By Russell Shaw

Conference focuses on roots of common morality

Pope sees study of natural law as crucial to worlds of politics and international relations

In his encyclical Deus Caritas Est ("God Is Love"), Pope Benedict XVI says it isn't the Catholic Church's job to make morality prevail in the political realm. But he doesn't just leave it at that. The Church, he adds in the 2005 encyclical, his first, is nonetheless "duty-bound" to contribute to morality in public life by helping people think straight about ethical questions.

How? A large part of the answer, in Pope Benedict's view, lies in the revival of natural law. He has made it a priority of his pontificate and has called on Catholic universities to cooperate with him in the effort.

One result of this papal initiative was on view at the end of March in a major conference at The Catholic University of America on the theme "A Common Morality for the Global Age."

Featuring a keynote address via satellite by Cardinal Angelo Scola of Venice, a friend and adviser of the pope, the gathering brought together scores of Catholic and non-Catholic scholars from the United States and other countries to consider natural law -- or the more generic "common morality" -- in today's world.

That natural law stands in need of reviving there can be no doubt. Yet the reasons are not so immediately clear.

While natural law's greatest exponent probably is St. Thomas Aquinas, the 13th-century philosopher-theologian, with its continued relevance reaffirmed by the Second Vatican Council (1962-65), it has both Christian and non-Christian roots.

Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679) and John Locke (1632-1704), whose writings helped shape American founding documents such as the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, were among its adherents, though not part of the natural law tradition favored by Catholics.

'Written on hearts'

For St. Thomas and others like him, "law" is not a legal code composed of rules but a reasonable plan of action. Thomas sees natural law as human participation in the eternal law -- the providential plan -- of God. This participation does not happen through divine revelation, but because natural law's "primary principles," as Thomas calls them, are accessible to unaided human reason -- a point St. Paul also made centuries earlier in his Letter to the Romans when speaking about moral truths that are "written onÉhearts" (2:15).

Natural law is natural because it is grounded in human nature. As such, it is the blueprint of behavior, which leads to the fulfillment of human persons ("human flourishing") through basic human goods -- the fundamental purposes of human choice that comprise the sum total of human possibilities.

Critics and defenders of natural law agree in deploring so-called biologism, which reduces the understanding of human nature to the physical structures of biological functioning. These, the defenders insist, are part of morality but not all of it. Critics and defenders also inveigh against legalism, which reduces morality to an ethical code.

Errors like biologism and legalism nevertheless have helped bring about a widespread reaction against natural law in secular circles today. So has the influence of thinkers such as Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) and Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900), to say nothing of Darwinism and Freudianism, which emphasize non-rational sources of behavior.

Also working against natural law is the suspicion that it is camouflaged theology and a project of the Catholic Church. Today, even many Catholic moralists have dropped natural law in favor of the theory called proportionalism, which, despite claims to the contrary, operates by intuition rather than reasoning.

'Slow, hard work'

Yet the continued relevance of a common morality to the world of politics and international relations is visible in a document like the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which was adopted by the United Nations General Assembly in 1948, and in various successor statements.

Although the universal declaration is not specifically a natural law document, its grounding in assumptions about universal rights makes it congenial to natural law thinking. Pope Benedict XVI and other recent popes have praised it warmly.

In his view, a moral consensus like that reflected in the universal declaration is an indispensable prerequisite of peace and justice among nations. In its absence, the only methods of settling international differences are compromise -- including compromise on moral principle -- and the use of force.

Against this background, speakers at the Catholic University conference tackled topics that included sex, war, human rights, human dignity, biotechnology, the family, and environmental concerns. They also wrestled with the role of religious believers living in what Duke University ethicist Stanley Hauerwas called the "diaspora" situation of dispersion within largely secular societies.

In face of this reality, Hauerwas maintained, retreat into the status of a "ghetto church" would be a betrayal of the Christian mission. Replying to a question, he insisted that the task of Christians is to give "witness -- that's what we give to the world in the hope of coming to common judgments. But it's slow, hard work."

Pope Benedict would no doubt agree. He counsels perseverance. Speaking to diplomats at the Vatican early this year, he called it "essential" to return to the common moral law, "committing our finest intellectual energies to this quest and not letting ourselves be discouraged by mistakes and misunderstandings."

"Mankind is not 'lawless,'"he said. "All the same, there is an urgent need to persevere in dialogue about these issues." At the Catholic University conference, that dialogue was in full swing.

What the participants were saying

"I'm very hopeful that what the Holy Father put before us as a challenge is truly possible -- but it's only possible if we do as the Holy Father suggested: Gather together people with different points of view, people of different religions, people from different cultures, and have them speak to one another in a respectful way." -- Vincentian Father David O'Connell (president, The Catholic University of America)

"'Where do I come from?', 'Where am I going?', 'Who am I?', 'Why am I alive?', 'Why do I suffer?', 'What is death?'. . .These questions are around today as never before in everyday popular discussion, and they burst out of the sophisticated laboratories of techno-science. Precisely because it is exposed to bitter conflicts of interpretation, a common morality is absolutely necessary and still possible." -- Cardinal Angelo Scola (patriarch of Venice)

"The gratitude that we can have for being able to come together with another person in the moment of most dire need. . .  and reason together with mutual respect about the meaning of what we're experiencing is an intrinsic good. And that is what God is calling us to -- that communion, which reason enables. And Pope Benedict is profoundly optimistic to that degree." -- William Wagner (director, The Catholic University of America Center for Law, Philosophy and Culture)

"It's very difficult to formalize these things with an international declaration that everyone can sign. But it's pretty clear that there is a lot of goodwill, there's a very wide perception that truth is better than lies, that love is better than hate, that mutual respect is better than warfare." -- The Rev. John Polkinghorne (Anglican priest and physicist who played a significant role in the discovery of the quark)

--by Kimberley Heatherington

Russell Shaw is a contributing editor to Our Sunday Visitor.