Catholicae Testudines

Say an extra prayer for the Holy Father

When you're young and healthy, getting the flu is an inconvenience.  When you're elderly and ill to begin with, it's another matter entirely.  You know how devoted he is to his duties as pope, so for him to interrupt his schedule it'd have to be something serious.

What are they thinking over there?

Unemployed German women being pushed into prostitution by the government.  Headline: "If you don't take a job as a prostitute we can stop your benefits" via (LGF).

In Germany prostitution is legal.  The excuse is that it will reduce rape of non-prostitutes.  Now, Catholic legal theory holds that it does not necessarily belong to civil law to repress every vice, but there is a difference between tolerating the limited existence of an evil that you cannot totally eradicate and practically promoting that evil as though it were morally neutral or even good.  Also remember what I said about legal positivism?  Now that it is legal, people think that it is moral.  Remember what the woman said in the article?  "The new regulations say that working in the sex industry is not immoral any more, and so jobs cannot be turned down without a risk to benefits."  Having rejected the safeguards of the Church or even of natural morality, the people have no logical basis to oppose the dastardly exploitation of women should the government decide to do so.  Which it has.

Addendum: Beyond. Parody. 

Gregorian chant group

Come learn some of the greatest prayers ever written set to great and timeless music.  Play your part in the restoration of Catholic music according to the mandate of Vatican II and Pope John Paul II.

Where is it?
CSC, conference room, Mondays, 6:00 PM after the evening Mass (starting today).

Do I have to have a great singing voice?
Chant is very accessible to people with "normal" voices.  It is easier than most of what you usually sing in church, and you do not have to be a rock star to sound good at it.  If you can match the pitch of a group that is singing you should do just fine.

Do I have to be fluent in Latin?
Who is?  You have to be open-minded about Latin.  Translations will be provided.

Will we perform publically?
Those that wish to will be part of a group that will provide some of the music for Holy Week.  Beyond that, we'll play it by ear (rim shot).

This is all really boring music, right?
On the contrary, An Introduction to Music (Bernstein and Picker) states:
"The singular beauty of the melodies cannot be denied; and when coupled with their ancient texts, their persuasiveness can be readily felt in a way that makes it easy to understand why the chants were powerful enough to be used for the conversion of the heathen to Christian faith."

Come down to the CSC and have a look.

Oscars

Screenwriter Barbara Nicolosi on the Oscar Nominations, or why I wouldn't give the time of day to the Academy Awards (Church of the Masses blog).

So, this year, the top Oscar nominations have gone to…

…a movie that makes a hero out of a man who murders his adopted daughter.
…a movie that makes a hero out of an abortionist.
…a movie that makes a hero out of a discredited researcher who was obsessed with sex and encouraged many others to experiment with various perversions.
…a movie that lionizes a billionaire narcissist who died insane from syphilis.
…a movie that suggests it is funny when an engaged man sets off for a week of debauchery before his marriage with his drunkard best friend.
…a movie that glamorizes four alley cats dressed as beautiful people who fornicate and commit adultery with each other, and indulge in various sexual perversions until the movie ends.
…a movie that makes a hero out of a paraplegic in despair who wants to kill himself.

And even from a purely cinematic perspective, these movies were nothing special, from what I hear.  Meanwhile, there was another movie which was...

…the biggest independent movie in cinema history.
….the third biggest box-office movie of the year.
….a movie that moved millions of people to tears, had the entire world talking, and even led several murderers to turn themselves in!
…the most courageous directoral achievement since Citizen Kane.
…and which just happened to be the story of the redemption of the world by the Son of God.  Too bad.

Speaking of, we're going to watch it at the CSC sometime soon, maybe Ash Wednesday.  So, to Catholic Terp readers, come join us.

God bless Iraq

Pray for wise rulers and peace.

Encouragement from Scalia

Live for Christ though the worldly-wise regard you as fools, says Supreme Court Justice. Via Relapsed Catholic.

Another natural law reflection

One book I really like (for lack of a better word) is Catch-22 by Joseph Heller.  And the reason I like it, besides the fact that the story is rather entertaining, is because a meditation on life by someone who is searching for the truth.  The spirit that informs the book is one that perceives that there is some sort of order in the world, that things fundamentally ought to make sense, but they're askew somehow, out of kilter in a really disconcerting way.  That is, they perceive both the reality of natural law and the reality of the disorder caused by original sin.

The characters in the book struggle to deal with this, and their distress that something is out of whack paradoxically proclaims that there is an order - if disorder was the way things were supposed to be, humans wouldn't find it upsetting.  And yet they don't see how things can be righted.  The Catholic Church is there, tantalizingly close and yet unreachably far away.  They are in Rome, and they meet monks from time to time.  The general insists on addressing the chaplain as "Father," though he protests that he is not a priest nor even a Catholic.  They are all trying to figure it out on their own, and they can see that they're in a crazy maze but they can't see the way out.

The issue is explored through the plot but also in important "side stories" that really have nothing to do with the action.  One particular instance that I was thinking about is the part where one of the main characters (Yossarian, maybe) is in bed with a woman and they are trying to figure out all this craziness and they talk about pain.  Pain has a purpose which is good: it informs you of something harmful and induces you to quickly resolve the situation.  It is clearly part of an ordered system.  But there's something that doesn't make sense.  You get hurt, and you fix what's causing the harm, but it keeps on hurting, sometimes a lot, in a way that doesn't help you at all and you're like, ok, ok, I get it, pain - but it just keeps on going - to the point where you have to take medicine to make it stop.  Considering this, Yossarian blasphemes God and says that if he was so good, why couldn't he just make a "neon sign light up on your forehead" or something to tell you.  And the woman tries to defend God, and Yossarian points out that she doesn't belive in God, and she gets upset and says, "Well the God I don't believe in is a good God!"

But anyway, that's the way it is, isn't it?  Even after baptism, some of the aftereffects of the damage of original sin remain that we must gradually correct as we journey toward perfection.  Pain is the senses' way of saying "I perceive that as an evil to me."  You accidentally stick your hand in a fire, it hurts - so you pull it out, and fast, before more damage can be done.  The continuing pain prevents you from doing anything with it so that the hand is allowed to heal.  But even still, it just hurts and hurts, so that all maybe you can think about is the pain; it prevents you from doing other good things, and that doesn't seem to make sense.  Or pleasure, the senses' way of saying "I perceive that as a good to me."  A piece of food smells and tastes good, and in fact it is good.  The fact that the senses really do do a good job (generally) of telling what is good and what is not good is quite wonderful, and maybe this simple fact seems even more wonderful to someone who has grown up in an ex-puritan culture, in the ruins of a culture that denied to some extent the goodness of creation.  This is the fundamental principle of the idea of natural law: that man contains within himself the ability to perceive what is good and what is not good.  But there is nevertheless the difficulty posed by what G.K. Chesterton felt to be the most obvious Christian doctrine: original sin.  We can perceive good in creation, but we seek it inordinately; to excess or in violation of a greater good.  The senses perceive that the food is good, and goad us on to eat another piece, and another, and another, even urging us to ignore our better judgment telling us we've had enough, even the sensation of fullness or the revulsion that comes from too much sweetness all at once.  Or other examples which make us lament the corruptibility of the flesh.

Anyway, what I'm getting at is that there actually is this natural orderedness to human existence, but it can be difficult to obey or even know in its entirety due to the disfigurement of original sin.  With great difficulty it can be figured out without the help of divine revelation, and it is necessary for a really human existence and society.  But even then, though obeying it purely naturally like the virtuous pagans leads to a kind of bittersweet happiness because without the help of grace we cannot attain our final and definitive happiness.

Natural law with regards to specific situations and me in particular

See previous post for a discussion of natural law itself.  This might end up being the Bush/natural law post that I hinted at and that was requested.

I like organizations that affirm and try to the best of their ability to uphold natural law and dislike ones that do the opposite.  I think that's a pretty good reason, certainly better than my mere whim.

If there were three political parties that affirmed natural law and tried to uphold it, and two that denied it and passed legislation in opposition to it, then there would be three parties that I liked and two that I disliked, though I would like and dislike them in varying amounts based on their specific policies.  I think that I am more aligned with someone who has some semblance of an understanding of the nature and purpose of the human person, even if we disagree about taxes and soforth.

In a state that has natural law as a basic assumption, the government recognizes that a human being has rights and duties which are a natural property of the human nature created by God (it must, however, have at least a pretty good idea of what these are). 

In a state which pretends that natural law does not exist, "rights" are only the privileges which the government sees fit to grant to its subjects.  Since these privileges are only established by the statutes posited by the government, they may be revoked or denied simply by legislative act.  To believe that a certain piece of legislation is unjust, then, as far as such a government is concerned, is mere personal sentiment.  Such a state, whether it is monarchical or democratic, is already a totalitarian government; it only remains to be seen how far the government will abuse its power. 

Pope John Paul has made this point repeatedly and forcefully during his pontificate.  In his encyclical Evangelium Vitae he says (par. 20) that a state which arrogates to itself the right to dispose of the lives of the weak and defenseless, a right which does not and cannot belong to it, even if such was the will of the people expressed in a democratic voting process, has caused the "breakdown of a genuinely human existence," the "disintegration of the State," while maintaining a "tragic caricature of legality."  This is, he says, "the death of true freedom."

Now, as for me.  Since I complain more about media types who have biases but try to pretend like they don't than about ones who are open about having preferences one way or the other, I might as well get mine out in the open.

If I had my way, I would want to remain basically apolitical but advise with strong political on whether what they wanted was in harmony with the nature and purpose of the human person, and how they could conduct themselves according to natural and divine law.  However, since I am an American (and a layman) and a patriot, it is my duty to take part in the political process.  Since the Democratic Party on the national level at least has committed itself to such an extent to a utilitarian legal positivism that does the very things the Pope warns us about, they have done an excellent job of driving me away, while the Republicans, by having generally an idea of natural law (whatever name they call it by) have led me to accept or at least tolerate many of their particular political positions.  The pro-life vs. abortion cause was for me the most pressing example of how the speculative aspects of how this law theory comes to bear in reality.  Indeed, in the earlier post, the columnist I linked to noted that Republicans [re]discovered natural law (which had been preserved by Catholics during Europe's secular liberalism movement) in an attempt to find a cogent philosophical basis for their revulsion for abortion.  This is what I was talking about in the pizza metaphor long ago.  If you have policies which are contrary to natural law, that is like "toppings" like brickbats and broken glass which are mockeries or perversions of toppings, but if you are philosophically opposed to natural law it is like your whole pizza is made out of something that's not even food, even if you have some fresh vegetables on top of it.

Really what I would like to see is two parties in America (not just one) who are committed to upholding the natural law.  I think it's really would not be healthy for the democratic process to have only one party be right on that count, even if they shut the others out of every election (though that would be better than having the others in power) - because there is room for a wide diversity of legitimate opinions within the bounds of the natural law.  Let them have at it on what's better with regards to defense spending and taxes and foreign policy and everything else - the debate will make the country better.  But let both of them be informed by a true conception of the human person.  The Democrats, by acknowledging the rights and dignity even of the weak and defenseless will not be vitiated or destroyed - rather, they will be more true than ever to their own principles (if I am not mistaken).  If that were the case, then even if I disagreed with a particular elected official rather vigorously on certain details, I would consider that no matter the outcome, that America had won the election.

Natural Law

This is what I can think of on the spur of the moment about natural law.

1.) What is the natural law?
The natural law is the body of precepts governing the behavior of beings posessing reason and free will, and whose objective existence is a consequence of human nature.  (There are other theories that go by the name of natural law, but they do concern me here.)

2.) What is the substance of the natural law?
The primary principle of natural law is that good is to be sought and evil avoided.  All dictates of the natural law flow from this one premise.  A human being is able to apprehend what is good and what is bad by virtue of his practical reason.  Therefore the precepts of the natural law can (at least theoretically) be determined by human reason even without the help of divine revelation.

3.) What are the specific precepts of the natural law?
The specific precepts are fittingly divided into two categories, the primary precepts which are easily and relatively directly deducible from the above first principle of natural law considered with regard to human nature. Some of these primary specific precepts are: God exists, God is to be adored,  truth is good, one's parents are to be held in honor, sex is linked to marriage which is ordered to generation and education of children, human beings may own property, one should preserve one's own life, the innocent are not to be killed, one should treat others as he himself would be treated.

4.) Why does every man not know the natural law in its fullness?
Though the reason of an individual is capable of apprehending the good, its judgment may be obstructed or distorted by a bad habit, pressure from a vicious society, or by ungoverned emotion or appetite.  This is actually quite common, especially with regard to the "secondary" precepts which follow from the primary specific precepts.

5.) What is the relationship of laws enacted by men to the natural law?
As men are often prevented by defects from knowing the natural law in its fullness, for the good of society as well as individuals it is incumbent upon rulers to enact civil laws which correct these defects.  For various reasons it may be necessary for governments to enact positive laws which go beyond the requirements of natural law.  However, any enactment by a government which contradicts the natural law is not a law at all, properly speaking, but an abuse of power.

6.) What systems of thought are popular today that are contrary to natural law?
Legal positivism, which arose in opposition to classical natural law theory, is the view that all law consists merely of arbitrary decrees backed up by coercive power.  Moral subjectivism or relativism is also contrary to natural law.

7.) Why is natural law important? 
It is important to note that although the natural law was created and promulgated by the fact of our creation by God, it is not arbitrary or positive law because it rests ultimately upon the nature of God.  Since God, as a necessary being, is unchangeable and could not have been other than He is, He could not command us to seek the evil and shun the good, because that would be contrary to His nature.  The specific precepts of the natural law are dependent upon human nature which is made in the image and likeness of God.  The natural law, however, does not contain everything needed for man's ultimate purpose, heaven, which is supernatural.  It is, however, indispensible since grace builds on nature.

Further reading on natural law:

Catechism of the Catholic Church paragraphs 1954-60 and 2070-71
Catholic Encyclopedia
St. Thomas Aquinas' treatise on law (see Questions 90-108, esp. 90-97)
Pope John Paul II, 2002 address to the Pontifical Academy for Life, Jubilee Year Address to government leaders and politicians

On 'why any normal person would want to read the Summa'

A post from Todd of Catholic Sensibility, quoting someone who, while not Catholic, understands why someone would want to read (or write) the Summa Theologica (you have to scroll down a bit).  If you don't want to read the whole essay, at least read the last paragraph.  I felt that this theologian and I have common ground because I do consider the Summa to be devotional reading that is ordered to contemplative prayer.