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By Thomas Storck

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Notes

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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