Dr. Josh Brown on Confucianism

Confucian wisdom, with Catholic theologian Dr. Josh Brown.

Episode 4 of great books discussions with great @MSMU professorshttps://t.co/Xk1QGyEH79

— Josh Hochschild (@JoshHochschild) July 5, 2021

A Protestant on Natural Law

Natural law is the remnant morality that endures because of God’s common grace. But it points us to saving grace.https://t.co/YHibgKBHJ2

— Andrew T. Walker (@andrewtwalk) December 8, 2020

Protestants and Natural Law Theory

The rejection of natural law theory is one of the most unnecessary and tragic moves in Protestant ethics over the last seventy-five years. The more I teach from the perspective of biblical natural law, the more I see students' understanding of God's Word and world come alive.

— Andrew T. Walker (@andrewtwalk) December 2, 2020

Meanwhile... universalism and particularism and "rights talk."

The myth of natural morality https://t.co/uH8b0EbIGJ

— john milbank (@johnmilbank3) December 2, 2020

The shift from duties to individual rights defines the decline of the west. https://t.co/Qa5CRMzDdp

— Patrick Deneen (@PatrickDeneen) November 30, 2020

Ulpian's Principles

Remember the wisdom of Ulpian! https://t.co/tXNXeraAmT pic.twitter.com/mz4p6xIVYK

— Norbert Filemon (@FilemonNorbert) November 26, 2020

It's Been a While Since I've Opened Either

Thanks to @iusetiustitium for making the reading list in Natural Law. Clash of the Titans. Which book is better? pic.twitter.com/vYusPgHvyZ

— Norbert Filemon (@FilemonNorbert) November 24, 2020

Finality... and Natural Inclinations

The question of finality in nature is key to an understanding of natural law. Hence a moral philosopher or moral theologian must study natural philosophy. pic.twitter.com/UHueXblZlO

— Pater Edmund (@sancrucensis) October 27, 2020

Robert George on the Commission on Unalienable Human Rights Report

Robert George on the Commission on Unalienable Rights Report https://t.co/m7ertmoQsk via @theird

— Robert P. George (@McCormickProf) October 23, 2020

Matt Dinan Reviews Manent's Natural Law and Human Rights

Today my review of Pierre Manent's Natural Law and Human Rights is the "In this Issue" in @hedgehogreview's weekly newsletter--check it out here:https://t.co/1xN86o7GqK pic.twitter.com/I8tQ9TOHNP

— Matt Dinan (@second_sailing) September 4, 2020

Jeff Mirus on Latin Integralism

The return of “Integralism”? https://t.co/Zrf4XaZkQJ @FormTheCulture

— The Catholic Thing (@catholicthing) August 27, 2020

Recognizing that the Church is the arbiter not only of Divine Revelation but of what God reveals through creation in what we call the Natural Law, I am more inclined to want to get the natural law right, to study Catholic social teaching with great care, and to develop a political party that combines the best and most comprehensive recognition of the corresponding principles that ought to animate both the social order and government itself.

Latins claim this as a part of the authority of the Church (see CCC 2036 and Dignitatis Humane 14), but where is the warrant within Apostolic Tradition? Setting aside those secondary precepts which are not directly directly through reasoning but are determined by reason or are applications of reason in finding a convention to order some state of affairs (e.g. driving on which side of the road), there are several points to be made.

1. There are precepts of Natural Law that have nonetheless been revealed directly by God as well. These have been passed down as a part of Sacred Tradition. So bishops can be said to be arbiters of the Natural Law, in so far as they have received it as a part of God's revelation to Israel and in Christ. But does that revelation include all possible secondary precepts?
2. Knowing apart from Divine Revelation the "fullness" of the Natural Law requires not intellectual virtue but moral virtue. Do bishops have a special charism from the Holy Spirit that replaces the need for this and the habit of synderesis and the logical reasoning required as well? This is a more dubious claim.

That the Church possesses the authority to teach the precepts of the Natural Law is probably a long-standing Latin theological opinion. (Going back to Trent if not some time before, during the medieval period?) I'd like to read a treatise or manual that show some nuance in presenting this. Can the patriarchate of Rome cite one of its "ecumenical councils" as an authority espousing this opinon? I am doubtful, since the CCC makes no such reference.

See the old CE entry on the Natural Law.

A Protestant Defense of the Common Good

A Protestant Defense of the Common Good @jordanballor https://t.co/1y8SyCCCkp via @PublicDiscourse

— Ryan T. Anderson (@RyanTAnd) August 17, 2020

The Public Discourse

Libertarianism and Natural Law on Private Property

https://t.co/j3O7u5tLic

— Catholic Culture Podcasts (@CatholicPods) August 18, 2020

Gerald Russello Reviews Natural Law and Human Rights: Toward a Recovery of Practical Reason by Pierre Manent

City Journal

Natural Law for Modern Times | City Journal https://t.co/nL7cjheOHL

— Allen Mendenhall (@allenmendenhall) July 27, 2020

Draft Report of the Commission on Unalienable Rights

The Glendon Commission (the U.S. Dept. of State Commission on Unalienable Rights, chaired by the magisterial legal scholar Mary Ann Glendon of Harvard Law School) has issued its Report. It re-roots human rights discourse in the principles of 1776 and 1948.https://t.co/dN9j2yH8Za

— Robert P. George (@McCormickProf) July 17, 2020

Lex Regia

The tyrannical Lex Regia?, by @smithpatrick08 https://t.co/hLIc81JDUq

— Ius & Iustitium (@iusetiustitium) June 18, 2020

P. Smith seems to suppose that Integralism: 'A Manual of Political Philosophy' attempts to criticise Roman Law and the Lex Regia. In fact, the book criticises only codification and the misreading of the Lex Regia as an account of the origin of civil legitimacy as such.

— Fr Thomas Crean OP (@crean_fr) June 19, 2020

Thomas Pink on Latin Integralism

Public Discourse: Philosophy, Politics, Religion and the Public Square by Thomas Pink

Integralism, Thomas Pink writes, "involves a rejection of the metaphysical foundations of most current legal and political philosophy." https://t.co/jGwe2SIcnh

— Public Discourse (@PublicDiscourse) May 10, 2020

Brilliant new article by @thomaspink1, explaining why integralism matters even nand especially in our curret, secular age: https://t.co/hkf1ncZfDl

— Pater Edmund (@sancrucensis) May 10, 2020

Integralism further involves a conception of the church as an authority over religion that replaces the state. The church is a sovereign potestas, with the authority to make laws and enforce these through punishments, just as is the state. Its authority is based not on natural law as is the state’s, but on the revealed law of Christ. Any interpretation of Dignitatis Humanae that denies this conception of the church as potestas over religion runs directly against the interpretation of that declaration given officially at Vatican II by the commission that drafted it. (For more on this, see my “Dignitatis Humanae: continuity after Leo XIII”.)

Latin integralism depends upon and promotes Latin maximalist conceptions of ecclesial authority, especially the authority of the bishop of Rome.

It is tempting to suppose that there are two quite different kinds of state: an integralist state that prioritizes the good of the community, and a liberal state that fosters the autonomy of the individual. But perhaps the better view is that there simply exist states that serve the common good in a way that involves enforcing an ethical consensus.  

The questions that should be asked are: what is the common good, what defines a political community, and is any state, integralist or otherwise, able to bring about the common good. Maybe integralists will have a new response to MacIntyre and Cavanaugh--until they do, they theorizing merely serves statism, and at best they serve as controlled opposition, inconsequential and no threat to the status quo.

Démocratie : vers quelle finalité commune ?

More:
Pierre Manent : Pourquoi recourir à la loi naturelle ?

Pierre Manent- La théologie politique et ses légendes : Carl Schmitt et Erik Peterson

Mary Ann Glendon on World Over

M

Part 2 of Trabbic's Series

CWR: Thomism and Political Liberalism, Part 2

The Natural Law

So, the natures of things determine what’s good and bad for them, what they should pursue and avoid and, again, that is true for us too. Our nature, in this sense, is the “law” that we should live by. When Thomas talks about the “law of nature” (lex naturalis) or “natural law” this is partly what he has in mind. In part our nature is this law, but our reason, insofar as it grasps what is naturally good for us, and directs us to pursue it, belongs to natural law too.

Thomas’s account of natural law, however, does not stop there. For Thomas, our nature and our reason are created by God. Hence, he teaches that the natural law ultimately comes from God. By following the natural law – which is nothing more than living in conformity with our nature – we are following God’s will. When we act against it, we are acting against God. Thomas calls the “plan” for creation as it exists in God’s “mind” the “eternal law.” This plan not only includes our nature and purpose but the nature and purpose of everything else too. To say that the natural law comes from God is the same as saying that it is derived from the eternal law. What Thomas calls the “divine law” (lex divina) is likewise derived from the eternal law. I will come back to that in a moment.

And then something on happiness...

The “knowing” of God that we are talking about in both the natural and supernatural cases is an act of contemplatio or “contemplation.” For Thomists, Jordan Aumann explains, contemplation is “a type of knowledge accompanied by delight and a certain degree of reason’s wonder before the object contemplated.”⁴ Contemplation can be pretty pedestrian, as when I appreciate the dark gold color of the scotch in my glass, or more exalted, as when I marvel at the starry sky. But the beauty of creation can and should be a ladder we ascend to the divine.

Our lives as human persons and as Christians should have divine contemplation at their center. This is what we are ultimately ordered to by nature and by grace. That doesn’t mean that we should all pack up and move to a monastery. Most basically in means a way of life faithful Catholics already live: one of regular prayer and participation in the Church’s liturgy marked in general by an appreciative and celebratory attitude toward reality, including the reality of other people.⁵ As Thomas uses the term, vita contemplativa or “contemplative life” does not necessarily refer to the life of cloistered religious. As Aumann points out, it is something that we all practice – laypeople, religious, and priests – inasmuch as we engage in contemplative acts.⁶

A Summary, of Sorts, of Tierney

Crisis Magazine: The Medieval and Catholic Roots of American Democracy by Andrew Latham

A Right to Have a Child?

Even if it is understood through the Natural Law as a restriction upon political authority, can we say that such a right or freedom is absolute? (Or even any right or freedom?)

With respect to the right to have a child -- even if a political authority cannot directly prohibit one from exercising it, can one say that this means that the authority is obliged to ensure that it is fulfilled or exercised without difficulty, or that there will be no negative consequences? For example, if there is a people fleeing or migrating to a new land, a journey that will take some time, one might say that it is a reasonable thing to suggest that the members of that people not engage in sexual relations, lest they be burdened with a pregnant woman who will prevent the group from traveling. And if such a woman gets pregnant, in extreme circumstances or danger, the people may be justified in leaving her behind in order to save the others.