New Blog

A new blog just started over at kofcculture.blogspot.com. It's main purpose is to promote a conference in Grand Rapids, MI entitled the 1st Annual Culture of Life Conference: The Dignity and Value of Human Life. There will be plenty of updates concerning the conference and various culture of life issues, so visit often.

The Big Time!

My brother just emailed me the following link:  http://www.catholicculture.org/culture/reviews/view.cfm?recnum=4460 in which Catholic Culture reviews his website.  And very favorably I might add. This makes me happy for two reason's; it's my brother's creation and I also contribute on occasion.  Anyway, get yourself over to catfoundations.com and start reading.

Natural Law - Decalogue Part 2

Finally, the next natural law essay.


Natural Law – The Commandments Part 2

The last time, we took a relatively in-depth look at the first three, or theistic
commandments and just how they can be understood from a natural law perspective, or
rather three different natural law perspectives. Today, we continue with a brief survey of
the next seven or social commandments. Since they all have a fairly obvious relevance
to the well-being of society our procedure will be somewhat different here. Instead of
looking at them from the material/subjective, philosophical and theistic perspectives as
before, we will mostly confine ourselves to a relational perspective, looking at the basic
meaning of each commandment and what sort of situations each relates too. So, let’s get
started.

The Fourth Commandment – Honor Thy Father and Thy Mother

This commandment is certainly not a favorite today but it is absolutely essential. First,
it is necessary because it is through the action of our mothers and fathers that we exist at
all and their subsequent care and sacrifice get us through our most vulnerable years and
teach us how to be responsible adults ourselves. And responsible adults are responsible
citizens who are a benefit to their society rather than a burden on it. Even if there were
no commandment, a very basic material sense of justice would require that some sort of
recompense be offered.
Through this sense of honor and respect towards those who have come before us, we also
learn to respect and honor employers, elected officials and the laws they make. Without
this basic respect, the rule of law would itself be called into question.
It should be noted that respect, honor and obedience only go so far. If any authority is
attempting to abuse its power to contravene higher law, then it is not to be obeyed. For
example if you were required to kill your ailing grandmother for the good of the state.

The Fifth Commandment – Thou Shalt not Kill

Most people do not question the validity of this commandment. After all, it is difficult to
disagree with a commandment that prohibits the taking of human life for anything other
than purposes of defense. Still, let’s clarify that a little bit. First of all, the intent is not to
prohibit killing in every instance, but rather to prohibit the taking of innocent human life.
Meaning that killing to defend yourself, another person or your country is permissible if
there is no other alternative.
Included as innocent human life are also the unborn (the most innocent of all) and
euthanasia. Both of these actions are prohibited simply on the basis that human life is
unique and a gift not to be squandered or taken from anyone else.

The Sixth Commandment – Thou Shalt not Commit Adultery

It is obvious how adultery can affect a marriage, but how does it affect society? Simply
because of the fact that is affects the marriage. When one spouse cheats, the trust
of the other spouse and that of any children involved is greatly damaged. This can
color all future relationships to the extent of doubting the validity of marriage and of

wanting to avoid children so they may not suffer similar pain. This obviously affects the
development and even the existence of future generations and so of society.

The Seventh Commandment – Thou Shalt not Steal

This is another easy one. Theft, of money, property, goods, ideas, etc deprives a person
of what is rightfully theirs, undermining basic motivation for work as well as fostering a
culture of fear and suspicion that can contribute to a sense of isolation from other people,
thus fragmenting society.

The Eight Commandment – Thou Shalt not Bear False Witness

Again, most people would certainly agree that lying should be avoided, certainly in the
case of falsely accusing people of action that they have not committed. But beyond such
obvious injustice, lying in general (to our spouse, to our employer, priest, friends, etc)
is yet another action that can understand the basic fabric of society. This is because our
laws and even daily interactions assume that most people have a basic concept of truth,
that it is important. We simply could not function if we always assumed that everyone
was out to swindle us, from the stock broker to the mechanic changing our oil. We trust
them to do their job. That is we trust them to not bear false witness as the nature and
quality of their work. Without this basic level of trust we all would soon be nervous
wrecks constantly looking over our shoulders for the next person trying to put one over
on us.

The Ninth Commandment – Thou Shalt not Covet thy Neighbor’s Wife

Alright, the other commandments all involve certain actions, even honoring our mothers
and fathers, while beginning in the mind certainly must result in some sort of concrete
action. So, it’s easy to see how these have an effect on the stability of society and thus
reflect the natural law. But how does coveting play into this? After all doesn’t it simply
happen in the mind? The answer of course is no. True, initially certain thoughts may
enter the mind and then leave; a situation that simply reflects the human condition. Even
the greatest saints suffered temptations. However, once those thoughts are entertained,
they can fester and eventually may come out in various little ways. One may begin
treating one’s one wife poorly, or seeking to undermine your neighbor’s marriage in
subtle ways. All of this violates the natural trust that one’s spouse and one’s neighbor
has a right to. And it goes without saying that if things continue in this direction then
violation of this commandment can result in the violation of the commandment against
adultery.

The Tenth Commandment – Thou Shalt not Covet they Neighbor’s Goods

This one of course works just like the ninth commandment. “ like my neighbor’s table
saw,” a thought which is harmless enough. However, this thought can eventually morph
into envy and now I find myself angry that he has one and I don’t. If unchecked, such
an attitude can damage one’s relationships not only with one’s neighbor but one’s

family as one becomes obsessed. Naturally, this situation could lead to violation of the
commandment against theft, or even against killing in certain circumstances.

We’ve completed our brief survey of the seven social commandments and how they
relate to the stability of society. The implicit assumption is that the stability of society is
bound up with the natural law and is itself desirable from the perspective of the natural
law. But is it? And if so, what sort of society? Is the natural law as reflected in the
commandments the only guarantor of a stable society? We will begin to explore these
questions in the next essay as we look at the place of the natural law in the public square.

Coming Soon

Soon, I'm going to get those reviews of the Batman movies up.  I'll probably do them all at once since there is no real need to be going over the character and what he's all about.  Especially since none of them really go too deep into Batman's motivations or personality beyond his relentless commitment to justice.  Although, different interpretations of his motivations and personality are certainly worth discussing.  All I'll say for the moment is that I very much like Chris Nolan/Christian Bale's take on the character.
Other than that, and likely before, I'll post another essay on natural law.  Also, after the first of the year, look for other developments in the book reviewing department.

Why do we ignore the natural law?

Latest entry in the Natural Law series.  Have at.  More movie reviews coming next week, including Carriers and maybe the made for TV over a decade ago Joan of Arc (which is way better than that piece of crap The Messenger).

Natural Law – Why don't we follow it?

So far, we have seen that natural law can be described as the set of principles that guide us to the best possible natural life for man. We have also seen that there is no shortage of disagreement about its content and even whether or not is exists. However, we have also seen that the use of reason and observation of the results of different modes of life show us that natural law does exists and that we can also determine much of its content, even as applied to individual lives and circumstances.

The question naturally arises, if we can know so much of natural law from reason alone and if it truly does la the best natural road map for our lies, why do so many people deny or ignore it?

Digression

Before delving into this question I think that some clarification is in order. I have emphasized that natural law provides the best natural road map for life for a reason. Natural law is just that, natural. It consists of what we can know about the good life based on what we can see, experience and determine through our every day lives and the use of our reason. It points toward and is compatible with, but does not include what we learn about the life of holiness through revelation. Thus, natural law points us toward the live of natural virtue but is does not consist of all that is necessary for the best possible life, that is a life lived in service to and imitation of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Much could be and needs to be said about the life of grace but that is beyond the scope of this series, at least so far. Going forward, we will touch on matters of revelation but even then the focus will be on its relationship to the natural law, rather than the specific issues of revelation itself.

The Difference of Man

We return to the question, “Why do we ignore the natural law?” Two significant reasons for this have already been touched on in previous articles. These are our reason and free will. It is these two capacities, unique to man that on one hand allow us to contemplate what the natural law is and on other what make it possible for us to ignore it. Why the paradox?

Concerning reason, we are given different capacities for recognizing and applying universal principles. That is, some men are simply wiser than others. Some, such as St. Thomas Aquinas and Blessed Mother Teresa are simply better able to understand and apply the natural law better than you or I. And even those two giants did so in very different ways. The causes of this variable capacity for reason are many. One is plain old genetics, whereas others include how we were raised, what books we read, our local environment and the customs of the community we grew up in. All of these and no doubt many others combine to form our intellects and personalities, resulting in different levels of ability to apply our natural reason.

Our free will of course allows us the ability to reject or accept the conclusions of our reason. The animals of course do not have this ability and simply follow the course that nature has laid out for them. We however, can ask the big questions and accept or reject the answers to those questions. Still, is this really an explanation? Granted that free will allows us to reject the good, why on earth would we?

This brings us to the single biggest reason that we ignore the natural law, sin. Or more specifically, original sin.

Now, I know I just said that these articles would not, as a rule, concern themselves with revelation. So, what am I doing dragging in the concept of original sin? First, it really is the only explanation for the utter insanity that seems to infect most of us. As Chesterton said, it is the most self-evident of all Christian dogma.

Second, it is not only a Christian dogma. Most, if not all religions of the world have some story of a fall, a story that attempts to explain why it is that man seems to be less than he should or could be. In a way, this is true even of the modern secularist who follows the lead of Rousseau and other philosophers of the Enlightenment in believing that man's first sin was to form laws and institutions to regulate property and behavior. Certainly, this differs in many ways from the Fall related in Genesis but on one essential point there is agreement, man is broken. I argue then that because is this brokenness is almost universally recognized, it is itself part of the natural law.

It is this essential brokenness that has corrupted our wills such that we are the only members of the material world that rejects the natural law. Our reason is often clouded by emotions or self-interest. Or our pride simply causes us to reject anything that would seem to reduce our station. This in particular is the disease of modern man. Enamored of our own achievements, modern man extremely resistant to anything that suggests that there is an authority or standard of behavior above our outside of our own wills. And thanks to free will, we can reject such standards even when they are obvious and we know exactly what we are doing. The abortionist, for example knows full well that the unborn baby he kills is alive and that he is killing that child. He cannot help but know that it is wrong. Yet, in his pride, he chooses to ignore his conscience. In fact, there has been a growing number of pro-abortion advocates admitting that they do know the child is alive, some are even willing to recognize the child's person-hood. While this is chilling enough, their argument for justifying the killing is even more so as it amounts to little more than stating that a child doesn't fit into their plans.

Such all-encompassing pride is not that only result of broken nature. The intellect of the woman having the abortion may be darkened and her will stunted by fear, ignorance and a number of previous bad decisions in her life. Such things can combine in such a way that person becomes virtually blind to the natural law.

For another example, think of child soldiers in the developing world. From an early age, they are surrounded by violence and are instructed in how to kill almost as soon as they are strong enough to hold a weapon. This creates an environment in which it would become almost impossible to recognize the most basic of principles.

Such situations give rise to question of whether or not people can be rendered completely incapable of following the natural law. The answer, according St. Thomas Aquinas is “not quite.” Essentially, our ability to recognize and apply to the natural law to various circumstances can be blotted out but the law itself remains. For example, the same child soldier may be utterly merciless to those he is told are his enemies and completely selfless in the care and protection of his tribe. Or think of the well known example of Hitler who, in addition to being a monster was also considered to be a loving father. Or, somewhat more pointedly there is the case of the moral relativist who suddenly cries out for justice when his car is stolen. While he chooses to ignore the natural law in every day life, he cannot help but appeal to its universal principles when their violation affect himself.

Next time, we'll begin to explore another guide to help us discern the natural law, the Ten Commandments.

The League of Bearded Catholics

My wife stumbled onto this blog:  http://timothyjones.typepad.com/tlbc/
Check it out.  If you go back a couple or three pages you will see the glory of Chesterton done up as an Incredibles character.  Oh the glory!

Levels of Being

Here is an essay in the natural law series from my brother.  If you haven't visited his website - http://catfoundations.com/ - do so now.  In fact, if you want, call him out for a speaking engagement.  He's smart, articulate and very faithful to the Church.  You'll be glad you did.


Natural Law
Part 1.5
Levels of Being
“Man fully alive is the glory of God” – St. Irenaeus
In Part 1 on natural law, or the law of nature, Mr. Postma, indicated that plants,
animals, and man are all created and fulfill their nature by the actions of their lives. For
plants, animals, and I will add rocks and minerals, this is facile because they lack
something that man has, self-awareness.
We have to understand that there is a natural progression of being in all of creation.
Rocks and minerals hold the lowest level of being. They are entirely inanimate and
completely contingent upon outside influences for their physical position and use.
Plants, although being mostly inanimate do possess at the lowest level the quality of
subject. Plants possess vitality, which allows them to lead their roots toward moist soil
and bend toward the sun’s light. Animals, like plants, are made up of what would be by
itself inanimate matter, possess vitality, but also are conscious creations. Animals have
the ability to move freely, organize, and even give an impression of emotion, such as the
purr of a cat or a dog appearing to be scared by a loud noise. Animals act out of instinct
rather than free thought and reasoning.
This is what separates man from the rest of creation mentioned. Man possesses all of
the above qualities, and also has been created with self-awareness. He is the only
creation that possesses a soul (vitality) that is also a spirit; and it is this spirit that allows
him to know himself, to know that he knows, to think about his thinking, to think about
others thinking; and to act based upon this knowledge of self and the world around him.
Mr. Postma discussed some examples of how man fulfills his nature. He writes,
“Here, we find that the cardinal virtues of prudence, temperance, justice and courage
serve as invaluable guides in conforming our actions to the natural law.” Man, unlike
minerals, plants, and animals, can decide to not live according to his nature. He can
choose the opposite of virtue, the opposite of order. He can ignore the cosmic order of
life and creation and choose to live merely in the here and now. By solely living in the
here and now he ignores the reality that a particular level of being can only be understood
by a higher level of being. A plant is incapable of understanding itself, but an animal has
a basic understanding of the use of plants for itself. Man of course, is capable of
understanding minerals, plants and animals to great extends. However, man is unable to
understand himself completely without a higher level of being. This will be the concern
of further articles after this series on natural law.
Now, back to the quote pulled from Mr. Postma’s essay. Man needs guides, lights
along the path, because he is self-aware, he can imagine outcomes. He can imagine past
circumstances, imagine future possibilities; and create scenarios for real time decisions
that must be made based on this. Man’s memory can aid him to be raised up to the
fullness of his nature, or be the curse that holds him down to the level of an animal, living
on impulse and instinct where he changing his mind as often as the situations he is in and
the different people he converses with.
Man’s ability to be aware of his thoughts and actions then require the following
of natural law, otherwise total despair in inevitable. If he cannot recognize certain
lights along the path that must be followed, he will be swallowed up by his pride, being
forced to deal with his own mirrored image each day, wandering in the cloud of
confusion with apparent dimmed light all around him, but with no distinct direction to be
followed.
-Mr. Mark A. Postma, M.A.
Director of Catechetical Foundations
Questions for further understanding
1. How are minerals and plants different?
2. What makes an animal different from a plant?
3. What does man possess that animals, plants, and minerals do not possess?
4. What higher level of being is needed to understand man?
5. How has your own imagination/memory held you back from living more fully
in accordance with natural law?

Update on Sienna

After a few minor travails, I got my new phone from Sienna Communications and it works great.  The phone is nothing special but the reception where I live is good and the customer service is friendly.  I plan on dropping my landline and getting another phone from them in the next week or so.  Believe it or not, with the cheap plan my wife and I will be using, we'll be saving a fair amount of money every month.

Natural Law - A Series

I wrote a little essay on natural law for my brother's website, the below mentioned Catechetical Foundations.  For those more philosophical astute than I am, feel free to correct or elaborate on anything that needs it.  After all, I'm just an average schmo who happens to like reading books and arguing.  You can also read it at his site under the free resources link.  Anyway, here it is:

Natural Law

Introduction

      If you spend any time reading about the many social controversies of the day, you will sooner or later run into the term natural law. Usually, it is used to highlight the fact that opposition to things such as abortion and homosexual sex are not due exclusively to religious reasons. Yet, rarely do any of the vast number of articles and essays on these subjects attempt to inform the reader as to what the natural law is or what it entails. Hopefully, this first of a series of articles on natural law, its content, history and place in the public square will help you in some small to cut through the philosophical fog.

 Natural law – From the ground up
  

    Okay, so what is natural law? For starters, if may be helpful to restate the term “natural law” as “the law of nature.” This makes it easier to see that at the most basic level, natural law means that all things follow, or should follow the pattern nature has set for them. All this means is that when an electron and a proton are attracted to each other, when the presence of water, sun and soil cause a plant to grow and the apple falls from the tree rather than flying off into space they are simply following the dictates of the natural law. In the same way, when dolphins swim, dogs mate and a lion runs down a gazelle, they are all following the natural law.
     Now, naturally, you may be thinking that since all of these examples differ so much they cannot possibly be an example of a single natural law. In a way, this is true.  There is not a single natural law that applies in the same way, to all things. However, what the examples do point to is not that the natural law dictates the same actions for all things but that each thing does what it does to fulfill its nature. So as the electron spins around the nucleus of the atom it is fulfilling its nature as an electron and the lion is fulfilling its nature as a lion as it brings down the gazelle.

     Okay, that's the ground floor, the lowest common denominator if you will. Having established that the natural law implies different actions for different orders of creation and different species within those orders, how does it apply to us? After all, that's what we're really interested in isn't it?
     First, we must do those things that are in accord with our nature as human beings.  And what is in accord with our nature is good and what is contrary to it is evil.  This brings us to St. Thomas Aquinas’ first principle of natural law, “we are to do good and avoid evil.”  Naturally, that is a little vague, so let’s flesh it out a bit. 

     Starting again at the most basic level, this refers to those things or inclinations relating to preserving our life and that of the species.  This of course means that self defense and sexual intercourse are in accord with the natural law.  But as Aquinas again points out there are other inclinations unique to man due to his capacity to reason.  These things include our inclinations to live in an ordered society, to create (or sub-create if you prefer) and to seek to know the truth about the world in which we live and above all to seek the truth about God.  Incidentally, some will say that this last bit gives away the fact that natural law is merely dogma dressed up as philosophy.  This question is beyond the scope of this short article so I will simply say here that the idea that we are inclined to seek the truth about God doesn’t actually say anything about His nature or even whether or not He exists.  We’ll go more in depth on this particular question later in the series. 

     In short, all of our natural inclinations, provided that they are ruled and guided by reason are considered to be part of the natural law.

Natural Law – From the abstract to the particular

     We are still dealing largely with abstractions, so let’s keep fleshing out the particular injunctions of natural law, especially as it relates to our daily lives.  Here, we find that the cardinal virtues of prudence, temperance, justice and courage serve as invaluable guides in conforming our actions to the natural law.  To understand that the virtues are themselves part of the natural law, simply take their opposites, addiction/fanaticism/licentiousness, rashness, injustice and cowardice and try to build a life with these anti-virtues as your guides.  And then imagine the long term effects of their practice on the individual and those around him.  I think most people would agree that this would be an unmitigated disaster.
     Now, let’s take a look at how those virtues help guide us in particular actions and behaviors, especially when we find ourselves swimming in somewhat murky waters.

     Naturally, the injunction to avoid evil acts prevents things like lying, cheating, stealing etc. as they are contrary to justice.  Other things like gluttony and substance abuse offend against temperance.  Yes, this means getting drunk is bad, even for Catholics.  Excessive gambling or telling people every bad thought you have about them are contrary to both prudence and temperance.  And a tendency to avoid any and all conflict is of course contrary to courage.  This means that there is a difference between turning the other cheek and being a doormat.
     On the more positive side of things, donating time, talent and treasure to your parish or some sort of charity, simply performing our daily jobs to the best of our ability, telling the truth, not eating four doughnuts at the morning meeting, are all in accord with the virtues and thus with natural law. 

     Now, this may give you the impression that there is some sort of natural law checklist or flow chart tucked away in an appendix of the Catechism.  For better or worse, there is no such thing.  One reason is that the combination of actions, virtues, intentions and circumstances results in an infinite number of possibilities.  This is one of the reasons why we have been given the ability to reason (and incidentally, why we are obligated to use this ability) so that we can determine how to apply the concepts outlined by the cardinal virtues to the particular circumstances that we come across in our daily lives. 
     Let’s take a couple of examples.  Say a person has some spare money that he want to give to an organization that relies on donations for support.  This organization provides counseling and cancer screening services which are both matters of particular concern to our generous donor.  However, the organization also performs abortions.  According to the natural law he can’t give to this organization since they are engaging in an activity that directly contradicts the injunction to preserve the species as well as the injunction to avoid killing innocent life.  But what if the circumstances are somewhat different?  Say, the organization is perfectly fine.  Rather than abortions, the organization provides material aid to single mothers?  But now our would-be donor has had to take a severe pay cut and to donate the money he was planning on would mean that he cannot provide adequate food for his family?  The virtues of prudence and justice would require our generous donor to hold off for a while, or at least to make a smaller donation. 
     These examples are fairly simple and certainly one can imagine more complicated scenarios.  Yet, they do indicate how the application of basic principles can help us navigate particular circumstances. Of course, one can also imagine people reaching different conclusions in these and other circumstances.  In fact, there is even a large amount of disagreement about the principles themselves as well as the methods we should use to apply them.  How can we say then that there is a natural law that can be known by human reason without the aid of revelation?  This question will be explored in the next article. 

Catechetical Foundations

Catechetical Foudnations is a group of Catholics dedicated to providing material to help train those who work to transmit the faith to the youth and adults of their parishes.  They have at least one full course developed and numerous talks and workshops ready to go.  The website is in the process of adding podcasts and video presentations in addition to its blog.  They really know their stuff, so check 'em out.