Natural Law

Catholicism Must Be a Sign of Contradiction

Last month I noted that Catholics need settings in which they can lead a Catholic life among Catholics. For most of us, loving God and living as Christians take schooling and support, which we aren’t going to get from the…

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So-Called Gay Marriage: A Dialogue

by J. Budziszewski

I’d been tied up with students all morning. No sooner did student number ten leave than student number eleven appeared. It was Theresa. “Hi, Professor Theophilus. This isn’t about your course. Have you got a few minutes anyway?” “Fewer and…

Cultural Assimilation: A Threat to Catholic Identity

For the most part, American Catholics have wanted to be like other people. They arrived in America as immigrants from places where they had a definite (if sometimes lowly) position. They left that for a country where social positions were…

“The Goodness and Humanity of God”

by Rev. James V. Schall, S.J.

The sub-title of J. Budziszewski’s 2009 book, The Line Through the Heart, reads as follows: “Natural Law as Fact, Theory, and Sign of Contradiction.” The initial dedicatory citation in the book, from which the book derives its title, is a…

Catholics Must Not Cede Ground in Public Debate

In the last several months I’ve been discussing the problems Catholics face dealing with public life today. The recent election underlined some of them. The bishops and others made their pitch about threats to the family and the freedom of…

The Catholic Response to “Abolitionist” Feminism

Feminism is a slippery issue that gets more slippery the more you think about it. It starts off seeming perfectly clear. One Catholic feminist, an intelligent woman, tells us that “The core of feminism lies in the simple demand that women…

Chinese Natural Law

A common argument against same-sex marriage is that it is ‘unnatural.’ But without qualification, such an argument is pointless. What do people mean when they call something ‘unnatural’? Do they mean ‘unusual,’ ‘abnormal,’ or ‘ugh’! I don’t like it!’? Do…

Lawless Christians

by Howard Kainz

We consider that a person is justified by faith apart from works of the law. –Rom. 3:28 We have believed in Christ Jesus that we may be justified by faith in Christ and not by works of the law, because…

Zombies, Zelda, and the Natural Law

by Peter Freeman

Rescuing the princess. Punishing unjust oppressors. Liberating a people from slavery. International gamers across the world live out these fantasies on a daily basis. These fantasies don’t make themselves, however. Grown men and women have to sit down at computers…

The Meaning of the Sexual Powers

by J. Budziszewski

There you will show me That which my soul desired; And there You will give at once, O You, my life! That which You gave me the other day. —John of the Cross, Spiritual Canticle Midnight. Shelly is getting herself…

Of Human Dignity and Shoes

For most of you this weekend contains a date you’ll never forget, along the lines of September 11, or December 7 — anniversaries of profound wounds to our country as a whole, even if we didn’t lose a relative in…

Natural Law for Doubters

by Joseph Stuart

With so many natural foods available these days for your health and nutrition, you might find yourself looking for natural and legal food for your mind. Now, Edward B. McLean, Beesley professor of political science at Wabash College, has served…

Natural Law from a Birmingham Jail

by Ronald J. Rychlak

On April 12,1963 — Good Friday — Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. led a group of about 50 anti-segregation protesters into downtown Birmingham, Alabama. It was a peaceful protest, but they were not naïve: They knew that their message would…

I Don’t Make the Natural Law, I Just Enforce It

To me, there’s nothing that quite says “Christmas” like schadenfreude — that grim satisfaction one takes in watching the suffering of others, especially other people whose ideas are evil. The Church father Tertullian used to write in lengthy detail of…

Natural Law without Nature? Aquinas to the Rescue

by Howard Kainz

Natural law has had a hard time in the modern world. Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832) castigated the natural law theorists of his day for promoting “personal opinions and sentiments” as standards of right and wrong. He offered utilitarianism as a replacement,…

Natural Law Foundations of the American Republic

by Cord Hamrick

Bill Whittle, explaining the Natural Law underpinnings of good law, and observing what is the underlying (as opposed to the proximate) cause of the current economic malaise: What We Believe, Part 4: Natural Law It’s Part 4 of Bill’s series…

Professor fired for “hate speech,” or as we call it, Natural Law.

by Zoe Romanowsky

On June 9th, the Catholic News Agency (CNA) reported that Dr. Kenneth Howell, an adjunct professor at the the University of Illinois, was fired for teaching that homosexual acts violate the natural moral law during his class on Catholicism. A…

Natural Law and Abortion

by Howard Kainz

In the current opposition to abortion on moral grounds, the “right to life” principle has attained an indisputable hegemony. But numerous exceptions to this principle are admitted, even by those who stand firmly by the general rule. Self-defense in…

The Failure of Darwinism to Explain Morality

by Benjamin D. Wiker

“As an explanation of the world, materialism has a sort of insane simplicity. It has just the quality of the madman’s arguments; we have at once the sense of it covering everything and the sense of it leaving everything out.”…

Smash the Secular State

If you’re like me, you can’t wait for Barack Obama to speak at the University of Notre Dame — if only because it will put a stop to the flurry of news stories and commentaries about the scandal. (Such as…

Benedict to the UN: In Defense of Natural Law

by Russell Shaw

December 10, 1948: Keep your eye on that date. It’s likely to have an important symbolic role in Pope Benedict XVI’s upcoming visit to the United Nations and the United States. Religious and civic pageantry, teddy bears wearing…