storck’s book  Foundations of a Catholic Political Order afforded him the opportunity to rework the Second Appendix of that book to address Professor Thomas Pink’s interpretation of Dignitatis Humanae (previously discussed on The Josias, for instance, here and here). With the author’s gracious permission, we now present Mr. Storck’s response below.

—The Editors

As I said in chapter two, I have reserved this Appendix for a fuller discussion of the question of religious liberty. Since the first edition of this book appeared in 1998 there has been considerable discussion and debate on Dignitatis Humanae in English, Italian, German and other languages. Space and other considerations prevent a thorough review of all this material, which is voluminous, but it is necessary to say something about some of the recent commentary on this question.[1]

Before doing so I remind the reader that despite the unequivocal pledge to maintain traditional Catholic doctrine made at the beginning of Dignitatis Humanae, the Declaration does not seem to do so. And some at least of its principal framers definitely intended to create new doctrine and apparently thought they had done so. Moreover, they have managed to convince almost everyone else that they had done so too. But it is not the tone of the document that we must pay attention to, but “to what the writer succeeded in setting down on paper explicitly.”[2] If we can overlook the rhetoric of Dignitatis Humanae and examine its text with care and with correct principles of interpretation, then I think it can be understood in such a way as not to stand in conflict with the earlier teaching.

In an article in the American magazine, Touchstone, Korey D. Maas, a Lutheran, summarizes the state of the Catholic debate on religious liberty for an ecumenical readership.[3] Maas notes that

The Council proceedings made evident the prolonged controversy concerning the discussion of religious liberty, what would become Dignitatis Humanae went through nine drafts and hundreds of interventions, with a vote on the text being postponed until the very conclusion of the Council. The greatest source of controversy was quite simply the belief that the document forwarded a doctrine contrary to dogmatic tradition.

Maas continues, “Unsurprisingly, then, the half-century since Vatican II has witnessed a plethora of attempted—but incompatible—clarifications,” and he points out the existence of “four distinct positions [that] have been articulated” with regard to how Dignitatis Humanae can or cannot be reconciled with previous teaching. The first two simply accept that the Council’s teaching was indeed an innovation, “a repudiation of pre-conciliar doctrine.” But the two positions regard this very differently. “While agreeing that the Declaration signals a rupture with the dogmatic tradition, `traditionalists’ condemn and `progressives’ celebrate this.” The former believe that the Church appears to have repudiated one of her settled teachings, with obviously ominous implications for all of her doctrine, while progressive or liberal Catholics rejoice because they see the Declaration as opening the door to further, and perhaps widespread, doctrinal change.

The remaining two interpretations of Dignitatis Humanae are what Maas calls, first, the neo-conservative view, and secondly, the radical. The first upholds the common understanding of Dignitatis Humanae as a pretty much unequivocal endorsement of religious liberty, and welcomes this affirmation. But, Maas points out, those who uphold this position differ widely in how they deal with the fact of the previous papal teaching, with some arguing that the apparently new teaching was always implicit in the older texts, while others assert that there are sufficient ambiguities in the teaching of previous pontiffs to allow for doctrinal development, or that the earlier teaching was not “dogmatic in nature…[and] merely represented temporary and mutable policy preferences….”

Finally, Maas concludes, the radical view sees the traditional pre-conciliar teaching as authoritative and the Council’s Declaration as “ambiguous. If it is to be understood as authoritative, then certain of its interpretations must be corrected to harmonize with the pre-conciliar tradition.”

Among those upholding this fourth position, Maas mentions the present writer along with John Lamont, Fr. Thomas Crean and Professor Thomas Pink of King’s College, London. It is the latter, however, whose views lately seem to have made considerable headway among those inclined to this kind of solution. I find Professor Pink’s approach unconvincing, however, and I will set forth briefly my objections to it here.

The key point in Pink’s method of dealing with the apparent discrepancy between Dignitatis Humanae and earlier papal teaching is his claim that the previous doctrine dealt not with the state’s inherent right or duty to restrict non-Catholic religious activity for the sake of the common good, but with the Church’s right to do so, at least with regard to the baptized. What Dignitatis Humanae does, therefore, is to withdraw an earlier authorization given to the civil authorities to restrain or coerce the baptized, on behalf of the Church, but it does not concern the Church’s own rights in this area, which remain as before. Thus the Declaration becomes a policy statement, withdrawing a power granted to the state by the Church. But since this grant of authority by the Church to the secular powers was always in principle revocable, Dignitatis Humanae does not constitute any change of doctrine, simply a change of policy.

While Professor Pink does well to call attention to the Church’s own rights over her subjects—that is, all the baptized—and is correct that this point is often overlooked, this in no way denies that the state may also have certain indirect rights in the religious sphere, insofar as this sphere concerns the preservation of the common good, for in fact it is impossible in practice to separate the temporal good of man entirely from his religious activity. By refocusing the argument exclusively around the Church’s rights and authority, Professor Pink has neglected the numerous passages in which a certain authority to safeguard and promote Catholic practice and to restrict non-Catholic religious conduct is seen as proper to the state’s own duties and rights.

Professor Pink has drawn from his studies on earlier Catholic thinkers, particularly Suárez and Bellarmine, to support his thesis. But whatever positions those earlier thinkers took on this matter, and no matter how much any of their writings may have been esteemed by any of the sovereign pontiffs, or even “commissioned by” any of them,[4] still such writings are not part of the Church’s magisterial teaching, and even if they do reflect the thinking of any particular pope, that does not make them part of the Church’s doctrine.[5] Lastly, if Professor Pink wishes to confine the power of dealing with religious matters solely to the Church, with the state’s authority in this area seen merely as something granted by the Church, it is not clear how he can explain the rights of the state to regulate religious activity on the part of unbaptized persons, over whom the Church has no rights whatsoever. Let us look at each of these points in order.

It seems clear from Pope Leo’s oft repeated assertions of the state’s duty toward the true Faith that he did teach that the state itself has a certain care for the religious life of its citizens, inasmuch as this affects the common good. This is not a mere grant of authority by which the state acts on behalf of the Church. I think that any common-sense interpretation of the following quotations from Leo’s encyclicals will bear out this claim.

So, too, is it a sin in the State not to have care for religion, as a something beyond its scope, or as of no practical benefit; or out of many forms of religion to adopt that one which chimes in with the fancy; for we are bound absolutely to worship God in that way which He has shown to be His will. All who rule, therefore, should hold in honor the holy name of God, and one of their chief duties must be to favor religion, to protect it, to shield it under the credit and sanction of the laws, and neither to organize nor enact any measure that may compromise its safety. This is the bounden duty of rulers to the people over whom they rule.

Immortale Dei, no. 6.

But, to justify [liberty of worship], it must needs be taken as true that the State has no duties toward God, or that such duties, if they exist, can be abandoned with impunity, both of which assertions are manifestly false. For it cannot be doubted but that, by the will of God, men are united in civil society; whether its component parts be considered; or its form, which implies authority; or the object of its existence; or the abundance of the vast services which it renders to man. God it is who has made man for society, and has placed him in the company of others like himself, so that what was wanting to his nature, and beyond his attainment if left to his own resources, he might obtain by association with others. Wherefore, civil 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. Since, then, the profession of one religion is necessary in the State, that religion must be professed which alone is true, and which can be recognized without difficulty, especially in Catholic states….

Libertas, no. 21

Men have a right freely and prudently to propagate throughout the State what things soever are true and honorable, so that as many as possible may possess them; but lying opinions, than which no mental plague is greater, and vices which corrupt the heart and moral life, should be diligently repressed by public authority, lest they insidiously work the ruin of the State.

Libertas, no 23.

Yet, with the discernment of a true mother, the Church weighs the great burden of human weakness, and well knows the course down which the minds and actions of men are in this our age being borne. For this reason, while not conceding any right to anything save what is true and honest, she does not forbid public authority to tolerate what is at variance with truth and justice, for the sake of avoiding some greater evil, or of obtaining or preserving some greater good…. But if, in such circumstances, for the sake of the common good (and this is the only legitimate reason), human law may or even should tolerate evil, it may not and should not approve or desire evil for its own sake; for evil of itself, being a privation of good, is opposed to the common welfare which every legislator is bound to desire and defend to the best of his ability.

Libertas, no. 33.

[T]he more a State is driven to tolerate evil, the further is it from perfection; and that the tolerance of evil which is dictated by political prudence should be strictly confined to the limits which its justifying cause, the public welfare, requires.

Libertas, no. 34.

Professor Pink quotes Immortale Dei, that “it is the Church, and not the State, that is to be man’s guide to heaven” (no. 11), and “Whatever, therefore, in things human is of a sacred character, whatever belongs…to the salvation of souls or to the worship of God, is subject to the power and judgment of the Church” (no. 13). But in view of the quotations from Leo that are set out immediately above, it seems clear that the sweeping conclusion that he draws from these quotations is not justified, namely, that “according to Leo XIII, in matters of religion the Church is the only authority with the right to coerce.”[6] Moreover, even without reference to the Leonine statements about the state’s duties in this area, the attentive reader will see that Leo is not saying anything regarding state coercion or authority in religious matters in the two quotes from Immortale Dei that Professor Pink adduces. Rather, Leo is pointing out that it is the Church’s task to lead us to heaven, and that her internal affairs – her worship and teaching, for example – are solely her concern, not the state’s. Moreover, we should recall that in the discussion of the state’s rights to regulate religious activity on behalf of the common good, we are chiefly or only looking at the activity of non-Catholics, to whom no divine mandate has been given to care for the religious life of mankind at all.

In addition to those passages which I have quoted, there is one more which it seems necessary to mention, the address of Pius XII, Ci Riesce, to the Union of Italian Catholic Jurists of December 6, 1953. Speaking of the authority of the state, Pius asks,

Could it be that in certain circumstances [God] would not give men any mandate, would not impose any duty, and would not even communicate the right to impede or to repress what is erroneous and false? A look at things as they are gives an affirmative answer.

no. 17.

The Pope is speaking here of political authority, as the whole address makes clear, and the point of the discussion is whether at times God might not “communicate the right to impede or to repress what is erroneous and false.” It is simply assumed here that at times God does communicate such a right, and nowhere in the text is there the slightest suggestion that this is a matter of a grant of authority on the part of the Church. In fact, a few paragraphs later, Pius XII states that it is “the Catholic statesman [who] must judge if this condition [calling for toleration] is verified in the concrete,” although he also notes that such a statesman will seek the “guidance,” but, note, not the permission, of the Church in making such a decision on behalf of the toleration of what is objectively evil.

Since Pius XII speaks of occasions when God might “not even communicate the right to impede or to repress what is erroneous and false,” obviously this cannot be a reference to the rights of the Church in this area, for the authority which the Church possesses over her own subjects is not something which is granted by God only according to circumstances, but is always present.

With regard to unbaptized persons, Professor Pink asserts the Church’s right to some authority over them.

But the Church still has the authority to use coercion to defend her jurisdiction against those unbaptized who interfere from without, proselytizing on behalf of false religions.[7]

He provides no text to support this view, however. While it is certainly the case that the state was traditionally seen as having such powers over its unbaptized citizens, as part of the state’s care of the common good, it is hard to see how such a right could belong to the Church herself, and hence be delegated by the Church to the state.

Finally, Professor Pink asserts that Dignitatis Humanae absolutely forbids state intrusion into the religious realm.

[B]ecause the good of religion does altogether transcend the authority of the state, our right not to be coerced by the state where the good of religion alone is at stake admits of no exceptions. The state cannot restrict our liberty for specifically religious ends, to protect religious truth, or simply for people’s religious good.[8]

But in fact Dignitatis Humanae is not so absolute in its teaching as Pink maintains. In addition to the well-known exceptions based on “due limits” and the “just requirements of public order” (no. 2) there is the far more important but often neglected statement in no. 7 that “the common good of all” is one of the factors to be taken into account with regard to the state’s care of religious conduct. In fact it was the common good that was traditionally seen as the chief factor that ought to guide the civil authorities in their legislation on religious matters.

Of course the state authorities do not exercise their powers in a vacuum. Catholic rulers must learn their religion from the Church, just as anyone else. But the authority that they hold for the sake of the common good to regulate the public religious activity of non-Catholics, and to protect and promote the Catholic faith, is not based on a grant of authority given by the Church, but is part of the “bounden duty of rulers to the people over whom they rule.”

Professor Pink also quotes a number of the relationes or official explanations of the meaning of Dignitatis Humanae given to the Council Fathers during their deliberations on the text, and claims that these explanations support his interpretation of what the Council was doing.[9] He points out that they emphasize the fact that Dignitatis Humanae concerns only religious freedom in the civil order, and not in the Church. This, he argues, confirms his position that the Council’s Declaration was merely the withdrawal of a prior permission granted to the state to enforce the Church’s rights over her own baptized subjects. But I think that this is an anachronistic reading of these statements. During and after the Council there was discussion of whether or how far the (presumed) teaching of Dignitatis Humanae might affect the freedom of a Catholic vis-à-vis the Church. Thus John Courtney Murray, in his introduction to Dignitatis Humanae for the Abbott edition of the Council’s documents, wrote,

[T]hough the Declaration deals only with the minor issue of religious freedom in the technical secular sense, it does affirm a principle of wider import – that the dignity of man consists in his responsible use of freedom. Some of the conciliar Fathers – not least those opposed to the Declaration – perceived that a certain indivisibility attaches to the notion of freedom… The conciliar affirmation of the principle of freedom was narrowly limited – in the text. But the text itself was flung into a pool whose shores are wide as the universal Church. The ripples will run far.

Inevitably, a second great argument will be set afoot…. The children of God…assert it within the Church as well as in the world….[10]

Although Fr. Murray’s remarks do concern the Church’s rights and authority over her members, they do so not in the sense that Professor Pink believes. That is, they are not concerned with a grant of power to the civil authorities, but with questions such as whether a Catholic has a right to dissent from Church teaching, for example. No one at the time raised the question of the state acting as agent for the Church to coerce its citizens in religious matters.[11]

Before concluding I will deal briefly with Professor Pink’s comments on my own and similar positions.[12]. He writes,

It is…remarkable that so many authors attempt to reconcile Dignitatis Humanae with the pre-conciliar magisterium by appealing to the just public order exception. These authors claim that in the Catholic societies of the past, non-Catholic religious activity and proselytization in the public sphere…did once threaten just public order as it might not be threatened now, and then suggest that the Catholic magisterium was calling on the state to restrict such activity just on that account.

Professor Pink then quotes me to the effect that

“just requirements of public order,” the “due limits,” and considerations of the rights of others and of the common good vary considerably from society to society, and in a society overwhelmingly and traditionally Catholic they could easily include restrictions, and even an outright prohibition, on the public activities of non-Catholic sects, particularly their proselytizing activities.

Professor Pink responds to the position of myself and of other authors holding similar views, as follows,

But this is to misunderstand the Church’s past conception of the state’s role when privileging Catholicism – which was primarily to protect the spiritual good of its citizens, and not simply to protect just public order under civil and social conditions very different from those of the present. The state’s coercive role was to protect the Church and her mission as essential to the supreme spiritual good of salvation, and not just to protect the civil order.

I find this comment odd, for I do not understand how “the spiritual good of its citizens” can be separated from “public order.” As I said above, it is impossible to separate the temporal good of mankind – which is directly under the care of the state – from our eternal destiny, for the two are interwoven, as the first chapter of this book illustrates again and again.

Moreover, the fact that “previous teaching justified not only restrictions on the public activity of false religions, but also coercing heretics to return to the true faith” is not at issue here, as the latter was clearly a power of the Church, and insofar as the Church sought the support of the state in implementing it, this was indeed an example of the Church asking the assistance of the civil powers, and in effect, delegating a certain authority to them. The fact that the Church’s powers over heretics are more far-reaching than those possessed by the state does not mean that the state has no duties of its own in the religious sphere, however.

To sum up my argument, then: Man has a right, in the political order, to religious freedom.[13] This is affirmed by Dignitatis Humanae, and in the context of that Declaration this assertion might seem to be at variance with the earlier teaching. But this is not really the case. For, as Dignitatis Humanae itself asserts in no. 7, the exercise of this freedom is limited by the concerns of the common good, a teaching reaffirmed by the Catechism of the Catholic Church (nos. 1738 and 2109). Thus, since the common good differs from one social situation to another, as the Catechism also points out (no. 2109), the degree of religious liberty rightly permitted to non-Catholics differs from one social situation to another. In overwhelmingly and traditional Catholic societies, we may rightly see public non-Catholic religious activity, especially proselytizing, as contrary to the common good, though non-Catholics would still enjoy their right to the private exercise of their religion, for example, in their own homes. Thus non-Catholics would always enjoy a political right to religious liberty, but the “due limits” which a state must place on this right “must be determined for each social situation by political prudence, according to the requirements of the common good….”[14]

The foundation of the de facto practice of allowing non-Catholics private religious liberty was not altogether clear in the earlier teaching. Did they have any kind of right to such liberty or was it merely something tolerated for the sake of the common good and peace of the society as a whole? But while this aspect of the teaching was undeveloped, the relevant pre-Vatican II papal documents never excluded the notion of a right of religious liberty for non-Catholics in certain circumstances. For example, in the Syllabus of Errors (no. 78), Pius IX condemned the “public exercise” of non-Catholic religions in Catholic states. And as I quoted above, in Ci Riesce, Pius XII says that God “would not even communicate the right” to restrict non-Catholic religious activity in some circumstances. Thus I do not think it is contradictory to say that there could be a right (in the political order) to religious liberty for non-Catholics, the exercise of which right, like all others, is subject to the exigencies of the common good. Thus non-Catholics would always have a right to private religious activity, and where they are a majority or a large or traditional minority or otherwise where the common good indicates, they also have a right to at least some public religious freedom. But, on the other hand, in Catholic nations the common good would usually indicate limitation, at least to some extent, of their public religious acts. This position, I think, is perfectly consistent both with the earlier teaching and with Dignitatis Humanae. It is true that Dignitatis Humanae emphasizes the right to religious freedom, but it contains sufficient in the way of limitations to make it compatible with that “traditional Catholic teaching” it undertook to develop, while at the same time, like all true doctrinal development, leaving what came before “intact.” Thus Dignitatis Humanae‘s contribution to the development of doctrine may be seen to lie in its giving the religious liberty of non-Catholics a firmer theological foundation, i.e., pointing out that their liberty is likewise founded on right. But note that their religious liberty is not the same as the exercise of that liberty, which is limited by the requirements of the common good, as Dignitatis Humanae itself clearly states in no. 7.

  1. In the United States the debate on religious liberty has been largely subsumed in recent years into a larger and more fundamental controversy about the relationship between Catholicism and the classical liberal tradition. ↑

  2. William G. Most, “Religious Liberty: What the Texts Demand,” Faith & Reason, vol. 9, no. 3, fall 1983, p. 198. Emphasis author’s. ↑

  3. “Can We Hang Together?” Touchstone, A Journal of Mere Christianity, vol. 31, issue 6, November/December 2018, pp. 52-7. ↑

  4. Professor Pink speaks of Suárez’s work, Defensio Fidei Catholicae as being “commissioned by Paul V and directed against James I of England.” Thomas Pink, “Conscience and Coercion,” First Things, August/September 2012, pp. 46-7. ↑

  5. We might compare such endorsements with the praise that Pope Benedict XV gave to Fr. Augustine Roesler’s World War I era book, Die Frauenfrage, which the Pope described as “a book…in which [readers] might safely and thoroughly and clearly discover what they should think of the social position of women according to the laws of the Catholic religion.” (Quoted in William B. Faherty, The Destiny of Modern Woman in the Light of Papal Teaching, Westminster : Newman Press, 1950, p. 63.) Yet no one today would consider a Catholic as bound by Fr. Roesler’s opinions on the civil status or social role of women. ↑

  6. Pink, “Conscience and Coercion,” p. 47. ↑

  7. Pink, “Conscience and Coercion,” p. 47. ↑

  8. Thomas Pink, “Dignitatis Humanae: continuity after Leo XIII,” Available on academia.edu, p. 1. ↑

  9. Thomas Pink, “Dignitatis Humanae: continuity after Leo XIII,” pp. 15ff. ↑

  10. Walter Abbott, ed., The Documents of Vatican II, (New York : Guild Press, 1966), pp. 673-4. ↑

  11. See also, for example, the address to the Council of Bishop Emile De Smedt on November 19, 1963, introducing the draft on religious liberty, which at the time was still a part of the ecumenical schema. (Vatican Council II, Acta Synodalia, vol. II, periodus 2, pars V, pp. 485-95. Reprinted and translated in Council Daybook, Vatican II, Session 1, Session 2, edited by Floyd Anderson, Washington : National Catholic Welfare Conference, 1965, pp. 277-82.)

    Also see the address of John Courtney Murray on September 15, 1965 at the Dutch Documentation Center in Rome on the pending religious liberty schema. Nowhere in his speech is there the slightest hint of the meaning of the text that Professor Pink advocates. Fr. Murray reviews the teaching of Leo XIII, focusing exclusively on Leo’s conception of the state, its rulers and whether they possess a patria potestas over their subjects, etc. But no reference to what Professor Pink claims was the point at issue. (Reprinted in Council Daybook, Vatican II, Session 4, edited by Floyd Anderson, Washington : National Catholic Welfare Conference, 1966, pp. 14-17.) ↑

  12. Thomas Pink, “Dignitatis Humanae: continuity after Leo XIII,” Available on academia.edu Quotes are from pp. 3ff. ↑

  13. Clearly there can be no moral right to embrace error, only a political right to be free of external restraint on the part of the state. ↑

  14. Catechism of the Catholic Church, no. 2109. ↑

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Catholicism and the Natural World

by Thomas Storck

Editorial Note: This article was originally published in 1999 in The Catholic Faith, vol. 5, no. 6, November/December 1999, as a commentary on Numbers 337-344 and 2415-2418 of the Catechism of the Catholic Church. It has only become more relevant with time.

 The Vatican’s issuance of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, first in French in 1992, and in English translation in 1994, was an important event in the history of the Church in the twentieth century. The Catechism has proved a helpful tool not only for the New Evangelization, but also for instructing those who are already Catholics, who in view of the widespread crisis of belief that has followed the Second Vatican Council are greatly in need of an authoritative restatement of their religion. For unless Catholics are catechized by the Church, they will assuredly be catechized by the world. Our minds are continually being formed, or misformed, and it is the ideas that result from this that ultimately govern our conduct. As Father John Hardon has written, “All the evil in the world begins with error. Or, more personally, all sin in the human heart begins as untruth in the human mind.”[1] Too often we take in uncritically notions from the culture around us, many of which are at variance with Catholic truth. In the turmoil occasioned by the Council, catechetics have declined to the point that very many Catholics have little or no knowledge of their religion, but even among those Catholics who take pains to preserve their orthodoxy there are generally areas in which the ideas that govern their actions are not in accord with the teaching of the Church. This is most likely to occur in matters where we are scarcely aware that there is any authoritative Catholic teaching, especially in those areas which transcend personal and individual morality and concern mankind organized as a community, such as the morality of economic life. It is such a subject that I wish to take up in this essay, namely the question of our proper attitude and conduct toward the natural order, toward the created or natural environment around us. In this area, as in so many others, it seems that the Devil sponsors two opposite errors, for the world offers us two competing outlooks, both of which are wrong. In reacting against the one that seems most wrong to us, we are apt to embrace the other, so, for example, as we rightly reject the New Age account of nature, we are in danger of embracing an ideology rooted in Cartesianism or Deism, which is equally opposed both to the explicit teaching of the Church as well as to the perennial philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas. The remedy for this is knowledge, knowledge of what the Church teaches in these areas, and a docile spirit toward her authority. In this article therefore I will explicate certain paragraphs of the Catechism that deal with the visible created order or nature, and man’s relations with that order. We will see that there is definite Catholic teaching on this subject and thus a distinct Catholic way of dealing with it. And far from being something remote from our lives, this teaching is in fact of great importance for how we live, and especially for how our society conducts itself.

The Catechism’s discussion of the natural creation takes place within its exposition of the Creed or Profession of Faith. After speaking of God as “Creator of heaven and earth” and of “all that is seen and unseen” (325), it then goes on to speak of the angelic order, and finally of the visible world. Let us look at the paragraphs that deal with this.

No. 337. God himself created the visible world in all its richness, diversity, and order. Scripture presents the work of the Creator symbolically as a succession of six days of divine “work,” concluded by the “rest” of the seventh day. On the subject of creation, the sacred text teaches the truths revealed by God for our salvation, permitting us to “recognize the inner nature, the value, and the ordering of the whole of creation to the praise of God.”

No. 338. Nothing exists that does not owe its existence to God the Creator. The world began when God’s word drew it out of nothingness; all existent beings, all of nature, and all human history are rooted in this primordial event, the very genesis by which the world was constituted and time begun.

One of the major points separating Catholics, and indeed all Christians, as well as Jews and Moslems, from much of the rest of the world, is the question of creation. Where did the perceptible world about us come from? In antiquity many people held that the world had always existed, or that the world was an emanation from God, not a creation by God. This latter is akin to pantheism, the belief that the world is a part of God or indistinguishable from God. Today Hinduism and other east Asian religions, for example, either explicitly or implicitly accept pantheism,[2] and contemporary New Age writers usually embrace similar ideas.[3] Even the current scientific theory of the Big Bang, though it has certain resemblances to the idea of a creation, supposes some matter to have existed before the Big Bang, and thus, unlike what is required by the Catholic faith, it is not creation out of nothing.

While rejecting pantheism, or any notion that the world is an emanation from God, we must also reject Deism. Superficially the Deistic concept of creation looks like the Catholic concept, but in fact they are essentially different. The paradigm of Deistic creation and the Deistic God is the Watchmaker. Though sometimes used by Protestant Christians, and even by Catholics, the notion of God as the Watchmaker has serious defects for a true Theism, since the God of Deism is essentially one who creates, but then walks away from his creation, while the true God, the God both of true philosophy and of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, both creates and continuously upholds his creation in being. As Ronald Knox wrote,

Paley’s metaphor of the watch once for all wound up is, of course, the classic illustration of this Deist conception. It represents God as having made the universe, but not as guiding it from moment to moment, still less as actually holding it in being.[4]

A better (but still inadequate) physical image for God and his creation than the watchmaker and the watch is the electric generator and the light bulb, for the light bulb depends on the generator not only for the beginning of its operation but also for its continuing to provide light, while the watchmaker makes the watch, winds it up, and then is free to go away.

Moreover, the concept of miracles was difficult or impossible to fit into the Deistic universe, for if their God simply made the watch, wound it up and went away, how could the course of this mechanical creation ever deviate from its predetermined path? Even the idea of God’s providence, of God hearing and answering our prayers, while perhaps not absolutely incompatible with Deism,[5] is foreign to its spirit, for it is hard to see how the Deistic God has any continuing interest in his workmanship. And though Deism is a heresy most characteristic of the eighteenth century, Deistic attitudes are still active today, as we will see below.

 Since the Catechism speaks of the “six days” of creation, it might be well to mention the controversial but related questions of the literal reading of the early chapters of Genesis and of the evolution of species. Protestant fundamentalists hold that the six days of Genesis must be interpreted literally, and thus they necessarily reject the theory of the evolution of all organic beings from one or a few primeval one-celled creatures over long aeons of time. Catholics have never been required to accept the first chapters of Genesis literally,[6] but it does not follow from this that the theory of evolution is true either. It is possible to reject both the fundamentalist view of Genesis without at the same time accepting organic evolution, for there is much purely scientific evidence that casts doubt upon macroevolution, without requiring a literal understanding of the early chapters of Genesis.[7]

No. 339. Each creature possesses its own particular goodness and perfection. For each one of the works of the “six days” it is said: “And God saw that it was good.” “By the very nature of creation, material being is endowed with its own stability, truth, and excellence, its own order and laws.” Each of the various creatures, willed in its own being, reflects in its own way a ray of God’s infinite wisdom and goodness. Man must therefore respect the particular goodness of every creature, to avoid any disordered use of things which would be in contempt of the Creator and would bring disastrous consequences for human beings and their environment.

“Each creature possesses its own particular goodness and perfection” and “Each of the various creatures, willed in its own being, reflects in its own way a ray of God’s infinite wisdom and goodness.” In these two sentences we have a perfect summary of the Catholic doctrine on and attitude toward the created order of natures. Without denying that mankind is the crown and ruler of creation, nevertheless the individual beings of the plant and animal kingdoms, even rocks and minerals, have a perfection of their own and reflect “a ray of God’s infinite wisdom and goodness.”

 As St. Thomas Aquinas explains in article 3 of question 5 of the Summa Theologiae, something is called bad only if it lacks what is proper to it, “as a man is called bad insofar as he lacks virtue, and an eye is called bad insofar as it lacks sharpness of sight.” We call a car that runs well, for example, a good car, and one whose engine is broken, bad (not morally bad, of course). So therefore everything that God has created has its own goodness, simply in itself, regardless of how it may benefit mankind. But if we forget this truth, we are apt to take a view of the rest of creation that looks on it much as a Deist might – they are simply external objects, like the watch, with no relation to God. For if the watchmaker simply makes the watch and then goes away, the watch not only displays no dependence on its maker, and thus no special relation to him, but is simply a neutral object which we may treat any way we choose. The watch is an essentially secular object, that is, divorced from God. In the Deistic universe, the world of natures is a world (apart from its origins) that exists on its own.  Its God is far from it, and it awaits (should we so choose) our exploitation.

 In a volume that contains much just criticism of the Green movement’s attitudes toward man and the natural order, The Cross and the Rain Forest,[8] two of the book’s authors, Robert Whelan and Joseph Kirwan, seem to regard the natural order in this Deistic way. Whelan criticizes those who regard a tree “as more than just a source of wood” (p. 40), and Kirwan seems to raise difficulties over whether animals should be called “creatures” or simply “things” (pp. 114-15). These sorts of attitudes have been common in the Western world for some time, even among those, such as Catholics, who should have known better, and since error tends to breed error, the reaction against the Deistic way of looking at the earth and the other creatures who live on it is in part the reason for the absurdities and immoralities of the Green and other movements that reject traditional Christianity.[9] As Catholics we must try to make our attitude toward our fellow creatures that of Holy Scripture, which eloquently speaks of animals, plants and even ice and snow or clouds and lightning, as praising God simply by their existence.[10]

No. 340. God wills the interdependence of creatures. The sun and the moon, the cedar and the little flower, the eagle and the sparrow: the spectacle of their countless diversities and inequalities tells us that no creature is self-sufficient.  Creatures exist only in dependence on each other, to complete each other, in the service of each other.

 The system of “interdependence of creatures” is what we generally call nature. Nature is simply the system of natures. Each created thing, sun and moon, large tree and little flower, has what we call a nature, that is, a whatness: each is a distinct and different kind of thing. As we saw above, it is by being itself in its own integrity that a thing is good. But none of these individual goods exists entirely by or for itself, “no creature is self-sufficient.” Thus even though each created thing praises God simply by existing, they also exist “in the service of each other.” Plants make use of the sun, rain and minerals from the soil; animals eat plants and other animals and use wood or grass or sand to make nests or other dwellings. So while it is good to allow animals and plants to live their own life, for of themselves they praise God, it is also good to cut down trees to construct buildings needed for mankind’s use or to eat plants and animals, since they exist also to serve us and each other. According to the Deistic concept of creation, created things would exist solely for our use, and even for our misuse. But since each created thing praises God by being itself, we cannot use them except in our genuine service and for our genuine welfare. It is as if we employed a servant who, whenever he was not actually serving us, spent his time worshipping before the Blessed Sacrament. Would we dare call him from this holy work to help us in something immoral or even frivolous? We can consider our use of the natural world analogously. Since each created thing blesses and praises God in its natural state, simply by existing, we ought not to take away that praise from God unless we have good reason. For natural things are not simply at our disposal, but exist “to complete each other, in the service of each other.” If we use them for frivolous reasons, or for things which ultimately are harmful to human society, then we are not using them in our service, but to our hurt. The mere piling up of consumer goods, the spending of huge sums on unworthy objects, our insatiable appetite for amusements – are any of these sufficiently important to justify our taking away things of the natural order from their work of praising God? As Pope John Paul wrote in Centesimus Annus:

It is not wrong to want to live better; what is wrong is a style of life which is presumed to be better when it is directed towards “having” rather than “being,” and which wants to have more, not in order to be more but in order to spend life in enjoyment as an end in itself. (no. 36)

The gravity of sin involved in misusing natural objects doubtless depends on many factors, but one can hardly deny the existence of some sin.

No. 341. The beauty of the universe: The order and harmony of the created world results from the diversity of beings and from the relationships which exist among them. Man discovers them progressively as the laws of nature. They call forth the admiration of scholars. The beauty of creation reflects the infinite beauty of the Creator and ought to inspire the respect and submission of man’s intellect and will.

   The Catechism here reflects what men for centuries have concluded when they examined carefully the cosmos. Aristotle wrote concerning knowledge of animals:

For if some [animals] have no graces to charm the sense, yet even these, by disclosing to intellectual perception the artistic spirit that designed them, give immense pleasure to all who can trace links of causation, and are inclined to philosophy.[11]

This ability to “trace links of causation,” as well as our perception of the “beauty of creation” ought to lead any unprejudiced person to recognize “the infinite beauty of the Creator,” and further “ought to inspire the respect and submission of [his] intellect and will.” As St. Paul wrote,

For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. Ever since the creation of the world his invisible nature, namely, his eternal power and deity, has been clearly perceived in the things that have been made. (Romans 1:19-20)

The fact that many today see the things that God has made and yet, not being able or willing to “trace links of causation,” fail to see the Creator, certainly calls into question our notion of the superiority of our civilization over all past ages. Centuries of bad philosophy and bad education have rendered modern man less capable of true philosophical insight and perception of beauty than our supposedly rude ancestors. A comparison between a church built in the Middle Ages and nearly any church built in the last forty or fifty years should be sufficient to show which civilization is really superior.

No. 342. The hierarchy of creatures is expressed by the order of the “six days,” from the less perfect to the more perfect.  God loves all his creatures and takes care of each one, even the sparrow. Nevertheless, Jesus said: “You are of more value than many sparrows,” or again: “Of how much more value is a man than a sheep!”

No. 343. Man is the summit of the Creator’s work, as the inspired account expresses by clearly distinguishing the creation of man from that of the other creatures.

It is necessary to make very careful distinctions in commenting on these passages in order to avoid the errors which lurk on each side of truth. On the one hand are those who deny that man has any special place in creation. For example, the organization Earth First!, in one of its proposals stated that

the central idea of Earth First! is that humans have no divine right to subdue the Earth, that we are merely one of several million forms of life on this planet. We reject even the notion of benevolent stewardship as that implies dominance.[12]

In 1987 two Earth First! members held up a banner at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C. that proclaimed “EQUAL RIGHTS FOR ALL SPECIES.”[13] Such notions, if interpreted literally, are contrary to what God has revealed. But I fear that in some cases people have reacted not against the Catholic and biblical teaching on man’s place in the cosmos but against a distorted version of it. This Deistic deformation of truth seemed to allow mankind to do absolutely anything to the earth and the other creatures living on it, with no object except man’s short-term gain. This of course is not what the Church teaches, as the Catechism makes very clear, for the fact that man is the “summit of the Creator’s work” does not mean that everything he desires to do with the natural world is good. For the desires that flow from the heart of fallen man are not all for the good or for the glory of God. Therefore we cannot cloak man’s frequent misuse of the natural creation under the truth that we have been commanded by God to subdue the earth, for God has not given us authority to do absolutely anything we may want with the created cosmos.

No. 344. There is a solidarity among all creatures arising from the fact that all have the same Creator and are all ordered to his glory.[14]

In human affairs solidarity is equated with social charity by Pope John Paul.[15] Obviously we cannot have charity toward plants or irrational animals, but we can have something akin or analogous to it. We can treat them as, in a way, our brothers who join us in praising God and “are all ordered to his glory.” That is, instead of looking on the natural world as something alien or other, something neutral or passive, something waiting for us to use or shape, we can see that world as alive with praise of God. This is not pantheism or an unChristian worship of the natural order. It is simply a realization of what is proclaimed in Holy Scripture and explicitly reiterated in the Catechism. Again, this does not mean that we cannot use these natural creatures and objects, but it does mean that even as we use we ought to use with reverence, we ought to realize that they are ordered not just to our use and benefit but directly to God also. Then we can speak of a true solidarity of creatures, a solidarity that will be ultimately crowned when “all things are subjected to him” and “the Son himself will also be subjected to him who put all things under him, that God may be everything to every one” (I Corinthians 15:28).[16]

Let us now look at a later section in the Catechism which takes up the topic of man’s treatment of the natural world in more detail and from the standpoint of the commandments.

No. 2415. The seventh commandment enjoins respect for the integrity of creation. Animals, like plants and inanimate beings, are by nature destined for the common good of past, present, and future humanity. Use of the mineral, vegetable, and animal resources of the universe cannot be divorced from respect for moral imperatives. Man’s dominion over inanimate and other living beings granted by the Creator is not absolute; it is limited by concern for the quality of life of his neighbor, including generations to come; it requires a religious respect for the integrity of creation.

No. 2416. Animals are God’s creatures. He surrounds them with his providential care. By their mere existence they bless him and give him glory. Thus men owe them kindness. We should recall the gentleness with which saints like St. Francis of Assisi or St. Philip Neri treated animals.

No. 2417. God entrusted animals to the stewardship of those whom he created in his own image. Hence it is legitimate to use animals for food and clothing. They may be domesticated to help man in his work and leisure. Medical and scientific experimentation on animals is a morally acceptable practice if it remains within reasonable limits and contributes to caring for or saving human lives.

No. 2418. It is contrary to human dignity to cause animals to suffer or die needlessly. It is likewise unworthy to spend money on them that should as a priority go to the relief of human misery. One can love animals; one should not direct to them the affection due only to persons.

 This second set of paragraphs is from part three of the Catechism, “Life in Christ,” which deals with Christian moral life. The paragraphs here are from a discussion of the Seventh Commandment, You Shall Not Steal. For to misuse any created thing is surely to take what does not belong to us, since all creation belongs to God and is granted to us for our use, not our misuse.

 This section of the Catechism sets forth the dual truth about created natures: they have an integrity, and thus a goodness, of their own, “their mere existence” blesses and glorifies God, but yet at the same time they are “entrusted…to [our] stewardship” and “destined for the common good of…humanity.” The limits of our use of animals, and even plants, however, lie not only in the effect of such use on mankind, but in “a religious respect for the integrity of creation,” and in the kindness we “owe” them. We may safely assume, however, that we are not violating this “kindness” as long as we use animals and plants for the true welfare of mankind. But the mere piling up of goods, as we saw above, is likely to be a misuse rather than a use.

 But unfortunately, this is exactly what modern man does. For example, in the United States, as the average family size has declined, the average size of new houses built has increased. In 1970 the average size of a new single-family home was 1,500 square feet; by 1996 it had increased to 2,120 square feet. In 1970 the average family size was 3.58 persons; in 1996 it was 3.20 persons.[17] In many other areas what our fathers considered luxuries are now items of daily use, or have even been surpassed. In fact, our economic system even requires such a continual and irrational consuming in order to stave off economic disaster, and unless corporate profits are increasing, businessmen are likely to be dissatisfied. But I fear that most of us do not even think to include these sorts of things in an examination of conscience, forgetting St. Paul’s dictum, “There is great gain in godliness with contentment; for we brought nothing into the world, and we cannot take anything out of the world; but if we have food and clothing, with these we shall be content” (I Timothy 6:6-8). Since we have much more than “food and clothing,” perhaps we should be content with that.

The Catechism states that “Medical and scientific experimentation on animals is a morally acceptable practice if it remains within reasonable limits and contributes to caring for or saving human lives.” Yet many experiments on animals are conducted not for saving lives, but for testing cosmetics. It would seem hard to reconcile this kind of testing, which is often very cruel, with the “solidarity” and the “kindness” we should have for animals.[18]

The principles that ought to govern our attitude and conduct toward the created order of natures that are stated in the Catechism and in Holy Scripture, if carefully followed, are able to bring about behavior that neither exploits and misuses animals and plants nor, on the other hand, that abdicates man’s role as steward of creation. To desire to have as little effect on the natural life and environment of animals and plants, consistent with real human needs, is not to embrace a romantic attitude toward the natural world. Rather it is to remember that “by their mere existence” animals “bless [God] and give him glory” and that each of God’s creations “reflects in its own way a ray of God’s infinite wisdom and goodness.” Every one of man’s works must be in response to some genuine human need, or truly enhance the life of man, not just add useless gadgets or otherwise contribute to our fascination with what is new. A more sober use of created things would lead to an attitude more akin to the solidarity that we are to have with all creatures. It is a worthy effort of Catholics to promote such solidarity in order to change the often wasteful and profligate way that mankind lives.

 As I said previously, Satan promotes error in pairs, so that there will always be two warring camps, both zealously championing positions that are flawed, and both keenly aware of what is wrong with their opponent’s point of view, but blind to what is wrong with their own. And in the modern world, too often Satan has managed to divide Catholics between these two camps. The only remedy, the only means by which we can escape this bitter but sterile secular warfare, is by obtaining an understanding of what the Church really teaches. Usually we will find that it coincides with neither of these two camps. And this is the case with the subject I have discussed here, our treatment of the environment. If we embrace what the Church teaches in Holy Scripture, in the Catechism and in other magisterial documents, then we can have some hope of avoiding being consigned to one of the two dreary secular camps. If we have some vision of the fullness of Catholic life and thought, then we can rejoice in our “solidarity [with] all creatures” at the same time as we recognize that we are the “summit of the Creator’s work.” Only thus can we ourselves contribute to the “beauty…order and harmony of the created world” and render it a more fitting gift to be placed at the feet of him, who is both “the image of the invisible God” and “the first-born of all creation” in whom “all things were created in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible,” (Colossians 1:15-16) and who one day will return to judge mankind and renew all things in himself.

    [1].  John A. Hardon, Spiritual Life in the Modern World (Boston : St. Paul Editions, c. 1982) p. 36.

    [2].  “God and the Self are one…. God dwells within you always. Furthermore, if you look carefully within yourself at the in-dwelling Lord, you’ll discover that you are nothing but that – that your body is nothing but a coalescing of that divine, creative power.”

    Comparing us and the Divine to waves and the ocean the author continues: “You arise and subside quickly – just like that – out of, and back into, the Divine.” And a little later: “…the essence of all Life is really only one thing.” From The Breath of God by Swami Chetanananda (Portland, Oregon : Rudra Press, c. 1988) pp. 2-4.

    See also Ainslie T. Embree, ed., The Hindu Tradition (New York : Vintage, c. 1966) pp. 10, 23-24 and Jacques Maritain, An Introduction to Philosophy (London : Sheed & Ward, 1947) pp. 21-22.

    [3].  “Because the goddess is portrayed as an immanent deity, one who is in nature and inseparable from it, it is not transparently clear how she could have created it. And indeed, creation stories play a less important role in feminist spirituality than they do in many other religions. On the rare occasions when a creation story is told, it is a story of birth.” Cynthia Eller, Living in the Lap of the Goddess: The Feminist Spirituality Movement in America (New York : Crossroad, c. 1993) p. 138.

    [4].  The Belief of Catholics (Garden City, N.Y. : Image, 1958) pp. 62-63.

    [5].  Since one can argue that even the Deistic God, being outside of time, perhaps could have arranged his creation from the beginning to take account of the prayers that would later be addressed to him.

    [6].  Among many possible sources, see the decisions of the Pontifical Biblical Commission, “On the Historical Character of the First Three Chapters of Genesis,” June 30, 1909, especially nos. 7 and 8; and the letter of the Pontifical Biblical Commission to Cardinal Suhard, Archbishop of Paris, on the literary form of the first eleven chapters of Genesis, January 16, 1948, both reprinted in Rome and the Study of Scripture (St. Meinrad, Indiana : Grail, rev. ed. 1962), pp. 122-24, 150-153.

    [7].  There are many works criticizing evolution from a purely scientific standpoint and the following list is very far from exhaustive: Norman Macbeth, Darwin Retried (Boston : Gambit, 1971); Henry M. Morris, ed., Scientific Creationism [Public School edition] (San Diego : Creation-Life, c. 1974); Michael Denton, Evolution: A Theory in Crisis (Bethesda, Md. : Adler & Adler, 1986); Phillip E. Johnson, Darwin on Trial (Washington : Regnery Gateway, 1991).

    [8].  Grand Rapids, Mich. : Acton Institute, c. 1996.

    [9].  In Living in the Lap of the Goddess, Cynthia Eller quotes Elizabeth Dodson Gray on “patriarchal religion.” “The goal of this old `sacred game’ is to get away from the ordinary, the natural, the `unsacred’ – away from women, fleshly bodies, decaying nature, away from all that is rooted in mortality and dying. `Up, up and away’ is the cry of this religious consciousness as it seeks to ascend to the elevated realm of pure spirit and utter transcendence where nothing gets soiled, or rots, or dies” (p. 136). Here is a mistaken identification between Deism and true Christianity. The God of Catholicism took flesh in the womb of a woman, nursed at her breasts, lived among us, sanctified a marriage feast by changing water into wine, and died a horrible death on a cross, his body smeared with sweat and blood. To the extent that Catholics have failed to emphasize the “earthy” aspects of the Faith, we seemed to have nothing to offer to those who rightly disdained a religion of “pure spirit and utter transcendence.” One obvious antidote to such an over-spiritual Catholicism is meditation on the mysteries of the Rosary, all of which, in one way or another, are concerned with earthly life, the body, conception, birth or death. The Rosary surely exhibits a religion that is very much involved with what “gets soiled or rots or dies.”

    [10].  See especially Psalm 148 and Daniel 3:57-81.

    [11].  On the Parts of Animals, book I, chapter 5.

    [12].  Quoted in Christopher Manes, Green Rage : Radical Environmentalism and the Unmaking of Civilization (Boston : Little, Brown, c. 1990) p. 74.

    [13].  Ibid., p. 166.

    [14].  This Catechism paragraph concludes with a quotation from St. Francis which is omitted here on account of its length.

    [15].  Encyclical Centesimus Annus, no. 10. See also the Catechism, no. 1939, where it is also equated with friendship.

    [16].  One can also see our Lady’s Assumption and Coronation as a kind of crowning of the natural order, for her body was nourished by the plants and animals of the created cosmos.

    [17].  Statistical Abstract of the United States, 1997 (Washington : Government Printing Office, 1997), tables 66 and 1187.

    [18].  Even Joseph Kirwan, one of the authors I criticized above for having an attitude toward the created order akin to Deism, opines that experimentation on animals “for cosmetic purposes” is morally unacceptable. The Cross and the Rain Forest, pp. 118-19.

    Worth consulting also is the short essay by C. S. Lewis, “Vivisection,” reprinted in God in the Dock (Grand Rapids : William B. Eerdmans, c. 1970) pp. 224-228.

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An Approach to Natural Law

By Thomas Storck

Moral discourse in the United States tends to be difficult and usually fruitless as there is little agreement not only about particular moral precepts, but about the foundations of morality. Generally, the various foundations proposed, or more often simply assumed, are deficient. An example from a few decades ago is the debate over acceptance of homosexuality and homosexual acts as normative, a debate which took place in the 1980s and 90s.

On the one hand, there was little in the way of actual argument, but simply a demand that same-sex attraction be accepted as in no way inferior to heterosexual desire and relations, or otherwise society would be guilty of discrimination, which was simply assumed to be always and everywhere evil, irrespective of the subject of discrimination. Those holding this position invented the useful term of reproach, “homophobe,” to demonize their opponents and reduce them to a confused silence. On the other hand, those stalwart individuals who did speak up against the homosexual juggernaut, mostly Evangelical Protestants, usually appealed to scriptural passages from the Pentateuch, leaving themselves open to ridicule when it was pointed out that those same books contained prohibitions against trimming the corners of one’s beard (Leviticus 19:27) or wearing clothes made of wool and linen together (Deuteronomy 22:11). Despite their discomfiture in the public conversation, such as it was, many Americans continue to cling to Sacred Scripture as the source of morality. Hence the effort in some Southern states to display copies of the Ten Commandments in courtrooms, commandments regarded not as a convenient codification of natural law, but as the revealed law of God, acts of divine positive law, having no basis other than the divine will.

Of course, Evangelical Protestants do not really take their morality from Scripture, as if they carefully worked through the Old and New Testaments, jotting down commandments and prohibitions in a list. Like most people, they generally follow the customs of their societies, dissenting only on some particulars concerning which they like to cite commandments from Scripture. But also like most people, until recently, this meant that the major precepts of the natural law were recognized as binding. For the interesting catalog of moral prohibitions from very diverse cultures collected by C. S. Lewis in The Abolition of Man[1] shows that the primary precepts of the natural law have by and large been acknowledged, even if the basis for those precepts was uncertain, their precise application muddled, and adherence to them spotty. As St. Paul wrote (Romans 2:14-15) “When Gentiles who have not the [Mosaic] law do by nature what the law requires, they are a law to themselves, even though they do not have the law. They show that what the law requires is written on their hearts[.]” This law “written on their hearts” is, of course, the natural law and, despite the varied cultures that exist on the earth, it is possible in most cases to trace out the main lines of that law in the injunctions and prohibitions of different peoples.

Although Catholics in the United States have unfortunately been enormously influenced by Protestant ideas and practices, we have not ceased to speak of natural law. Thus, to the extent that Catholics took part in the debate about homosexuality, they generally appealed to natural law, not to the bare scriptural text. But I think that very often discussions about the natural law can be both confusing and presented in such a way that the natural law seems to rest upon mere assertions without a type of argument that might resonate with many people.[2] It is not always well explained what it means that it is written on our hearts, or that it is discoverable by reason, or how it relates to conscience, or even what or whose nature we are speaking of when we call it the natural law. I propose here not a new understanding of natural law or even a new approach to it, but simply a presentation that emphasizes certain features of the tradition that may make it more understandable to some.

In the first place, then, why is it called natural law? It is simply the law of human nature. Law, however, not in the sense of a legal code set forth in propositions, but a tendency, inclination, disposition or indication of human nature, stemming from what human beings are and tend to do.

So far, so good. But how do we go from a consideration of human nature to any specific moral prescriptions? One way to begin is to look at how we use the terms good and bad. We say something is good when that thing is whole and functions according to its inborn or “built-in” purpose. We say that a car that runs well is a good car, an athlete that usually wins in his particular sport is a good athlete, and that a swift race horse  is a good race horse. When a thing functions successfully according to its purpose, we call it good. But according to its purpose as manifested by its nature, or being, as a whole. For it is not enough that a car’s engine works, if at the same time its roof leaks, its tires are bare, or its headlights are broken. Unless it works according to the whole range of its functioning, we hesitate to call it good.

This connection between goodness and right functioning is embedded in our language and thought. Perfect means the highest degree of goodness; it also means that something has been finished or completed. The word perfect is derived from Latin perficere, to complete, to perfect. The participle, perfectus, means simply something that is completed or accomplished. In other words, when something is perfect, it has been made or finished as it is supposed to be; it can act according to its function. It is good.

Now obviously we are not speaking in the first instance of moral good here. A wrecked car and a lame race horse are not morally bad. The kind of good that we first uncover when we look at the relationship between goodness and functioning is ontological good, the goodness of being. What connection, though, does this kind of good have with moral goodness?

Moral goodness is in fact a subset of ontological goodness, a part of ontological goodness applicable only to creatures with intellect and will. A race horse is not blamed if it loses a race, and a car is certainly not legitimately blamed if it breaks down. That’s because, if either of these is not functioning according to the fullness of its nature, there is no free choice on its part to blame. This principle applies to many aspects of human beings. For instance, we are not blamed if we are blind or sick (assuming that we did nothing to bring about those conditions), for in these respects we are like the race horse. But there is another side to human actions. While we might say that human beings have a certain perfection if we are healthy and have the use of all our limbs and our five senses, what if someone is a glutton or is so suspicious and quarrelsome that he can hardly get along with anyone or is someone who never keeps a promise, and so on? These defects are ontological, to be sure, in that they are part of our total human functioning, but they are also moral because at least to some degree—and apart from cases of psychological pathologies—they depend upon our free choices and the habits that we form or allow to grow up in us. Moral goodness and badness are simply that part of ontological goodness or badness that is more or less subject to our free choice. And because our possession of intellect and will is what specifically distinguishes us from the other animals, who lack these endowments, the goodness or badness which depend upon our intellect and will mark out a human being as good or bad more clearly than any mere ontological deficits, deficits which have absolutely no moral aspect. Thus a bad man is not someone who is blind or lame, but someone who steals or cheats and so on.

But although we are justly blamed only with regard to those acts over which our intellects and wills have control, our moral acts are rooted in our ontological goodness. St. Thomas Aquinas shows how the various aspects of human nature, including the ontological traits or tendencies that we share with other animals or even with inanimate objects, as well as those which are unique to rational creatures, give rise to moral precepts:

There is in the first place an inclination in man toward the good according to the nature which he shares with all substances, since each substance seeks the conserving of its own nature; and according to this inclination, those things pertain to the natural law through which human life is conserved. Secondly, there is an inclination in man to something more special according to the nature which he shares with the other animals; and according to this those things are from the natural law which nature teaches to all animals, as the union of the male and the female, and education of the young and so on. Thirdly, there is an inclination in man to the good according to his rational nature, which is proper to him, for example, man has a natural inclination to know the truth about God and to live in society, and according to this, those things pertain to the natural law which concern these sorts of inclinations.[3]

But these inclinations and tendencies which we share with other created things become moral precepts only when they are subject to our intellect and will. The lack of any ontological good has no moral significance, nor is any criticism leveled at anyone for lacking some merely ontological perfection of humanity, unless, of course, by the use of his intellect and will he contributed to that ontological deficiency.

But how do we go from such general considerations about human functioning to prescriptions such as are found, for example, in the Ten Commandments? If we look at the precepts that Thomas derives from human nature in its fullness and complexity, we can organize them under the heads of the four natural moral virtues, temperance, justice, prudence and fortitude (courage), and if we do so, we can determine more specific precepts of behavior.

This is easily seen with regard to temperance, which regulates our use and enjoyment of bodily pleasures. It is interesting to note that the bodily pleasures of eating and drinking are primarily and naturally oriented toward health and well-being. This natural orientation is not something imposed upon them, it is part of the very structure of the acts and their results. If someone eats so much, for example, that his bodily health suffers, or becomes a drunkard by his own fault, then clearly he has injured his ability to function as a human being. He has misused food or drink so that instead of preserving his healthy human functioning, they now work against it. He acts against the inclination of “each substance [to] the conserving of its own nature.” Hence the precepts of the natural law that concern eating and drinking derive not from any external or arbitrary law, but from the obvious purposes of food and drink. This does not mean, of course, that when we consume food and drink we must always make health our primary concern or intention, or that we cannot enjoy such goods for the sake of the pleasure they can convey or for the sake of other goods, such as the fellowship that often arises when we eat with others. No, it only means that when we seek one of these goods which accompany the act of eating or drinking, we not do so in such a way that it seriously injures the primary purpose of eating, the maintenance of our health. If we do so, then we have turned things upside down and allowed a legitimate but secondary purpose to usurp their primary purpose.

But what about sex? Here we have a two-fold motive. In the first place, there is that which “nature teaches to all animals, as the union of the male and the female, and education of the young.” But along with this, as St. Thomas notes, “man has a natural inclination…to live in society.” But society can maintain and renew itself only by the birth of children and their proper formation and education. Thus as eating and drinking are oriented toward the health of the individual, sexual activity is oriented toward the health of society. If sexual activity is engaged in so that it results in harm to society, its natural end will have been violated. But society needs not only the birth of children, but their careful upbringing and formation. This is the primary reason for the family, and hence the restriction of sexual activity to a lifelong marriage. Children raised without both parents will, generally speaking, tend to lack the psychological and moral formation that people need to become well-functioning adults. The reason for the restriction of sexual activity to marriage is not because of any notion that sexual pleasure, when rightly ordered, is evil or should be barely tolerated and restricted or inhibited as much as possible, but rather for the obvious reason that by nature sex and procreation are connected. Sexual activity bears the same kind of relationship to the health of society that eating and drinking do to the health of the individual. Thus there is nothing wrong with seeking the one or the other on account of the pleasure involved provided that we do nothing on our part to distort or disturb its natural orientation, but there is something wrong with doing so when we violate the primary purposes of either one.

What about the next virtue, justice? We have seen that “man has a natural inclination…to live in society, and according to this, those things pertain to the natural law which concern these sorts of inclinations.” Now we cannot live peacefully and fruitfully in society unless we try to cultivate the virtues necessary for society, in the first place, justice, the virtue which directs us to give everyone his due and to work for a society whose institutions will tend to give to and demand from each member of society what is fitting according to his abilities, possessions, needs and status, for the sake of the good of the whole.

This perhaps seems vague, and in order to understand justice and its role in society, it is necessary to distinguish the different kinds of justice. In the first place there is the fundamental type of justice, commutative justice, the justice of exchange and contract, the justice which specifies exact repayment of what is due. It is often called strict justice.

The next kind, distributive justice, has regard to the benefits which an authority, usually the state authority, is obliged to confer, not with mathematical exactness, but according to the general character of the merits and needs of those subject to that authority. The Catechism of the Catholic Church (2411) teaches concerning these two forms of justice:

Commutative justice obliges strictly; it requires safeguarding property rights, paying debts, and fulfilling obligations freely contracted….One distinguishes commutative justice…from distributive justice which regulates what the community owes its citizens in proportion to their contributions and needs.

Although distributive justice is concerned principally with the state or civil society as a whole, a homely illustration may help in understanding it. A mother borrows $50 from a neighbor to go to the bakery. She is bound in commutative justice to repay exactly $50 to that neighbor. But let us say she decides to buy treats for her children at the bakery. Is she obliged to give each exactly the same kind and amount of treat? May she not take into account the fact that one child did an extra household chore, unasked, that another is struggling with a weight problem, that a third has an allergy to a favorite kind of pastry? Of course she may do so, and this shows the nature of distributive justice. It takes into account the manifold differences that exist within any group subject to the same authority.

But there is yet another kind of justice, legal justice. Legal justice concerns the obligations each person owes to the common good, as the Catechism further says, “what the citizen owes in fairness to the community.” The traditional conception of legal justice is that it is:

a relation of the members to the community. It requires each man to contribute his proper share toward the common good….It is probably called legal justice because it shows itself chiefly in law-abiding conduct, but it goes beyond the bare requirement of the written law.[4]

Typical examples often given of acts of legal justice by moralists were paying taxes and obeying just laws.

But there is one more, social justice, which is best conceived as a part of legal justice or as legal justice under a different aspect which emphasizes different facets of the virtue. Social justice, while likewise concerned with the “relation of the members to the community” and the contribution of each one’s “proper share toward the common good,” strikes a slightly different note. Pope Pius XI says of social justice, “Now it is of the very essence of social justice to demand from each individual all that is necessary for the common good” (Divini Redemptoris, no. 51). This sounds very like legal justice. Social justice, however, while likewise concerned with the duties of the individual to the common good, concerns not individual actions, such as paying taxes, but the fostering and establishment of organizations and institutions of society which contribute toward establishment and maintenance of the common good. This exact note of social justice is best illustrated by a contrast which Pius XI drew in Quadragesimo Anno. The pontiff wrote,

Every effort must therefore be made that fathers of families receive a sufficient wage adequate to meet ordinary domestic needs. If in the present state of society this is not always feasible, social justice demands that reforms be introduced without delay which will guarantee every adult workingman just such a wage. (no. 71)

Now elsewhere Pius XI makes it clear that a worker is due a living wage in commutative or strict justice. For example, in Divini Redemptoris he speaks of “the salary to which [the workingman] has a strict title in justice” (no. 49).[5] Social justice, however, as a part of legal justice concerns the duty of members of society to introduce necessary reforms so that the just wage due in commutative justice can in fact be paid. In other words, social justice places demands on citizens to make social or institutional changes. This is why it is a part of legal justice, for it concerns “what the citizen owes in fairness to the community.” And in this case upon whom is this duty incumbent? This duty rests especially upon “contractors and employers” who are charged “to support and promote such necessary organizations as normal instruments enabling them to fulfill their obligations of justice” (Divini Redemptoris, no. 53), and no doubt upon all who have a role in shaping public opinion. The key point to note here is the distinction between what is demanded by commutative justice (payment of a living wage) and what is demanded by social justice (establishment of institutions necessary to achieve that).

There is considerable leeway in a society to determine rules and institutions that concern justice. Pius XI explains in Quadragesimo Anno that to a great extent property rights depend upon the positive law of various societies and can legitimately vary according to custom and culture:

History proves that the right of ownership, like other elements of social life, is not absolutely rigid, and this doctrine We Ourselves have given utterance to on a previous occasion in the following terms: “How varied are the forms which the right of property has assumed! First, a primitive form in use among untutored and backward peoples, which still exists in certain localities even in our own day; then, that of the patriarchal age; later came various tyrannical types (We use the word in its classical meaning); finally the feudal and monarchic systems down to the varieties of more recent times.”  (no. 49)

Justice, then, is not always a simple matter of quid pro quo, but must be looked at in its complex philosophical and historical aspects if we would avoid a one-size-fits-all approach which ends up distorting society. A failure to appreciate the nuances of the virtue of justice has contributed to the polarization of opinion in the United States, since people make often conflicting demands to remedy what seem to them obvious instances of injustice without appreciating all of the complex moral factors involved.

The need for the last two virtues, prudence and courage, arises from the fact that they are required for the proper functioning of the other virtues. Indeed, prudence holds a kind of primacy among the virtues as “the mold and `mother’ of all the other cardinal virtues, of justice, fortitude, and temperance”[6] for “[w]ithout prudence fortitude becomes boldness, temperance becomes moroseness, justice becomes harshness.”[7] Especially is prudence necessary for the just administration of the commonwealth, where, as we have seen, there are many complex factors that must be taken into account in devising just solutions to problems that arise.[8]

Without courage (or fortitude), moreover, the other virtues are hardly secure, for a temperance or justice or prudence that ceases as soon as we encounter some obstacle or danger is not really a virtue, but at best a beginner’s attempt at virtue. Courage, moreover, is not just about bravely facing an enemy as on the battlefield, but in a different way is necessary for steadily facing the ordinary or extraordinary difficulties of life, for example, in a husband or wife who bravely cares for an ailing spouse over a period of years.

It is above all important to understand that these four moral virtues are not something extrinsic to proper human functioning, something added or extra. If something is good when it is whole and able to operate according to its specific nature, then the virtues are what perfect man and complete our nature. A thoroughly evil person is less of a human being than a morally good person, and the connection of morality with being is one of the most important points to grasp. The lack of recognition of this connection is probably the chief factor which has led people to regard morality as something arbitrary, added, unnecessary, or even effete. But this is not true, and someone who is deficient in one or more of the virtues is less of a human being then someone who is lacking a limb or the use of one of the five senses. Acquisition of the virtues is a kind of training in learning how to function as a human being, akin to how a race horse is trained in how to run well.

Above I mentioned that most people take their moral bearings from the society in which they live. I also mentioned the collection of moral precepts which C. S. Lewis compiled from various societies. The similarities in these precepts show that St. Paul was right, that “what the law requires is written on their hearts,” on the hearts of all mankind. But everyone is aware that the similarities in these moral precepts contain immense differences as well. How differently have different societies regarded polygamy, abortion, slavery, cannibalism, usury, and so on. Thus the vital role of the education of a culture as a means of education in virtue. When the barbarian nations of Europe received the Faith their members did not immediately begin living as well-instructed and serious Catholics. Rather their formation in the Faith was in most cases long and difficult. But the fact that the culture was officially changed contributed greatly to their personal adherence to better moral norms. When the ideals held up for public approbation in any society are just and generous, they can do much to elevate private and individual conduct, just as the opposite can do much to degrade it. Moreover, in cases where the natural law does not specify anything exact, such as the limits of property rights, or where it is difficult to determine what exactly it does specify, healthy cultural norms can inculcate good habits that even go beyond the minimum demands of natural law and mark out a society as especially virtuous and noble. Such efforts to elevate cultural norms regarding morality are aided immensely by the good example of persons and institutions, especially by the Church, which can do enormous good by both example and instruction.

Today in the United States, as in most of the Western world, opinions about morality vary greatly. But in this country there has never been a robust consciousness on the part of the public that the moral law is grounded in human nature itself. Either people accepted the moral standards they found around them, without questioning them much—whatever their actual behavior may have been—or they appealed to Sacred Scripture as a sufficient source of morality. The latter has now been discredited in the public mind, and indeed, the Protestant understanding of the relationship between revelation and morals was always deficient in any case. But it is possible that a revitalized presentation of natural law might appeal, by its freshness and novelty, to people disenchanted with either reliance on direct divine revelation or simple acquiescence in the standards of their neighbors. In any case, it is the duty of Catholics to promote a better understanding of natural law as part of our task of elevating the culture around us, and as a preparation for the Church’s constant duty to propagate the true Faith.

Notes

[1] The Abolition of Man (New York : Macmillan, c. 1947). See pp. 95-121.

[2] For example, in a discussion of contraception, Elizabeth Anscombe wrote, “In fact there is no greater connection of `natural law’ with the prohibition on contraception than with any other part of morality. Any type of wrong action is `against the natural law’: stealing is, framing someone is, oppressing people is. `Natural law’ is simply a way of speaking about the whole of morality, used by Catholic thinkers because they believe the general precepts of morality are laws promulgated by God our Creator in the enlightened human understanding when it is thinking in general terms about what are good and what are bad actions. That is to say, the discoveries of reflection and reasoning when we think straight about these things are God’s legislation to us (whether we realise this or not).” www.orthodoxytoday.org/articles/AnscombeChastity.php

[3] Summa Theologiae, I-II q. 94, art. 2, corp.

[4] Austin Fagothey, Right and Reason, (St. Louis : C. V. Mosby, 1953), pp. 236-37.

[5] See also, Leo XIII, Rerum Novarum, no. 34; Pius XI, Casti Connubii, no. 117, Quadragesimo Anno, nos. 71, 110; John XXIII, Mater et Magistra, no. 71; John Paul II, Centesimus Annus, no. 8.

[6] Josef Pieper, The Four Cardinal Virtues, (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame, 1966), p. 3.

[7] Fagothey, Right and Reason, p. 234.

[8] See Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, II-II q. 47, art. 10.

Header Image: John Frederick Herring, ‘Priam’ beating Lord Exeter’s ‘Augustus’ at Newmarket, 1831.

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The Philosophy of Art

by Thomas Storck

The word art generally suggests to most people some actual artistic creation, a sculpture or painting or the like. Or it might suggest a technique for making such an object. Either of these could be meant by a phrase such as, He is studying art, meaning either that he is studying works of art, art history, or that he is studying how to create works of art himself. The second of these two senses of art is closer to the classic definition of art as given by Aristotle in his Ethics VI, 4 as “the reasoned state of capacity to make” or “a rational faculty exercised in making something.”[1] This definition was repeated and made his own by St. Thomas Aquinas, who expressed it in Latin by the phrase recta ratio factibilium, the right conception or reason or understanding of a thing that is to be made.[2] The twentieth-century philosopher Jacques Maritain explains this definition in these words: Continue reading “The Philosophy of Art”

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Aquinas on Buying and Selling

by Thomas Storck

In his Summa Theologiae II-II, St. Thomas devotes two questions to unjust acts which are committed in buying and selling or lending.

The first of these questions (q. 77), divided into four articles, deals with fraud in the broad sense (fraudulentia), while the second (q. 78) concerns usury. A study of these questions reveals important differences not only between St. Thomas’ teaching on injustices committed in economic life and the ethical attitudes common today, but differences in basic evaluations of the place of commerce in society. In order to make this clear, I will look at the first question, no. 77, setting forth first what Aquinas taught and then contrasting it with commerce and business ethics as these exist in a capitalist society. (For a discussion of question 78, on usury, see “The Sin of Usury.”) Continue reading “Aquinas on Buying and Selling”

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The Sin of Usury

I. Introduction[1]

To the extent that usury is thought of or discussed today it is usually understood as the charging of excessive interest on loans, especially perhaps on a consumer loan as opposed to a business loan. Although the charging of high rates of interest is indeed a real social and political evil, this is not the classical understanding of usury. Rather usury, as that has been discussed for centuries in Catholic theology and condemned again and again by the Church, means the taking of any interest on any type of loan, simply by virtue of the loan contract. The most complete papal treatment of usury is found in the 1745 encyclical of Pope Benedict XIV, Vix Pervenit, the relevant portions of which run, Continue reading “The Sin of Usury”