Hi Judy,

Quickly. I have asked that if our Constitution is not interpreted in light if the Natural Law, anything becomes plausible as we now are seeing (i.e., abortion, euthanasia, same sex unions as marriage,even slavery again!)?

Your answer was that the Natural Law can be argued?

Well me say that our nation's Constitution was founded upon the Judeo-Christian law ethic. What is happening now is clearly unconstitutional and is now to be likened to the old Roam Empire in which the gods and emperors rule?

Thanx,

Paul

Your answer was

Dear Paul

In case there is a misunderstanding let me be clear: St. Thomas, who is the premier doctor of the church on teaching the natural law, has been misrepresented as well in the debate about what the natural law truly is and why it is important.

This is why I place so much emphasis on VERITATIS SPLENDOR which was to my mind among Pope John Paul II's most important encyclicals. In that letter he wrote (#44)

44. The Church has often made reference to the Thomistic doctrine of natural law, including it in her own teaching on morality. Thus my Venerable Predecessor Leo XIII emphasized the essential subordination of reason and human law to the Wisdom of God and to his law. After stating that "the natural law is written and engraved in the heart of each and every man, since it is none other than human reason itself which commands us to do good and counsels us not to sin", Leo XIII appealed to the "higher reason" of the divine Lawgiver: "But this prescription of human reason could not have the force of law unless it were the voice and the interpreter of some higher reason to which our spirit and our freedom must be subject". Indeed, the force of law consists in its authority to impose duties, to confer rights and to sanction certain behaviour: "Now all of this, clearly, could not exist in man if, as his own supreme legislator, he gave himself the rule of his own actions". And he concluded: "It follows that the natural law is itself the eternal law, implanted in beings endowed with reason, and inclining them towards their right action and end; it is none other than the eternal reason of the Creator and Ruler of the universe".

COPYRIGHT 2013

Click here to send this Question and Answer to a friend