A reading of the holy gospel according to Saint Mark. Jesus left Tyrean territory and returned by way of Sidon to the Sea Of Galilee into the district of the 10 cities. Nicopolis, some people brought Jesus a man born deaf who had a speech impediment also and begged him to lay his hand upon the man. Jesus took the man off by himself away from the crowd. Then he put his hands into the man's ears and, spitting, touched his tongue.
Then Jesus looked up to heaven and admitted a grove. He said to the man, that is, be opened. At once, the man's ears were opened. He was freed from the impediment and began to speak plainly. Then Jesus enjoined them all strictly not to tell anybody about it.
But the more he ordered them not to, the more they proclaimed what he had done. Their amazement went beyond all bounds. Jesus has done everything well, they said. He makes the deaf hear and the mute speak. And this is the gospel, the good news of the lord.
In the name of the father and of the son and of the holy spirit, amen. Saint Paul was talking to the Romans or writing to them, I should say, and he was speaking to them about law. And here's what he had to say about what we call the natural law. This is just one quotation. This is Saint Paul, first century AD.
And Paul says, when the Gentiles, who do not have the revealed law, by nature observe the prescriptions of the revealed law, they are a law to themselves. And that's taken from his letter to the Romans. Now since the nomination of Clarence Thomas, judge Clarence Thomas to the supreme court a couple of months ago, we have been reading and hearing a great deal about natural law and his allegiance, his acceptance, his belief in it. And that is held to be one of the main things against a man, that he, poor benighted creature, has some kind of belief or faith in what we call the natural law, which is associated with his Catholic schooling, his Catholic upbringing. Now this has caused a great deal of consternation not only among the liberals, but also among some conservatives.
Because today, in certain quarters, it's not universal at all. Don't let anyone tell you that. In many quarters, a reference to the natural law is like referring to the dodo bird. It's archaic, they say. It's out of step with with contemporary legal thinking.
It's attached, of course, to some religious beliefs, main meaning most often the Catholic church. And they looked upon it as something very antique, something obsolete. That's what they would liberals would like to think. And for by and large, they're right, speaking of The United States Of America. Because by and large, our law today is not a law based upon anything except statutory law.
That is the the decision of some judge or some court. Let's face it. Now Saint Paul had a very good concept, but remember, he didn't generate it. As early well, as late, I might say, as Plato and Aristotle, fourth century BC, You have there a conception of human law, man made law, but you also have a very definite conception of something more basic than that, which they call the law of nature. Now down the centuries, this has held.
It people may talk all they want to about natural law being obsolete, but we're doing a lot of talking about it today in legal journals, in the public TV, in the public press. Whenever Thomas's name comes up, an opposition to him is expressed, which is pretty widespread. And, of course, during the past week, it has be has become steamed up because the the hearings begin this coming Tuesday, I think. But the point is it's not dead. And a lot of people with common sense says you've gotta have something beyond made man law.
Now, of course, this ties in I'm not going to go into it, but this ties in most most absolutely in mister August talk about abortion, the the right to private property, murder, the right of a working man to a living wage, all of these things. And let me tell you, the people who reject natural law at the same time accept it. For example, today you have and have had since the second World War, charges against human beings as crimes against humanity. Where is that a law that man made? On what statute is that?
Where do you find that? In what in what legal jurisdiction do you find it? Of course, the legal positive said the Nuremberg Trials were all illegal. And from their point of view, they were. Because if there's nothing more than man made law, then there was no law to try those people accused of crimes against humanity.
You take the Dred Scott decision again in against slavery. Do you mean to tell me that the people in those days as well as today tell us that slavery is right as long as the Supreme Court said it was? As indeed it did and retracted it. So there is something. Now notice I said that's a pretty wide open word.
That's a blank But there's something more in this life than what humans make in regard to law. But this whole issue has come very much to the fore with the nomination of of judge Clarence Thomas. Now some of you have asked I'm up here talking about this today because some of you asked me to do it. Now let me tell you, I'm glad to talk on this subject. I could talk for hours on it.
Don't worry. It won't happen. I'd be shot if I did. But the point is, what can I do in a short space of time with a subject that's absolutely immense? I mean absolutely.
So all I'm going to try to do is this. I'm not going to talk about Thomas. That's not my point at all. It's natural law. But the point is the objection to Thomas is the objection to natural law as he conceives it.
And he conceives it as against the background of his Catholic education. And the Catholic view of the natural law is pretty much, pretty much the view of Thomas Aquinas, the great thirteenth century philosopher, and incidentally, he was a theologian. I like to put it that way. Now what is Aquinas' view of the natural law? In a way, it's very simple to say.
But let me tell you, when you trash, which I'm not going to do, with some of the modern contemporary concepts, it's absolutely breathtaking. Because as far as Aquinas has been thirteenth century man remembered, it's a complete synthesis. Now I've talked to you time and again how Hisuma begins with god who created man and the universe. The universe is god's creature. All of the universe is god's creature.
No exceptions. And that universe in some way is is created for a purpose. It's teleological. It's for a goal. And that goal is god's goal.
Not mine, not yours, but it's god's. All I can do is pray to discover it in my own life. I don't create it. And let me tell you, god's world is going to succeed as he wants it to do whether I like it or not. That's one sure thing.
Think of this in connection with the problem of evil because this that comes in here plenty. So Aquinas begins with god, the creator, and man, his creature, and man has to go back to god, and he goes back to god by virtue or obeying god's law. It's that simple. That's the whole summon. It's in a nutshell.
And what helps us? What helps us to virtue is law, god's law, man's law, the state law. They are all supposed to help us to virtue. Notice about the business of separation of church and state. It's the business of the state to help me to be virtuous, not to be wealthy, healthy, and wise, but to be virtuous to go back to god.
This is Aquinas, of course. You see, isn't isn't that simple and plain and sensible? Now that law, if you wanna call it that, whereby god governs the whole of his creation, not just our planet, but the whole of our universe. That, Thomas calls the eternal law. Eternal law.
And the world is his creature. It does what he wants it to do except except man. He can refuse to do it because he has knowledge and he has will. And after whatever happened in that dear old Garden of Eden, we have been a weakened per we have been a weakened people. Something happened to human nature.
Therefore, the natural law isn't enough. But the point now that I wanna make is that you have god's eternal law governing the whole of his creation, going, progressing, moving towards the goal, the end, the purpose that god wanted, And it will do it, infallibly do it with the exception of human beings because we are different from all that is nonhuman in this world. Men and women, by in virtue of being human, in virtue of being made to the image and likeness of god see, we're going back to the first chapter of Genesis. They have the power of knowledge to know the truth, and they have the power to will it and do it, and they have the power to say no. Even the old Roman poet knew that.
I see the good and approve it and do the opposite. Saint Paul puts it even more graphic graphically. The good that I would, I do not, and the evil that I would not, that I do. That's our condition as fallen creatures of God by our first parents' act, whatever it was. Now so that this that god's law for his universe, it embraces human beings, but here, human beings have a freedom to go along with god's law as they see it or not or not.
And because of that ability to say yes or no, we call it moral. And this is called the natural moral law, the the eternal law of god as applied to me in my decisions. In other words, as Aquinas puts it very simply, the natural moral law is simply a participation in god's eternal law. Set first part, second part of the Summa Theologica. His treatise on law is question 91 and following.
Now today, we refer to it generally as the natural as we talk today about Thomas or we we talk about the natural law. But what we're talking about really is the natural moral law. What the Saint Paul is talking to the Romans about here is the law of God is applied to human beings, not that the law is applied to animals and plants and stones and chemicals and the rest. And so as far as Aquinas is concerned, in theory, there is a natural law. It comes from god.
It is planted in god, and it applies to me, but not with a physical coercion as it does in the nature of things, but with through the freedom of my choice and the enlightenment of my mind. Human beings are made to the image and likeness of god almighty, not because they're animals, sentient, feeling, emotional animals, but because they reflect the freedom and the knowledge of god. Now that's Aquinas' view. Of course, I am really summarizing, but it's it's it's it's simple to grasp. That that the universe is created by god.
It has a purpose. He guides it. The I'm talking about the whole of the universe. No exceptions. It has to be that way if there's a god who's omnipotent.
Can he act for anything less than himself? And so we have then what he call the eternal law, that law, as it applies to human beings who have freedom and will and knowledge, we call that the natural moral law. Now what are some of its characteristics? It's universal. Notice.
It's universal. Applies to all human beings. It's known by reason, not by revelation. It is immutable because god can't change. Therefore, the law is immutable.
Now, of course, its application is something totally different. The natural moral law is not the answer to a maiden's prayer by no means. If that's all we had to live on, we'd be in a sorry state of affairs because we see the good and approve it and do the opposite. That's the kind of people we are. Ovid knew that.
Saint Paul says it clearly as I quoted to you. And so we do need positive law. We do need statutory law. We do need the state in its various levels to tell us what to do to make us virtuous. That's the aim of state law.
Even Plato saw that very clearly. Now so that we could say, the natural law is it it's terrifically important. It's not enough to talk about natural law. You've got to have a basis for natural law. And, of course, since the time of Aquinas, thirteenth century, when and then scholasticism gradually got rotten.
That's what it did. It became nothing but logical games. And then you had, of course, Descartes. You had the the the Renaissance. You had the period of enlightenment in the Western world, especially in England and America and France and Germany.
You have then a a gradual decline from God as the center of the universe to man, to individualism. Oh, yes. Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness for me. Remember that the men who signed the declaration of independence firmly believed in some kind of a divine natural law. Read the first sentence of the declaration.
And so in the course of time, the the whole idea of natural law was not entirely lost, but the basis was lost. Because with the period within the enlightenment and the the period and the age of reason and all of that, we had deism, we had agnosticism, and we had atheism. So the very supports of natural law, as a man like Aquinas put put it, were was completely wiped out. So what did they try to put into this place? Utilitarianism, the good of the individual, any number of things.
It was a period of rationalism where we've gone through it. Where has it gotten us? Now we have a court set up on a natural international basis, and we call it crimes against humanity. And the very people who support that deny natural law. It's it's crazy.
It's nutty. Just a sensible point of view. The logical positivists have a point. Now logical positivism is is is in the saddle today. That's what we call current legal thinking, whereby the only thing that matters is the is the is the stuff of experience.
Experience, empiricism. Don't talk about stuff like natural law. Talk about the immediacy of data that my senses give me. That has from the time since the time of chief justice Holmes Oliver Holmes, that is the the main thrust of American law. But remember, that is not universally accepted in the legal profession.
Some people would like you to think that, but it isn't. And so today, we have a situation where we have a court, a supreme court, very divided, and the division is very much in the balance. And that's what makes the present situation very, very sensitive. Now this you you may think that this I don't know how many of you have given any thought to this, but it's time you do. It's time you do.
Because if you take the position that a court of law, a bunch of men downtown in Washington can sit up there and tell us that abortion is right. And there because it's legal, people then say it's my right. You see, this is like the snake catching its darn tail and going into a hoop. If the best you can say for human rights is that they come from a civil court, then the court that gives, the court can take away. And what happens to your rights, the most basic ones?
Your right to life, that's for sure a basic one, after you've been born, after you've been conceived if it's a human being. Natural law doesn't tell you exactly when there's a human being, but it tells you that you can't kill a human being without a just cause. This is a very, very profound issue. It touches your lives profoundly. Look at all what's going on right now over in the politics.
They have succeeded. What's the basis for a people to declare themselves a sovereign state? Where where do they get the right? You've gotta answer that question. What gives you the right as parents to have children when the state says you can't have more than two?
We haven't come to that yet in The United States, but it's in the our world. China's been doing it. So I'm not preaching I'm not attacking a windmill this morning. I'm not a Cervantes. This is a very when Thomas is attacked because of his faith in a god given natural law, they are attacking him profoundly.
Profoundly. And, of course, if if it happens to be true, it certainly is something in his favor, isn't it? And so today, this matter of natural law remember, when when when that word is used, that doesn't tell you what it means. What I have given you is Aquinas' view. I'm going to repeat it.
It's so simple. There's a god who created the universe. He runs the show. That's called eternal law. The participation in that eternal law of human beings is called the natural moral law, and that comes to me by my discovery, by my intelligence.
I have to work on it, but it's not enough. It's not enough. The natural law is involved with my salvation, but it's not enough. It's the application of that law, the interpretation of that law to a definite situation in a changing world that's important. That's absolutely necessary.
That's why in our fallen state, god deigned to send his son to be our redeemer and gave us a living voice in the church, his living voice in his church, to tell us when the when when when the situation is very confusing as it often is, when it's very difficult for us to see our way, when good men and good women are very divided, we need a light that's more than the light of a philosopher. It's the light of the truth of Jesus Christ. I am the way, the truth, and the life. In the name of the father, the son, the holy spirit. Amen.