This piece, a genealogy of integralism, first appeared on John Brungardt’s blog here.  It provides an excellent overview of the intellectual development and history of integralism as well as the current state of play between integralists and their critics.

–The Editors

By John G. Brungardt

The purpose of this post is to recall the contours of the debate about Catholic integralism that have taken place in the “Internet Republic of Letters” over the past several years. The post is part genealogy, part introductory survey, and part reflection on the warp and woof of a discussion that is now intertwined with others in the public square. I do not aim to break new ground, but I do hope to provide a reflective tour for newcomers or recollection to familiars of the debate’s high and low points. Learn or take from it what you will.

Why consider “Catholic integralism” at all? One reason is to clarify the difference between understanding the principles of political philosophy and Catholic social teaching versus a discussion of practical statecraft and “soulcraft,” the realm of particular actions and practical decisions. The question of integralism framed solely on the terms of the latter’s demands easily results in conclusions such as Rod Dreher’s, that “integralism is a dead end,” or George Weigel’s, that integralism is a “game intellectuals play,” or, worse, the verdict that it is “an internet aesthetic of mostly young men alienated from the public life and consumed with the libido dominandi.” Integralism’s proponents have also been accused of the opposite mistake, namely, of speculative errors concerning the difference between power and authority, or of lacking a speculative vision altogether, or, some wonder, misrepresenting Catholic social doctrine. Consequently, achieving some measure of clarity about the proper register of the question—is it speculative, practical, pragmatic, rhetorical?—and the corresponding answer is desirable.

Another, deeper reason is that, since the question of Catholic integralism concerns properly understanding first principles (nature and grace, faith and reason, the hierarchy of common goods) and acting with regard to those principles in concrete affairs that must take into account not just days or years but decades and centuries, it makes no little difference what the true answer is, even if that answer must come with many parts and qualifications. For human life must be ordered by that eternal truth in which the vicissitudes of human history participate. The task of the examined life is that each one in each generation know the measure of that standard, insofar as he or she can know it. To do so, we must begin dialectically, by seeing the questions and the arguments clearly.

So, what ought we to think of the question of Catholic integralism? Does it propose a deep truth or a dangerous falsehood?

Some Basics

First, what is integralism? The now most-referenced definition is the “Three Sentences” definition from The Josias, which one finds referred to numerous times in the essays listed below:

Catholic Integralism is a tradition of thought that rejects the liberal separation of politics from concern with the end of human life, holding that political rule must order man to his final goal. Since, however, man has both a temporal and an eternal end, integralism holds that there are two powers that rule him: a temporal power and a spiritual power. And since man’s temporal end is subordinated to his eternal end, the temporal power must be subordinated to the spiritual power.

The key to understanding “the two powers” in this definition is to understand what “spiritual” means in the definition. In “A clarification on integralism,” the philosopher Edward Feser notes that the question ought not to be whether one is for or against integralism, but for or against what sort of integralism. The natural law mean standard, Feser argues (and it is bound to sound like an extreme to many), is that “a generic theism should be affirmed by the state and that government policy should be consistent with the principles of natural law.” However,

the debate over Catholic integralism has to do with whether specifically Catholic doctrines, which concern our supernatural end and are matters of revealed theology, should have an influence on public policy. The state should favor theism, but must it favor the Church?

Immediately, one sees why the integralism question is, by the vast majority of people, taken to be too irrelevant, if not too dangerous, a topic to take seriously. Haven’t the issues of “Church and State” been decided by the modern political synthesis of the post-Enlightenment? Didn’t Vatican II decisively condemn 19th-century notions of religious liberty?

To explain the “sort” of integralism one is asking about, Feser proposes three options: soft, moderate, or hard integralism. Hard integralism maintains that “it is always best for the Church to try to implement integralism as far as she can,” while soft integralism holds that “though in theory the state may and ideally should favor the Church, in practice this is extremely unlikely ever to work out very well.” Naturally, moderate integralism

falls in between these extremes. Whereas the soft integralist thinks it is never or almost never a good idea to try practically to implement integralism, and the hard integralist thinks it is always or almost always a good idea to do so, the moderate integralist thinks that there is no “one size fits all” solution and that we have to go case by case. In some historical and cultural contexts, getting the state to favor the Church might be the best policy, in others it might be a very bad policy, and in yet others it might not be clear what the best approach is. We shouldn’t assume a priori that any of these answers is the right one, but should treat the question as prudential and highly contingent on circumstances.

Nor does one have far to look to find an example of a moderate integralist of no small stature. In The State in Catholic Thought (1945; reviewed here by Leo Strauss), Heinrich Rommen writes:

A union between Church and state, or better a cooperation in concord and unity of both, would mean mutual respect for the independence of each in suo ordine. … It needs no proof that such a union is possible as a practical policy only where the people of the state are in great majority Catholics. Yet under this condition the union is actually no problem at all, but simply a truism. Therefore it would be wrong to say that such a union between state and Church is a necessity or should always take place. The condemned thesis 55 of the Syllabus of 1864 (the Church should be separated from the state, and the state from the Church) does not imply this. The true thesis would demand that the circumstances be considered. St. Robert Bellarmine expressly states that state and Church may live in union or in separation, because fundamentally each can exist without the other. (pp. 595–96)

Still, for the contemporary reader, this simply reinforces the previous concerns about theoretical and political relics. It also clearly raises profound metaphysical questions about assumptions Rommen is making. Isn’t it long past the time when such ideas, or such discussion, were practical, let alone thought to be true or relevant? Don’t proposals like Rommen’s involve, somewhere in the footnotes, writs of Inquisition and coercion of religious belief?

Kevin Vallier says that the knee-jerk reaction argument against integralism usually goes something like that:

If integralism is true, religious coercion is not wrong.
But religious coercion is wrong.
Therefore, integralism is false.

However, Vallier adds:

I don’t think integralism can be so easily dismissed. The reason is that integralism has a certain elegance and simplicity and even obviousness. It tells us that states should help people achieve their ultimate good. Besides feasibility worries, why wouldn’t this be the best thing for the state to do? Are non-integralists really asking the state to do less than the best? Doesn’t that just sound crazy when we state it openly?

And indeed, many non-integralists defend the current model of the now centuries-old, minimalist, secular, and in principle non-confessional status of liberal political order. In the academic jargon, “the public good” is a “thin” one, not a “thick” one. Thus, the question becomes manifold: one of the good, the political good, and the ideal political regime simply speaking versus the best one achievable practically speaking (Politics, 1288b37). So Vallier concludes, “What anti-integralists need is a satisfying explanation as to why integralism is axiologically false. The anti-integralists need to explain why integralism has the wrong conceptions of value, reasons, and practical rationality.”

Some Origins

To gain only some of the historical sensibility required to appreciate how far back into the formation of modernity and the disintegration of Catholic Europe this question takes one, read this essay at First Things on the 1782 Decree on the Dissolution of Religious Orders in Austria. That is, the deep background to the question of Catholic integralism in the face of modern nation-state democracies began with earnest during the long 19th century, when the issue of the compatibility of the Catholic faith and (then) modern liberalism was raised.

For instance, a positive answer to the compatibility question was put forward in L’Avenir by Montalembert, Lamennais, and Lacordaire. This led to a wide-ranging and controverted debate and even outright conflict that—when combined with many other strains of 19th-century secular thought—culminated in Pope Pius IX’s Quanta Cura (1864) and its appended Syllabus of Errors, mentioned above by Rommen. This 19th- and early 20th-century backdrop also has many other parts, some now long-forgotten by most (e.g., Ralliement and Action française, among others).

Why, then, is Catholic integralism a topic of discussion now? That answer also has many parts. A first part is the work of Fr. Edmund Waldstein, O.Cist., among the founders of The Josias, the “online manual” of Catholic integralism. Rod Dreher once called Fr. Waldstein “perhaps the foremost advocate of [integralism] today.” For the roots of Catholic integralism stretching back even further than 19th-century Catholic politics, one must read Waldstein’s essay “Integralism and Gelasian Dyarchy,” which he described as his “fullest account to date of what I call ‘integralism’.” In the (perhaps) near future, that account will be surpassed by a book-length treatment.

But there is another, non-integralist side to this origin-story that must be noticed, what Deneen in a 2014 American Conservative article called “A Catholic Showdown Worth Watching.” Deneen outlined two Catholic responses to political liberalism in the 20th century. The first is an older tradition of Catholic compatibilism—also of late called Catholic fusionism—which proposes that “there is no fundamental contradiction between liberal democracy and Catholicism” or (from the fusionist angle) that “the principles of American conservatism and those of Catholic social teaching might be seamlessly and unproblematically combined.”

The second is a newer “radical” camp (in which Deneen included himself):

The “radical” school rejects the view that Catholicism and liberal democracy are fundamentally compatible. Rather, liberalism cannot be understood to be merely neutral and ultimately tolerant toward (and even potentially benefiting from) Catholicism. Rather, liberalism is premised on a contrary view of human nature (and even a competing theology) to Catholicism.

Deneen pointed out that this group included (and still includes) prominent thinkers like Alasdair MacIntyre and David L. Schindler. As for his own questioning of Catholic-liberal compatibilism—of course, this was before his 2018 book Why Liberalism Failed—Deneen pointed to his essay written two years earlier in First Things, “Unsustainable Liberalism.” That essay also sparked a series of debates, including a lengthy one at Public Discourse.

These radical, “illiberal Catholics” (a charge mentioned in Deneen’s 2012 American Conservative piece, and answered, among many others, by Waldstein here) now tends to go by the name “post-liberal Catholicism,” a moniker that became popular after the so-called “Franco-Persian Wars,” the debates between David French and Sohrab Ahmari over the possibility, plausibility, and desirability of “a public square re-ordered to the common good and ultimately the Highest Good.”

The debate over the compatibility of Catholicism and liberalism, then, is a broad question raised both back in the 19th century (about the old liberalism) and now again in the 21st (about a new liberalism, where “liberalism” often signifies a confusing mélange of Locke, Rousseau, post-progressive era thinking, and soixante-huitard leftism). And all this despite its being given an apparently conclusive answer during the 20th century. But the broader, renewed question of compatibility and the new Catholic integralism’s proposed solution did not remain separate.

The Debates, A Brief History

One should know that neither is the question of the coherence or “sustainability” of liberalism new to contemporary debate. Take Ernst-Wolfgang Böckenförde, for instance:

The liberal, secularized state lives by prerequisites which it cannot guarantee itself. This is the great adventure it has undertaken for freedom’s sake. As a liberal state it can only endure if the freedom it bestows on its citizens takes some regulation from the interior, both from a moral substance of the individuals and a certain homogeneity of society at large. On the other hand, it cannot by itself procure these interior forces of regulation, that is not with its own means such as legal compulsion and authoritative decree. Doing so, it would surrender its liberal character and fall back, in a secular manner, into the claim of totality it once led the way out of, back then in the confessional civil wars.

That is, Böckenförde’s dilemma or paradox is that liberalism, if it were to attempt to guarantee its institutional, cultural, educational, and moral prerequisites, would have to be illiberal, give up its claims of substantive neutrality concerning the good life for human beings, and “fall back … into the claim of totality.” Besides Böckenförde’s paradox of liberalism, one could consider the debate between perfectionist liberalism and political liberalism. The question of the totalizing claims of the complete human end, then, is inescapably the foundational question of political order—liberalism of any sort cannot claim to be anything more than an answer.

The question of Catholic integralism and the broader, more recent debate about sustainability of liberalism did finally meet. For instance, the Closing Colloquy of the Center for Ethics and Culture’s 2018 Fall Conference at Notre Dame featured a discussion between Patrick Deneen, Phillip Muñoz, Gladden Pappin, and Adrian Vermeule (discussed by Rod Dreher here and here). “Liberalism vs. Integralism” was also the theme of a conference held earlier in 2018 at Harvard, hosted by the Thomistic Institute.

As one can easily see by perusing the conferences and their reports, the substance of the discussions were animated not merely by the debates mentioned above. Some of the new discussion material was from the post-liberalism element—especially Deneen’s recently published Why Liberalism Failed—other was provided by Adrian Vermeule’s integralist critique of Deneen’s solution.

Now, these debates on prominent university campuses over the nexus between the question of liberalism generally and the question of Catholic integralism specifically had already cropped up before these 2018 conferences in various loca of the “Internet Republic of Letters.”

First Things

First Things during 2017 published reviews of Legutko’s The Demon in Democracy (by Vermeule, titled “Liturgy of Liberalism”) and Willard Jones’s Before Church and State (by Waldstein, under the title “An Integralist Manifesto”). It published essays on a strategy for Christians living in liberal nations (again by Vermeule), as well as an interview about “The Possibility of a Catholic Social Order” and a call for a “humane integralism.” The tension continued to be that between the concern for discerning the truth of Catholic principles and the practicality of how to apply them in the concrete historical order, between nostalgia for the achievements of past cultures and strategizing in the now with little-to-no societal room to maneuver.

The question of principle and policy provides the occasion to note Thomas Pink’s earlier, 2012 First Things essay, “Conscience and Coercion.” In it, Pink argues that Vatican II’s Dignitatis Humanae changed the Church’s policy, not her principles or doctrine, in regard to the religious liberty of individuals, an essay that generated not a few reader responses (wherein one also finds letters about Deneen’s “Unsustainable Liberalism,” published in the same issue as Pink’s essay). The issue of the coercion of believers—that compelle intrare (Luke 14:23) so heatedly debated in the early modern era—is a subset of Pink’s debate with Fr. Martin Rhonheimer in issues of Nova et Vetera, a debate carried on at the 2015 Notre Dame Center for Ethics and Culture Fall Conference.

The broader issue yet, then, is the same question of Catholic integralism. Pink’s position is decidedly in the minority. The majority view is clear from the vehement and profuse reaction to First Thing’s early 2018 article by Fr. Romanus Cessario, O.P., “Non Possumus,” a review of the 2017 publication of the memoirs of Edgardo Mortara.

As an aside, the “new” Mortara affair was impactful enough to be able to function as the opening framework of Schwartzman and Wilson’s 2019 law review article “The Unreasonableness of Catholic Integralism” (which also has a useful bibliography in its footnotes, apart from citing most of the above sources). However, as Kevin Vallier pointed out about the article’s judgment of Catholic integralism generally, its definitional approach is Rawlsian, and thus conceptually incommensurable with integralism’s premises about the human person and what it means to be reasonable. At issue is not a technical debate, but a deeper metaphysical discussion that answers first-principle level questions about what it means for individuals to act and how they ought to act.

After early 2018, integralism did not make much of an appearance in First Things, at least until the return of talk of “the common good and the Highest Good,” the start of the debate turned speaking tour between Sohrab Ahmari and David French. Ahmari’s essay, “the article that launched a 1,000 think pieces,” did not touch upon integralism or the coercion of the baptized per se. Nonetheless, that debate over the true nature and coherence of liberalism and the America’s political and providential constitution had the long-range effect of continuing to join the two debates. More to come below.

Public Discourse

Nor did the debate over integralism escape the editorial eyes or professorial pens at Public Discourse. In May 2018, citing as occasions the essays from First Things and the Harvard conference noted above, as well as various discussions of Deneen’s Why Liberalism Failed, Joseph Trabbic defended the continued, doctrinally normative character of a Catholic confessional state as the ideal political arrangement. (Later in 2019 Trabbic wrote a three-part series for Catholic World Report, “Thomism and Political Liberalism,” to illustrate how “there are some pretty stark and irreconcilable differences between Thomas’s political theory and liberal political theory”; see Part 1, Part 2, Part 3.)

Trabbic’s essay received a fierce response from Robert Miller, who called Trabbic’s thesis “almost the exact opposite of the truth,” and argued that “integralism is contrary to Catholic doctrine.” Miller’s essay prompted responses, among others, by John P. Joy (at another venue) and by Thomas Pink at Public Discourse in August 2018. Miller, along with Lawrence King, responded to Pink and Joy in early 2019. As one might expect, these debates hinge heavily on how to properly understand Vatican II’s declaration Dignitatis Humanae. A December 2019 article by Matthew Shadle continued the response to Pink, presenting further nuances of the debate over evolution, rupture, or development of religious freedom doctrine in Dignitatis.

But Public Discourse did not merely present debates over fine points of Catholic doctrine; the scope was broadened. The May 2019 essay by Korey D. Maas, “The Coming Anti-Catholicism,” after reviewing and citing nearly all of the above genealogy, concluded that “insofar as prominent and influential Catholics insist that Catholicism is fundamentally incompatible with the liberal tradition, liberals will feel increasingly justified in reaching the same conclusion.” That is, apart from the proper grasp of theological principles, a certain “Realtheologie” looms large in integralism’s and Catholic post-liberalism’s cultural scene. We could, argued Gerard Bradley, learn certain lessons from integralists’s “thought experiments” by taking them as accurate diagnoses of current problems, but that is all. Yet as recently as this May, in “Integralism, Political Philosophy, and the State,” Thomas Pink has replied to both Bradley and Shadle that integralism’s political philosophy is more realistic in its understanding of how states—confessional or secular—actually function.

Church Life Journal

Caleb Bernacchio’s “The Anti-Integralist Alasdair MacIntyre,” published by Notre Dame’s Church Life Journal in early 2018, argued to separate MacIntyre’s critique of liberalism from the integralist position, saying that given MacIntyre’s critique of modernity “there is no need to pursue the impossible and nostalgic goal of returning to an integralist state.” A positive exposition by Waldstein, “What Is Integralism Today?”, was published later in 2018 (coinciding with the above-mentioned Center for Ethics and Culture colloquy at Notre Dame).

Waldstein’s answer to the quid sit question led to a brief debate at CLJ, between Waldstein and Timothy Troutner, over the true nature of integralism. In his “The Integralist Mirroring of Liberal Ideals,” Troutner argued that “criticizing integralism need not imply a defense of liberalism,” and that “integralism flourishes by posing this false dichotomy, by defining itself as the theologically orthodox antithesis to a heretical liberalism.” Waldstein’s response, “Integralism and the Logic of the Cross,” argued that

Troutner’s conclusion that integralism must be rejected by Catholics is, however, false. The arguments that he uses to support it are based on exaggerations and misunderstandings. He tries to distinguish his own understanding of freedom and equality from the liberal understanding. But he does not distinguish them enough. For Troutner, as for liberals, freedom and equality are opposed to hierarchy and obedience. Whereas, in reality, true freedom and true equality depend on hierarchy and on obedience.

Other Criticisms and Defenses

Apart from the above journals, various other criticisms, defenses, and interweaving themes could be mentioned, bringing this review from 2019 to the present. Recent debates over “common good constitutionalism” and the continued rethinking of American conservatism or European populism and nationalism also bear upon this question, to varying degrees of remove. Some of these are listed below, and I’ll not discuss them in detail.

I will, however, note two of the most substantive in passing: Park MacDougald’s thorough review of the recent history of issue, “A Catholic Debate over Liberalism,” published in City Journal, and Michael Hanby’s “For and Against Integralism,” published in First Things in March. MacDougald’s history also illustrates what I’ve sketched here, namely, the joining of general discussions about the sustainability of modern political liberalism. Hanby’s essay and the reader replies show that the debate about Catholic integralism is, ultimately, about the metaphysical foundations of politics and their relevance for political practicalities and deep moral and cultural conversion.

Perennial Questions about the Highest Good

It is patent from reviewing the topics, reasons, and interlocutors in the above debates that the question of Catholic integralism today does not turn upon irrelevant or insubstantial issues, but rather concerns perennial and foundational principles of political order. It is rash to think otherwise when the question is being discussed at the highest levels and in the profoundest terms. If one presses beyond the internet-based essays and into the recent books cited or past thinkers relied upon, it is impossible not to see that the stakes for getting the answer to the question of Catholic integralism right are immense.

This is because the debate has made compelling and even pressing the reconsideration of questions that many had long considered culturally settled. What is the proper understanding—if a rational defense of its existence is to be had—of a common good beyond the political order? What vision of human perfection ultimately sets us free in the profoundest sense? What is the proper relationship between the Church and the modern nation-state? Is there a clear meaning of “liberalism” that proposes the true account of that relationship, or must liberalism cede to the “new Catholic integralist” account? If so, what is the true nature of religious liberty?

And it is not as if clear—albeit controversial and in some cases unconvincing—answers to such questions have failed to be given in the various essays cited throughout this review. And achieving such sound speculative vision is a sine qua non to advance, for, as Fr. Thomas Joseph White said in his closing “exhortation” at the Harvard conference mentioned previously: “Practical truths are grounded more fundamentally in speculative or theoretical visions. And vision always wins out in the end.”

Concluding Thought

I’d like to end by quoting a passage from the introduction to Rommen’s The State in Catholic Thought. There, Rommen defends the idea that a perennial political philosophy exists, and that, in the providential contingencies of history, it has been taken up into the Catholic Church. It is a “Catholic political philosophy” in a contextual and not an essential sense, that is, “the adjective ‘Catholic’ here means, so to speak, the place where this philosophy grew and found its home. It does not imply that this political philosophy is based on theology or revelation. It is based on natural reason and on rational principles” (p. v).

As a consequence, the unfolding application of its principles, like the apparent fluctuations of the content of natural law through history, can be traced to a similar matrix of causes. The “ebb and flow” of human affairs and the human limitations of circumstance and character to the realizing of higher goods in political community causes an apparent but not real variation of the truth:

Some critics forget that this is an everlasting process which is repeated again and again in all fields of intellectual life. Thus the new democratic and social ideas of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries could be fully received only after a process of toilsome clearance in embittered discussions, as, for instance, in the controversies between Lacordaire, Montalembert, and the Catholic liberals in France, and the adherents of monarchy. These internal disputes do not destroy the unity of polar tension. No new philosophy is founded; only new problems are put before the philosophia perennis, that is by no means a static and brittle system. To be sure, Catholic political philosophy as a part of this philosophia perennis may be called conservative. It does not easily give up what has proved its value in long experience for alluring but unproved new ideas. But, on the other hand, it is not compelled to mummify theories and opinions in a stubborn conservatism that is closed to the perpetually changing life of God’s creation. What may be called linear thinking goes straight out from one pole or from one idea of the cosmos of ideas, which every true philosophy is. This idea, cut off from its interrelations and interdependencies with the cosmos, it then fanatically thinks to a finish. Thus it becomes radical individualism or socialism or totalitarianism or anarchism. This linear thinking, so characteristic of the modem mind and its countless isms, is a stranger to Catholic political philosophy. For Catholic political philosophy is ‘spheric’ thinking. Of the interdependencies and the mutual relations between ideas as united in a spheric cosmos and the concordance of these, spheric thinking must be always aware. This explains the unity in diversity, the conservative perseverance in principles and the flexible progressiveness, promoted by the disputes of the schools, in the application of the identical principles in a ceaselessly changing life. (pp. 22–23)

Recall that the same author, some 500 pages later, defends the possibility and ideal of a Catholic confessional state. Perhaps there are unresolved tensions in Rommen’s presentation of the “spheric thinking” of perennial political philosophy. Clearly they still exist unresolved in the discussion at large today.

* * *

Select Bibliography (Listed in Approximate Order of Appearance/Reference)

Basics and Origins of Integralism

• The Josias
  • Waldstein, “Integralism in Three Sentences.” http://thejosias.com/2016/10/17/integralism-in-three-sentences/
  • Waldstein, “Integralism and Gelasian Dyarchy.” https://thejosias.com/2016/03/03/integralism-and-gelasian-dyarchy/ (he’s writing a book-length expansion of this essay’s subject)
• Pater Edmund Waldstein, O.Cist.
  • His blog, Sancrucensis
• Feser’s Clarification
  • “A Clarification on Integralism.” 2019 June 7 https://edwardfeser.blogspot.com/2019/06/a-clarification-on-integralism.html

Post-Liberalism

• Deneen, “A Catholic Showdown Worth Watching,” TAC, 6 Feb 2014: https://www.theamericanconservative.com/a-catholic-showdown-worth-watching/
  • Refers to:
  • Deneen, “Unsustainable Liberalism,” First Things, 2012 August: https://www.firstthings.com/article/2012/08/unsustainable-liberalism
  • Series of debate about this in Public Discourse: https://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2013/03/9458/
  • Zmirak, “Illiberal Catholicism,” Aleteia, 2013 Dec 31: https://aleteia.org/2013/12/31/illiberal-catholicism/; Reply by Waldstein, “Integralism,” Sancrucensis, 2014 Jan 16: https://sancrucensis.wordpress.com/2014/01/16/integralism/
• The Franco-Persian War
  • Ahmari, “Against David French-ism.” First Things, 2019 May 29: https://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2019/05/against-david-french-ism
  • French, “What Sohrab Ahmari Gets Wrong.” National Review, 2019 May 30: https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/05/david-french-response-sohrab-ahmari/
  • Select responses:
    • Pecknold, “French, Ahmari, and the Common Good.” First Things, 2019 June 13: https://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2019/06/french-ahmari-and-the-common-good
    • Peterson, “The American Founding Was Not Libertarian Liberalism,” The American Mind, 2019 June 14: https://americanmind.org/features/why-the-new-right-rises/the-american-founding-was-not-libertarian-liberalism/
  • Follow-ups
    • “Against the Dead Consensus,” First Things, 2019 March 21: https://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2019/03/against-the-dead-consensus
    • Continetti, “Making Sense of …” Free Beacon, 2019 May 31: https://freebeacon.com/columns/making-sense-of-the-new-american-right/
    • Reno, “What Is At Stake,” First Things, 2019 Sept 19: https://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2019/09/whats-at-stake-in-the-french-ahmari-debate
    • Ahmari, “The New Right,” First Things, 2019 Oct: https://www.firstthings.com/article/2019/10/the-new-american-right
    • Ahmari, “Our Integral Regime,” First Things, 2019 Dec 19: https://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2019/12/our-integral-regime
    • Thompson, “Pajama Boy Nietzscheans,” American Mind, 2020 May 13: https://americanmind.org/essays/the-rise-and-fall-of-the-pajama-boy-nietzscheans/

First Things

• Pink, Thomas. “Conscience and Coercion,” First Things, 2012 Aug. https://www.firstthings.com/article/2012/08/conscience-and-coercion
• Vermeule, Review of Demon in Democracy, First Things, 2017 Jan: https://www.firstthings.com/article/2017/01/liturgy-of-liberalism
• Waldstein, “An Integralist Manifesto.” First Things, 2017 Oct. https://www.firstthings.com/article/2017/10/an-integralist-manifesto
• Vermeule, “A Christian Strategy.” First Things, 2017 Nov. https://www.firstthings.com/article/2017/11/a-christian-strategy
• Smith, PJ, Interview of Kwasniewski, on A Reader in Catholic Social Teaching, First Things, 2017 Dec 18: https://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2017/12/the-possibility-of-a-catholic-social-order
• The Mortara Affair in First Things
  • Cessario, 2018 Feb: https://www.firstthings.com/article/2018/02/non-possumus
  • Reno, 2018 Jan 1: https://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2018/01/judaism-christianity-and-first-things
  • Carmy, 2018 March: https://www.firstthings.com/article/2018/03/not-power-but-glory
  • Letters in Response, 2018 April: https://www.firstthings.com/article/2018/04/letters
  • Other responses, selected
    • Miller, 2018 Jan 11: https://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2018/01/20868/
    • Peters, 2018 Jan 15: https://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2018/01/20884/
    • Frater Asinus, 2018 Feb 7: https://thejosias.com/2018/02/07/debemus-in-defense-of-fr-cessario-bl-pius-ix-and-the-catholic-faith/
• Reno, “Liberal Integralism” First Things 2018 March 14: https://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2018/03/liberal-integralism
  • Refers to Spadaro, “Evangelical Fundamentalism and Catholic Integralism: A Surprising Ecumenism,” La Civilta Cattolica, 2017 July 13: https://www.laciviltacattolica.it/articolo/evangelical-fundamentalism-and-catholic-integralism-in-the-usa-a-surprising-ecumenism/
• Hanby, “For and Against Integralism,” First Things 2020 March: https://www.firstthings.com/article/2020/03/for-and-against-integralism
  • Letters, replies, 2020 May: https://www.firstthings.com/article/2020/05/letters

Public Discourse

• Peters, “Liberalism vs. Integralism” at Harvard, Public Discourse, 2018 April 11: https://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2018/04/21306/
• Trabbic, “The Catholic Church, the State, and Liberalism,” Public Discourse, 2018 May 2: https://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2018/05/21405/
  • See also Trabbic at CWR: “Thomism and Political Liberalism” Part 1, Part 2, Part 3
• Miller Debate
  • Miller, “Integralism and Catholic Doctrine” Public Discourse, 2018 July 15: https://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2018/07/22105/
    • Response by Pink, “In Defence of Catholic Integralism,” Public Discourse, 2018 Aug 12: https://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2018/08/39362/
    • Response by Joy at Dialogos, no date: http://dialogos-institute.org/blog/wordpress/the-theological-note-of-integralism/
  • Miller and King, “On Integralism, Religious Liberty, and the Authority of the Church: 19th Century Popes and 20th Century Popes Disagreed,” (replies to Pink and Joy) Public Discourse, 2019 Feb 2: https://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2019/02/49141/
    • Response by Joy at Dialogos: http://dialogos-institute.org/blog/wordpress/integralism-and-the-infallibility-of-quanta-cura/
• Maas, “The Coming Anti-Catholicism”, Public Discourse, 2019 May 1: https://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2019/05/51277/
• Shadle, “Religious Freedom, the Church, and State Coercion,” Public Discourse, 2019 Dec 3: https://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2019/12/58486/
• Bradley, “Learning From Integralism,” Public Discourse, 2020 Jan 9: https://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2020/01/59146/
• Pink, “Integralism, Political Philosophy, and the State,” Public Discourse, 2020 May 9: https://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2020/05/63226/

Church Life Journal

• Bernacchio, “The Anti-Integralist Alasdair MacIntyre,” CLJ, 2018 May 8: https://churchlifejournal.nd.edu/articles/the-anti-integralist-alasdair-macintyre/
• Waldstein, “What Is Integralism Today?” CLJ, 2018 Oct 31: https://churchlifejournal.nd.edu/articles/what-is-integralism-today/
• Troutner-Waldstein Debate
  • Troutner, “The Integralist Mirroring of Liberal Ideals,” CLJ, 2019 March 8: http://churchlife.nd.edu/2019/03/08/the-integralist-mirroring-of-liberal-ideals/
  • Waldstein, “Integralism and the Logic of the Cross,” CLJ, 2019 March 19: https://churchlifejournal.nd.edu/articles/integralism-and-the-logic-of-the-cross/
• Vermuele, “All Human Conflict Is Ultimately Theological,” CLJ, 2019 July 26: https://churchlifejournal.nd.edu/articles/all-human-conflict-is-ultimately-theological/
• Leithart, “A Protestant Integralist?” CLJ, 2020 Jan 23: https://churchlifejournal.nd.edu/articles/a-protestant-integralist/

Scattered Notices, the Latest

• Massimo, “Beware of ideological efforts to reinvent a mythical medieval Church,” La Croix, 2018 Dec 4: https://international.la-croix.com/news/beware-of-ideological-efforts-to-reinvent-a-mythical-medieval-church/8993 (see also Commonweal)
• Carter, “What You Should Know about Integralism,” Providence Mag, 2019 June 25: https://providencemag.com/2019/06/what-you-should-know-integralism/
• Fernandes, “Against the New Integralists,” Catholic Insight, 2019 Sept 12: https://catholicinsight.com/against-the-new-integralists/
• Millies, “What Is Catholic Integralism?” US Catholic, October 14, 2019: http://www.uscatholic.org/articles/201910/what-catholic-integralism-31851
• Walker, “The Problem with Integralism in One Tweet,” Providence Mag, 2019 Nov 27: https://providencemag.com/2019/11/problem-catholic-integralism-tweet-adrian-vermeule/
• MacDougald, “A Catholic Debate over Liberalism,” City Journal, Winter 2020: https://www.city-journal.org/catholic-debate-over-liberalism
• Verbruggen, “How Many Integralists Can There Possibly Be?” National Review, 2020 April 2: https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/catholic-integralism-how-many-can-there-possibly-be/
• Burns, “The New Intellectuals of the American Right,” The New Statesman, 2020 April 7: https://www.newstatesman.com/world/north-america/2020/04/new-intellectuals-american-right
• Patterson, “After Republican Virtue” Law & Liberty, 2020 April 22: https://lawliberty.org/after-republican-virtue/
  • Reply by: Pinkoski, “How Not to Challenge the Integralists” Law & Liberty, 2020 April 30: https://lawliberty.org/how-not-to-challenge-the-integralists/
• Bothur, “A Workingman’s Case For Integralism.” TAC, 2020 April 30: https://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/a-workingmans-case-for-integralism/
• Weigel, “Games Intellectuals Play,” 2020 May 20: https://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2020/05/games-intellectuals-play

American Affairs

• Vermuele, Review of Deneen “Integration from Within,” Why Liberalism Failed, Spring 2018: https://americanaffairsjournal.org/2018/02/integration-from-within/
• Gallagher, Kevin, “The Eclipse of Catholic Fusionism,” American Affairs, 2018 Aug: https://americanaffairsjournal.org/2018/08/the-eclipse-of-catholic-fusionism/
  • Critique: Patterson, “Why Integralism Is an Ideology of Despair,” 2018 Nov 28 : https://lawliberty.org/why-integralism-is-an-ideology-of-despair/
• Spring 2019, 3.1, section on “Liberalism’s Limitations”
  • Vermuele, Spring 2019: https://americanaffairsjournal.org/2019/02/liberalism-and-the-invisible-hand/
  • Pappin, Spring 2019: https://americanaffairsjournal.org/2019/02/toward-a-party-of-the-state/

Vermeule & Common Good Constitutionalism

• Links by Vermeule here at Mirror of Justice
• Select critiques:
  • Levitz, NY Mag, 2020 April 2: https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/04/vermeule-catholic-integralism-theocracy-progressives-conservatives-constitution.html
  • Hochman, TAC, 2020 April 6: https://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/adrian-vermeules-moral-madness/
  • See also Peterson et al, “The Constitution and the Common Good,” a series of essays at The American Mind
• Common Good Constitutionalism and Integralism: Fitzgerald, TAC, 2020 April 7: https://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/adrian-vermeules-nosebleed/

Discussions in the Academy

• ND Ethics Conference 2018, Closing Colloquy; TAC Dreher here and here
• Harvard Conference 2018, Christianity and Liberalism; PD report by Peters here
• Harvard course; Robert George and Adrian Vermeule, here
• Witherspoon Inst., “Integralism & Liberalism” here

Some Academic Publications

Crean, O.P., Thomas, and Alan Fimister. Integralism: A Manual of Political Philosophy. Neunkirchen-Seelscheid: Editiones Scholasticae, 2020.

Schwartzman, Micah, and Jocelyn Wilson. “The Unreasonableness of Catholic Integralism.” San Diego Law Review 56, no. 4 (2019): 1039–67.

by Ian Bothur

^[1] Natural science does regularly achieve many interesting findings with respect to the order of natural bodies; not just the very small subdivisions of matter.

^[2] GS 26, §1.

^[3] GS 74, §1.

^[4] Thomas Aquinas, Super Sent., lib. 1 d. 24 q. 1 a. 1 co.

^[5] Thomas Aquinas, De Ente et Essentia,trans. Armand Maurer (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1968), 36 (IV.iii).

^[6] Jacques Maritain, The Person and the Common Good, 3, trans. John J. Fitzgerald (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1947). At https://www3.nd.edu/~maritain/jmc/etext/CG03.HTM

^[7] Aristotle, Physics,199a12

^[8] Perfection is synonymous with completion or the fulness of its own being.

^[9] Aristotle, Physics, 195a 26

^[10] Thomas Aquinas, De Veritate,22.i

^[11] Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, Ia-IIae, q. 52, a. 1

[12] Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, Ia, q. 5, a. 3, c. I am grateful to Pater Edmund Waldstein for help with the general account of order.

[13] Thomas Aquinas, In Ethica I, lect. 1.

^[14] Thomas Aquinas, De Veritate, 22.i

^[15] The free participation of rational creatures in the Eternal Law is the Natural Law.

^[16] Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I, q. 39 a. 3 co.

^[17] Thomas Aquinas, Quodlibet VI, q. 11 co.

^[18] Thomas Aquinas, Contra Gentiles, lib. 2 cap. 58 n. 5.

^[19] Thomas Aquinas, De potentia, q. 3 a. 16 ad 2.

^[20] Aristotle, Politics, I.2, 1253a3-17

^[21] Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, Ia-IIae, q. 4, a. 8

^[22] Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, Ia-IIae, q. 5, a. 5 ad 1; Ia-IIae, q.3 a.8

Header Image: Standing Figures, by George Tooker.

Edmund Waldstein, O.Cist.

1 Virtue in general

1.1 Etymologies

Like so many words in English, “virtue” is derived from the Latin. This Latin derivation has the disadvantage of obscuring the original experience from which the concept signified is abstracted. Moreover, the cultural history of 19^th century Britain has given “virtue” a sort of missish ring, whereas it and similar words in other languages originally had martial connotations. Unfortunately, there is no good Anglo-Saxon equivalent still in use. The closest would be “dought” or, in the more common adjective form, “doughty,” derived from Old English dohtig, which now has an almost comically archaic ring to it: “Yet many doughty warriours often tride / In greater perils to be stout and bold.”[1] Doughty now means “brave,” and that was probably its oldest meaning as well, but in the 11^th century it was used in an extended sense to mean “competent” and “good” as well. Thus Bosworth-Toller cites the following line from a charter of Earl Godwin from sometime around the year 1016: Ðyssa þinga is gecnǽwe ǽlc dohtig man on Kænt and on Súþ-Sexan. (“Of these things is cognizant every good [doughty] man in Kent and Sussex”).[2] Dohtig is related to dyhtig (strong) and dugan (to be fit, able, strong). It is thus etymologically equivalent to the Modern German word for virtue Tugend from taugen (power, ability, efficiency).

By Professor Brian M. McCall

Adapted from ch. 1 of The Architecture of Law: Rebuilding Law in the Classical Tradition (Notre Dame Press 2018). Part 1 can be found here, part 2 here, and part 3 here.

OVERVIEW OF THE EDIFICE: DO WE NEED TO KNOW ITS ORIGIN?

Combining the elements of Aquinas’s definition and effects of law produces an understanding of law as a rule and measure of human acts ordained by reason toward the common good, which is promulgated by one who has care of the community and which makes use of punishment to make men good by commanding good, forbidding evil, and permitting neutral acts. This definition identifies the genus of law, but when we penetrate deeper we see that law is composed of different species. To help understand these distinctions we can draw upon the image of an architectural structure. Just as a building is composed of many levels, so too the genus of law is composed of several levels of law. Before looking at individual levels, however, it is necessary to survey the design of the overall structure. How do the pieces fit together?

Gratian begins his treatise on laws with the following division of the types of law making up the legal structure: “The human race is ruled by two things: natural law and long-standing human customs.”¹¹⁵ Gratian immediately sheds more light on this two-part division of law in the first causa of this first distinction when he quotes Isidore of Seville:

All the laws that exist are either of divine or human origin. Divine laws are constituted [constant] by nature, but human laws are constituted by human customs, and therefore human laws differ from community to community because certain things are pleasing to different communities. The immutable divine will [fas] is the content of divinely made law, and political or conventional justice [ius] is the content of human law. That is why it is in accordance with divine law [fas] to cross through the field of another person, but it is contrary to human-made law [ius].¹¹⁶

The passage begins with a differently worded two-part division. Whereas the first division was between natural law and custom, the second is between divine law and human law. The terms “divine” or “human” can be reconciled to the earlier division, natural law and custom. The second division refers to their respective origins, whereas the first refers to a representative type of each genus produced by divine or human agency. Huguccio in his commentary on Gratian confirms the divine origin of natural law and verbally links Gratian’s opening division to the passage of Isidore quoted by Gratian.¹¹⁷ He also explains that custom (mos) is human law (jus humanum), which is invented by man.¹¹⁸ Isidore says that divine laws stand in or are based on (constant) nature, whereas human law is based on longstanding practices. Hence, natural law has its origin in God, and custom is the creation of human law. The Ordinary Gloss on this opening passage explains natural law is “divine,” and “custom” is “customary law or written or unwritten human law.”¹¹⁹ Isidore further notes that since human laws are rooted in the customs of nations, they can vary from nation to nation and are not universal. The implication is that divine law, rooted in nature, does not so vary. The divine law is immutable because it has its source in nature, which is universal.

Gratian’s text then introduces yet another pair of words to identify each of these two categories. First it calls laws of divine origin (that which stands in the nature of things) “fas.” This Latin word means that which is “right or fitting or proper according to the will or command of God.”¹²⁰ Its universality and unchangeable nature is conveyed even by its grammatical status as an indeclinable noun—a noun that, uncharacteristically for Latin, does not change its ending according to its function in a sentence. Huguccio describes fas as whatever is “permitted,” “said to be appropriate and good,” and “ought to be said to be pleasing.”¹²¹ As opposed to customs that may please one people but not another, fas ought to be pleasing to all. The text then calls all human laws “jus.” This is a general Latin term often translated as “law,” but as Kenneth Pennington has argued, it conveys a rich penumbrae of meanings beyond mere legal enactments.¹²² It encompasses the sense of that which is right or just in light of human judgment.¹²³ Justinian’s Digest contains a general definition of jus as that which is “always equitable and good” (semper aequum ac bonum).¹²⁴ Cicero in a letter to Atticus uses the same construction of fas and jus to refer to everything that is right according both to divine and human reckoning.¹²⁵ Natural law (jus naturale) and long-standing custom (mos) thus stand in the opening lines of the Decretum as representatives of these two overarching groupings of everything that is right and good, from both the perspective of God (fas, rooted in the nature of things or natural law) and man (jus, rooted in human determinations of what is right or of long-standing customs). Both sides of this coin of what is right and good must be examined to determine a rule and measure for conduct. Man is ruled by both natural law and custom, fas and jus. Gratian gives a specific example to illustrate the need to consult both types of law for a complete answer: human law (lex humana) might prohibit something that could be permissible by divine law (lex divina). Passing through another’s field may be permitted by divine law (fas), but prohibited by human ordinance (ius).

Thus, for a complete understanding of the rule and measure of human action, both groupings of law must be consulted. In this vein, Justinian’s Digest defines jurisprudence (the wisdom of law) as “the knowledge of divine and human things, and the knowledge of justice and injustice.”¹²⁶ Natural law is a component of a dual system. To understand natural law, one must know it in this context.

As Gratian comments, this two-part division of law is itself subdivided into many species.¹²⁷ This first category of law identified by Gratian, divine, contains the three types of law, which Aquinas calls eternal law (lex aeterna), natural law (lex naturalis), and divine law (lex divina), the last sometimes referred to as the law of the scriptures (lex scripturae). Each of these types has been promulgated directly by God. Gratian’s second category contains written statutes and long-standing customs, both promulgated by human lawgivers. Each of these species of law is epistemologically and jurisdictionally related to the others. One can understand neither one of these individual species nor the entire concept of law as a whole without understanding the essence of each species. Most contemporary jurisprudence proceeds on the assumption, stated or implied, that either (1) only the species contained under the heading “human law” exist and the others are not real, or (2) if the other species under “divine law” exist, knowledge of them is unnecessary to understanding human law. Classical jurisprudence rejects both assumptions. Simply because the trim carpenter cannot see the foundation or the wall studs does not mean they do not exist. At least some knowledge of the entire edifice is indispensable to anyone who works on or within its walls.

The eternal law is the most general and foundational element of the structure. It contains the definition of all created finite beings. Its precepts, legislated from the foundation of the world, determine the end or perfection of each substance and provide means for the attainment of that end. The eternal law does not directly tell rational creatures how to act. It rather invites rational creatures to participate in the determination of human action by electing means to the end established by eternal law. In this sense, eternal law limits action by limiting the end of human action. The natural law is deeply connected to the eternal law and provides precepts orienting rational beings to their end established by the eternal law. The precepts of natural law provide generally worded principles of action that orient freely chosen human action to the perfection of human nature. Natural law precepts thus rise up out of the eternal law as the frame of a building rises out of the foundation. A frame gives more concrete definition to the structure of a building, which is constrained by the footprint of the foundation. Yet, the frame only generally defines the final appearance of the building. Many more details will determine it. Likewise, the natural law, by identifying hierarchically related ends of various aspects of human nature, provides more direction for electing means to attain the end of human nature. Yet, these precepts of natural law by their very design require further determination or specification, which specification is left to legal authorities, personal superiors, and individual persons, depending upon the nature and effect of the particular action contemplated. Human beings thus participate in making specific laws or rules of action at varying levels depending upon the circumstances. Likewise, artisans and craftsmen add detailed work and decoration to a frame to give the structure its final appearance.

To decorate the legal structure, practitioners of the legal craft must understand the eternal and natural law to know what it is they are decorating. This knowledge is not merely interesting but essential. Even the pagan philosopher Cicero understood that knowledge of these fundamental laws was necessary to the study and practice of law. In De Legibus, which is written as a dialogue, Atticus and Quintus want Cicero to begin discussing the details of the civil laws of Rome. Cicero responds that he cannot start a discourse on law at that point. First the most basic truths about human nature and the purpose of human existence must be understood:

You must understand that there is no subject for discussion in which it can be made so clear what nature has given to humans; what a quantity of wonderful things the human mind embraces; for the sake of performing and fulfilling what function we are born and brought into the world; what serves to unite people; and what natural bond there is among them. Once we have explained these things, we can find the source of laws and of justice.¹²⁸

Atticus then objects that in this plan of discourse Cicero is departing from the common practice that the understanding of law should be drawn from the “praetor’s edict . . . or from the Twelve Tables.”¹²⁹ To which Cicero responds:

In this discussion we must embrace the whole subject of universal justice and law, so that what we call “civil law” will be limited to a small and narrow area. We must explain the nature of law, and that needs to be looked for in human nature; we must consider the legislation through which states ought to be governed; and then we must deal with the laws and decrees of peoples as they are composed and written, in which the so-called civil laws of our people will not be left out.¹³⁰

Cicero understood that the study of law must begin with the most fundamental principles of human nature, which are known through the eternal and natural laws, but contemporary legal scholarship and education in American law schools limit themselves to cataloging, interpreting, and discussing the details of the edicts and other texts of civil law. If Cicero were alive today, he likely would say all of this work needs to follow and be subordinate to a knowledge of these higher laws.

Later Christian philosophers and jurists add to Cicero’s understanding a new font of knowledge. In addition to the eternal and natural law, which all rational creatures can come to know by use of their innate reason, God has promulgated a third type of law, referred to as the “divine law” or the “law of the scriptures.” One of the roles of the precepts of this type of law is to reveal principles of natural law more clearly. In addition to relying on our own, fallible reason to discover these fundamental laws, Gratian and Aquinas argue that we have direct access to them through revelation. Gratian makes this point clear in the opening passage of the Decretum when he introduces the division of law into natural law and long-standing custom. He explains that the natural law is contained in the Law (by which he means the law revealed in the Old Testament) and the Gospels, which he summarizes by quoting the Golden Rule (Matt. 7:12).¹³¹

Cicero’s insistence that we must start with cosmological and ontological truths, and later Christian jurists’ insistence that we must consult the divine law, before studying the details of civil laws raises an important question. The classical natural law tradition is rooted in a theological perspective. For the pagan philosophers and jurists this perspective was a vaguely articulated perspective, sometimes pantheist and sometimes a monotheist tendency, that transcended the popular polytheist religions of Greece and Rome. Upon the dawning of Christianity, the perspective shifted to a clearly articulated Christian theology. For Cicero, the eternal and natural laws had their origin in a vague supreme power in the universe. For Gratian and Aquinas, jurisprudence was firmly rooted in the soil of Christian theology, and the origin of all law was more than a cosmic force—it was a personal God who became incarnate to save mankind and make the contents of divinely promulgated law more clearly and widely known.

The question then arises for jurists who are committed to the natural law tradition but are living in a pluralist and largely secular and atheistic world: To what extent is belief in and knowledge of God (either vaguely as for Aristotle and Cicero, or as with the revealed God of the Trinity) a prerequisite to accepting, understanding, and using natural law in legal practice? We can sketch a preliminary answer here.

Scholars such as Michael S. Moore have argued that commitment to natural law jurisprudence is possible without any theological commitments. Unlike Moore, a professed atheist,¹³² Finnis clearly professes Christianity but argues that although one who accepts Christian revelation may understand the purpose and origin of natural law better than one who does not, Christian revelation and theological commitments are not necessary to come to know natural law or, in the nomenclature of Finnis, the principles of practical reason. Theological truths may be important to Finnis in other contexts, but they are not necessary to articulate his understanding of practical reason. On the other end of the spectrum from the claims of Moore and Finnis, Kai Nielsen has argued that “if there is no God or if we have only the God of the Deist, the classical natural law theory is absurd, for there will then be no providential governing of creation, no plan for man of which the natural law is a part.”¹³³ Although Nielsen is no fan of classical natural law, his reading of Aquinas is more faithful to the Angelic Doctor than that of Finnis. Nielsen rightly sees that Aquinas’s, and hence all classical natural lawyers’, understanding of and justification for natural law is dependent upon specific theological (at least those of natural theology) claims: “For such [Aquinas’s] natural law theory to be justified, God, in fact, must exist; and it must be a further fact that God’s nature is essentially what Aquinas says it is.”¹³⁴ Although on this point, and not on many others, I agree generally with Nielsen’s claim that at the end of the analysis God and particular aspects of His nature are ultimately indispensable to a complete justification for and understanding of natural law, my own answer, however, does add a nuanced distinction to Nielsen’s claim. The philosophers and jurists of antiquity demonstrate that one can come to know that natural and even eternal law exist and can come to know specific precepts thereof. Thus far, Finnis and Moore are correct that some knowledge of and argument in favor of natural law can be had without specific theological commitments. Yet, I will argue, owing to failures of both the human will and reason, a theologically neutered approach is ultimately incomplete and likely to persist in erroneous conclusions. One who follows the thread of natural law reasoning, because it argues from final ends, that is, teleology, must one day reach the question: From where did these final causes arise? Since these final causes as precepts of eternal law are an ordinance of reason, they must come from somebody’s reason. As Aquinas argues, to be law they must be promulgated by someone. Ultimately, a natural law jurist must confront this question. Likewise, anyone’s ability to accurately know all of those principles of natural law and, more to the point, correctly apply them to particular circumstances, is severely limited without recourse to divine law. The history of unjust and evil laws and legal regimes throughout history is evidence of the difficult work of knowing and correctly applying the principles of the natural law. Succeeding in this task without recourse to divine revelation is analogous to building an edifice without consulting an architect. The approach of Finnis to minimize the role of God in natural law jurisprudence may have some initial success and overcome the initial mocking of critics like Nielsen, but I argue it will be ultimately unsatisfactory.

Moore offers a categorization of different metaphysical foundations for a natural law that can be very useful in explaining my answer to this question. Moore first formulates a two-pronged, general definition of any form of natural law theory: “(1) there are objective moral truths; and (2) the truth of any legal proposition necessarily depends, at least in part, on the truth of some corresponding moral proposition(s).”¹³⁵ This definition clearly distinguishes natural law jurisprudence from positivism because it requires that laws (legal propositions) have a relationship to truths outside of the legal system. Yet, according to Moore, different proponents of this relational view can have very different understandings of the nonlegal truths. Moore identifies four possibilities:

1. Moral realists who hold that the nonlegal propositions to which law must relate really exist independently of both (1) what people think them to be (mind-independent) and (2) human conventions (convention-independent) regardless of whether those truths both exist naturally and are known naturally (or through some suprasensible faculty).
2. Naturalist moral realists who hold that the nonlegal propositions to which law must relate really exist, are mind- and convention independent, and exist in the natural world and can be known by a natural power or faculty.
3. A particular species of naturalist who holds that “a universal and discrete human nature” determines the content of the nonlegal moral truths to which legal propositions must relate.
4. Religious tradition-grounded naturalists who hold that the “(human) mind- and convention-independent” nonlegal truths to which legal propositions must relate “depend on the natural fact of divine command.”¹³⁶

I will argue that one can fully comprehend the essence of law (speculative knowledge) and have greater success in reaching good (meaning true) judgments about what human laws ought to contain (practical knowledge) only from a perspective that combines both the third and fourth categories. A jurist who accepts both the real, naturally existing moral truths and their ontological origin in and revelation by the mind of God will attain greater speculative and practical knowledge of law than one who approaches jurisprudence from one of the other limited perspectives. Classical antiquity demonstrates that philosophers and jurists such as Aristotle, Plato, and Cicero accepted a natural law philosophy and jurisprudence and had significant success in acquiring speculative and practical knowledge of the law. Yet, their advocacy for natural law was inchoate because they could not clearly articulate the attributes of its divine origin. Their work, despite its greatness in some areas, clearly contains conclusions about the content of natural law that are, in light of Christian revelation, strikingly false. Aristotle’s claim that slavery is a natural and good state for some is only one example. Augustine, Gratian, and Aquinas surpassed the achievements of the ancients because they had recourse to the fuller source of knowledge in revelation.

A critical difference between natural law jurisprudence undertaken from one of the first three perspectives (listed above) alone and the combination of the third and fourth is the same difference that John L. Hill identifies between Greek philosophy and Christian philosophy. The former “tries to explain the world by giving us a pattern, whereas Christianity gives us a Person.”¹³⁷ The revelation of the three divine persons within God makes philosophy, and hence law, personal rather than merely conceptual. Classical natural law jurisprudence makes law personal in contrast not only to the jurisprudence of Hart and Raz but also to that of Moore and Finnis.

Notwithstanding this and other differences, one can certainly be persuaded to accept and practice aspects of natural law jurisprudence without necessarily accepting the theological commitments of the fourth category, and fruitful conversation and dialectic can occur among scholars coming from all four perspectives. Yet, the fourth perspective offers the most complete and successful approach to solving the epistemological problems inherent in unaided natural law jurisprudence. Although intelligent conversation is possible and fruitful among those coming from all four categories, the benefits to be gained from accepting the commitments of the fourth category should not be ignored and left out of the discussion simply for the sake of gaining wider acceptance for natural law jurisprudence. Since all of those who argue from the first three categories lack the ultimate metaphysical foundation for law (and all of reality), they can only reach a certain extent of knowledge. Those who tend to try to appeal to positivists (or other non–natural law jurists) by arguing exclusively from the first three metaphysical positions do a disservice to, and ultimately undermine the deep metaphysical grounding of, natural law jurisprudence. Ignoring or downplaying the metaphysical foundations ultimately leads to their dismissal. As Jonathan Crowe has observed, the result is that, for Finnis, law does not really have an ontology; it is merely a hermeneutic to explain and justify normative social practices.¹³⁸

A deeper consideration of eternal, natural, divine, and human law is necessary to fully understand what is lost by abandoning this fourth type of natural law jurisprudence. The metaphysical and theological claims of the natural law tradition are ultimately the most unique contribution it can bring to jurisprudence and should therefore not be left out of the discussion.

115.          Gratian, DecretumD.1 (my translation of humanum genus duobus regitur, naturali uidelicet iure et moribus.)

116.          Ibid., D.1, C.1; my translation of omnes leges aut diuinae sunt, aut humanae. Diuinae natura, humanae moribus constant, ideoque he discrepant, quoniam aliae aliis gentibus placent. §1. Fas lex diuina est: ius lex humana. Transire per agrum alienum, fas est, ius non est.

117.          Huguccio Pisanus, Summa Decretorum, in Monumenta Iuris Canonici Series A: Corpus Glossatorum, vol. 6, ed. Oldřich Přerovský (Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, 2006), 13 (glossing naturali uidelicet iure as id est diuino); see also Huguccio, Derivationes, quoted in Stephan Kuttner, The History of Ideas and Doctrines of

Canon Law in the Middle Ages (London: Variorum Reprints, 1980), V, 99. Drawing a similar parallel between positive justice and natural justice, which he calls fas, Huguccio claims that iustitia positiva has been made by man whereas naturalis justitia is extended from the effects of nature.

118.          Huguccio, Summa Decretorum, 14: Quo nomine comprehenditur quodlibet ius humanum, id est ab homine inuentum.

119.          Gratian, The Treatise on Laws (Decretum DD. 1– 20), vol. 2, trans. Augustine Thompson and James Gordley (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1993), Ordinary Gloss to D.1.

120.          See Charlton T. Lewis et al., A Latin Dictionary: Founded on Andrews’ Edition of Freund’s Latin Dictionary (Oxford: Clarendon, 1879) (defining fasas “belonging to the religious language, the dictates of religion, divine law; opposed to jus, or human law”). The following are examples of the use of the word in the Bible: audiebant autem eum usque ad hoc verbum et levaverunt vocem suam dicentes tolle de terra eiusmodi non enim fas est eum vivere (Acts 22:22, Vulg.)—“And they heard him until this word, and then lifted up their voice, saying: Away with such an one from the earth; for it is not fit that he should live” (Acts 22:22, DV); contigit autem et septem fratres cum matre adprehensos conpelli a rege contra fas ad carnes porcinas flagris et taureis cruciatos” (2 Macc. 7:1, Vulg.)—“It came to pass also, that seven brethren, together with their mother, were apprehended, and compelled by the king to eat swine’s flesh against the law, for which end they were tormented with whips and scourges” (2 Macc. 7:1, DV); hii vero qui intus erant confidentes in stabilitate murorum et adparatu alimoniarum remissius agebant maledictis lacessentes Iudam ac blasphemantes et loquentes quae fas non est (2 Macc. 12:14, Vulg.)—“But they that were within it, trusting in the strength of the walls, and the provision of victuals, behaved in a more negligent manner, and provoked Judas with railing and blaspheming, and uttering such words as were not to be spoken” (2 Macc. 12:14, DV).

121.          Huguccio, Summa Decretorum, 20– 21.

122.          See Kenneth Pennington, “Lex Naturalis and Ius Naturale,” The Jurist 68 (2008): 571–7 3.

123.          See Lewis, A Latin Dictionary (jus: “that which is binding or obligatory; that which is binding by its nature, right, justice, duty”).

124.          Justinian, Digest 1.1.11.

125.          Cicero, Letters to Atticus 1.16.6, http://www.thelatinlibrary.com/cicero /att1.shtml#6. Explaining how devastating it is to Rome when corrupt men render a wrong verdict, he says: triginta homines populi Romani levissimos ac nequissimos nummulis acceptis ius ac fas omne delere. The phrase sums up a complete obliteration of all rightness—ius ac fas.

126.          Justinian, Digest 1.1.10.2 (my translation of iuris prudentia est divinarum atque humanarum rerum notitia, iusti atque iniusti scientia).

127.          Gratian, DecretumD.1, C.1.

128.          Cicero, “On the Laws,” in On the Commonwealth and On the Laws, ed.

James E.G. Zetzel (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 110.

129.          Ibid., 110– 11.

130.          Ibid., 111.

131.          Gratian, DecretumD.1.

132.          See Michael S. Moore, “Good without God,” in Natural Law, Liberalism, and Morality, ed. Robert P. George (Oxford: Clarendon, 2001), 221– 70.

133.          Kai Nielson, “The Myth of Natural Law,” in Law and Philosophy: A Symposium, ed. Sidney Hook (New York: New York University Press, 1964), 129. 134. Ibid., 130.

135.         Michael S. Moore, “Law as a Functional Kind,” in Natural Law Theory: Contemporary Essays, ed. Robert P. George (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992), 189– 90.

136.         Ibid., 190– 91.

137.         Hill, After the Natural Law, 55 (paraphrasing G.K. Chesterton). 138. Crowe, “Clarifying the Natural Law Thesis,” 168– 70.

By Professor Brian M. McCall

Adapted from ch. 1 of The Architecture of Law: Rebuilding Law in the Classical Tradition (Notre Dame Press 2018). Part 1 can be found here, part 2 here.

THE COMMON GOOD

The consideration thus far has continually referred to the end or object of human acts. We need to establish a few clarifications. The end or object of human activity is incorporated into the definition of law in the phrase “for the common good.” This part of the definition indicates the purpose of law: it answers the question, “Why does law exist?” Law exists to orient human actions to their common natural end. Law is a rule and measure that directs the human intellect and will toward the object or end that is common to all human beings. Yet, like the false dichotomy between law and morality, the term “common good” can be misunderstood as in opposition to the individual end, the object of the life of an individual human being. Like the false dichotomy between law and morality, we will see that there is no dichotomy between common and individual good: they are parts of the same whole.

By Professor Brian M. McCall

Adapted from Chapter 1 of The Architecture of Law: Rebuilding Law in the Classical Tradition (Notre Dame Press 2018).

Summum jus, summa injuria.
The greater the law the higher the injury.¹

With these words the great Roman orator Cicero warned against the dangers of an exaggerated exaltation of human law. His words take on a new poignancy in light of much contemporary jurisprudence. Not only have human positive laws grown exponentially in their number and scope, but the dominant theory of legal positivism has exalted the place of human positive law by building an entire system of law upon it alone. Human made law has come to be viewed as self-referential, self-justified, and essentially self-restrained. Classical natural law jurisprudence understood human law to be merely one part within a grand hierarchical edifice of laws. Human-made positive law is the detailed and varied decoration that brings into clearer view the lines, structure, and foundation of a larger legal edifice. This structure is organized and held together by a frame, or universal principles, and erected on a firm ontological foundation.

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.