The Natural Law Part III

An example of where all three, Secularism, Individualism, and Relativism have come together is in the most important of human endeavors, procreation. Here are a few observations in relationship to the Natural Law.

Procreative contraception was never considered objectively valid, in other words, objectively morally right, by any Christian sect until 1930. What contraception does is separates the unitive from the procreative elements of sex. It gives man, pejoratively speaking, the attributes of becoming his own “god”. How? By giving him the ability to determine when “a life is or is not worth living”. Contraception frustrates the total self donation that is supposed to characterize the conjugal act, and for that matter, marriage. People separate themselves through contraception in a time when the purpose should be to unify. I will give up myself except for my fertility, or my goods (pre-nup), or in my case my 1970 VW Bus. Sex is reserved for marriage. Remember that metaphorical automobile manual? Sex, very simply, is reserved for marriage because of babies. Marriage is permanent because sex has something to do with babies. Why is it that any noted psychologist or psychiatrist talks about the incredible value of the nuclear family, a father, mother, and child? In relationship to each other? Is it because each component needs the other to ‘function properly’, both in respect to the present as well as the future? Is the family not the basic building block of all societies? Security, selflessness, the feeling of self worth, of being valuable, and ultimately loved is that “oil” which allows not only that unit to function properly but also directs each person within that unit towards happiness, peace and growth as an individual. Is not society a reflection of that nuclear unit? When we have over a fifty percent divorce rate in this country are there not effects that can obviously be seen from perpetuating divorce, of having children out of wedlock, absentee fathers, mothers that don’t understand how to be a mother? Because their mother did not understand how to be a mother? It is a perpetuating philosophy and system that spirals downward and ultimately out of control. And from that society becomes broken, sometimes irreparably.

Epistemology is the science of knowing. Descartes said that the only thing a person can know is his own idea. Aquinas, on the other hand, said that an idea is by which we know the outside world. All knowledge comes through the senses. Aquinas also wrote that the intellect has an active and passive component but the second aspect of intellect is judgment. Judgment is based on information received by the senses.

Descartes entire philosophy rests on relativism. If one can only know one’s own idea, then everything, everyone else’s thoughts, ideas, processes are relative. They can be acquired or dismissed subjectively and totally based on one’s own ideas. There is no objective truth.

The first act of the intellect is the act of forming the idea. The second is judgment. The third is reasoning. The Natural Law is part of the recovery of reason. John Paul II said, and he stole it from Aquinas (and Aquinas stole it basically from Socrates, Plato and Aristotle---something about “there is nothing new under the son”), that in order for man to ascend to truth he has two wings to fly on—one being reason, the other faith. Is the Natural Law objective truth? Is there a “nature” to human beings? The Natural Law is the story of how things work—including human beings. And where do we get the natural law? From the Law Giver.