my name is father romanus cesario i teach moral theology at st john seminary in brighton massachusetts it is from the newly refurbished buildings of saint john's seminary that this course entitled the elements of moral theology is being videotaped for the international catholic university we are about to begin the third of six hour-long lectures this one devoted to the theme of natural law in catholic moral theology in the first hour of instruction after having introduced the program for the six lectures i explained what was specific about catholic moral theology especially its location within the soccer doctrina that is to say the saving instruction that god communicates to his church in christ like doctrines about god christ church and sacraments god also reveals to us truths doctrines if you will about human comportment and behavior the church teaches as the traditional phrase puts it both about faith and morals and in the case of morals it falls then to the moral theologian within the church to explicate what the church teaches about the happy life about the good of the human person about the christian way of life moral theology then is different from moral philosophy indeed an argument can be made that it is different from secular ethics not only because the moral theologian is bound to receive the principles of his or her discourse from divine revelation but also because being part of a theological instruction moral theology seeks to present the big picture that is to say the big picture about the human creature in god's plan the plan that god has ultimately realized in christ a calvary scene that has been part of the saint john's campus for more than a century today it is covered with snow but that calvary scene reminds all of the seminarians and other students who pass through our beautiful campus here in boston that the truth being taught within this seminary indeed within any school of catholic theology is a truth that flows from the cross of christ ultimately what makes the moral theologian's task unique is that he must explain why right conduct proper living good action in this life always carries with it the mark of the cross one theologian has observed that the christian life is cruciform by definition because no disciple of christ is greater than the master and no one can escape the imprint that the cross leaves on every action indeed on everything that exists in the world in the second lecture we spoke about some remote background to the work of the moral theologian to the discourse of the moral theologian to the instruction that the moral theologian must give about human life and there we examined the anthropology that undergirds this these lessons in moral theology the anthropology of the image of the imago of the imago dei man created after the image of god the human creature bearing that image in his or her very constitution precisely as a human creature this imaging is an imaging that no one can escape no one can shrug off no one can renege upon it is there because god has put his imprint on us in the same way that he has put two hands two feet two eyes and anything else that is constitutive of our being human and still because the mystery of christ's love that we referred to earlier and which is represented above all by his death on the cross is a mystery of free love christ gives himself freely to the will of the father it entails his death everything that transpires within the world of grace has its origin and a free gift and its completion in a free response which truth to be told is itself god's gift to us you will recall if you attend catholic mass especially during weekdays that in the preface for the saints the church recalls a phrase of saint augustine it teaches us that when god rewards the merits of his saints it is his very own gifts that he rewards so both the gift from god's part is free the response is free and itself a gift and this interaction of divine initiative and human response brings from the image of nature that belongs to every human creature simply because that man or woman is born into the world brings that image of nature to a flourishing in what we call the image of grace sometimes called the image of conformity because the one who lives by divine grace who is conformed to christ and to his cross again the word crew form comes to mind the one who lives in that state of conformity lives in a state of friendship with god of loving union and this is a work only god can initiate a work only he can achieve it is a work of which we are the thankful and happy beneficiaries and it is a work indispensable for moral theological discourse because when we act rightly when we do the right thing when we love in the way in which we should those actions from beginning to end inside and out flow from the transformative work of divine grace active in our lives some of you have had a chance to examine the catechism of the catholic church it is very significant that the instruction on the moral life life in christ comes in part three not part one as if to suggest first of all you must act like a christian and then maybe you can believe what christians believe not part two which says well now once you have been told what to believe next we'll tell you how to act no it comes in part three because between the discussion or the presentation of the creed and the articles of faith come the very important instructions about the sacraments of the church about divine worship about how it is that we enter into the mystery of the church's communion sacramentally and so are enabled by that communion in a word to love and that is why when we spoke about the imago dei in lecture two of this series i recalled a scene present in saint john's chapel a scene that depicts the church at pentecost and closed with remarks about our blessed lady mary the virgin mother of god in whose being and life everything that the moral theologian wants to instruct about has already been achieved in its perfection which is why now body and soul in heaven she reigns as queen of angels and saints in this third lecture however it is time to take another step back in a certain sense and to recognize that the anthropology of the imago commits us to a particular conception of the christian life that can has been described aptly i believe as man set between god and god that phrase summarizes much of what we have discussed in the second lecture of this series namely that because we come forth from god in his image and are set upon returning to god to enjoy his own very own happiness the theologians like to use the word beatitude to make it clear that the happiness god promises is a happiness of a kind only he can supply he only he can supply it for truth to tell god's happiness is his very self man set between god and god as origin and goal as important as it is to understand the origin if you will the theological origins of the human creature to understand that the significance of the biblical revelation that god created us after his very own image odd imagine them day important as that is to know the kind of creature that man is equally important is knowledge about our destiny our goal our end term sometimes people speak about the word objective i prefer to retain the classical language of end which while unfamiliar to many at least used in this context avoids the unhappy implications of words such as objective or goal that can suggest something that is created by the individuals something which comes as it were adapted already to our personal preferences desires likes and so forth i prefer rather end which is a translation of the greek word telos or in latin venus so as to communicate that our end is given in the same way that our origin is given i recall the text from saint augustine which i have already referred to some people say it's the text best known of all christian texts outside of the canonical scriptures you have made us for yourself oh lord and our hearts are restless until they rest in the the end the telos the fenus is the the it is the lord it is the trinity of persons father son and holy spirit in whose blessed life we are called to share by way of communion some of you will remember at the very beginning of this lecture i had recalled the code of episcopal motto of cardinal richard cushing who was a former archbishop here in boston and well-known churchman in the country in the mid 20th century his motto would cognoscante that they may know thee father the end then is revealed to us the moral theologian knows that the end is beatific communion or friendship with the blessed trinity and yet it is a communion or a friendship which requires that we be instructed not only about it but in how to attain it that they may know thee man then set between god and god set because the most interesting and important feature shall i say the most specifically interesting and important feature of the moral theologians discourse and what most people expect to hear from moral theologians is what happens between if you will what happens in the setting i frequently tell the students that this line represents life it can represent an individual's life it can also represent the life of the whole human race for it remains the truth that this setting is a setting which emerges more and more to be the way that christ himself walked indeed this setting this line this life emerges more and more as we come to realize god's plan to be christ himself who said i am the way the truth and the life now this may seem an odd way to introduce a lecture on natural law and yet from my point of view the theologian has no alternative but to locate natural law within the context of man set between god and god the reason of my justification for this conviction is to be found in the work of saint thomas aquinas especially his summit de elojie especially in the second part of that tripartite work and what is free what is called in the tradition the first part of the second part there in a general treatise of the place that law holds in catholic moral theology aquinas discusses briefly it should be observed natural law and he gives it a definition which experts in medieval theology trace back to the work of saint augustine they are in dispute a discussion about the exact way in which aquinas adapted augustine's instinct here that's a matter for specialists in any event aquinas was satisfied to define natural law as a certain participation of the rational creature in eternal law now saint augustine had used the expression eternal law to express how it is that god governs everything that he has created when aquinas defines natural law as a certain participation of the rational creature in the eternal law he is telling us that in the human creature made after the image of god there exists a law which or a pattern which represents god's eternal plan or design for creation and specifically for human creation including human action now this is a very large claim and it certainly is a claim that is difficult to advance in a cultural setting such as our own when people are more or less persuaded that what makes them unique as human creatures is not that they are in some way shaped by a divine plan or pattern but contrarily that they are freed from any kind of constraint patterning freed from any plan not of their own choosing which is to say that they are persuaded that what makes them unique as persons is their own autonomy not to use a phrase that has been reintroduced into catholic discourse by pope john paul ii in any way subject to a power authority that is heteronomous that is to say other than belonging to their own subject or person and yet it is the case that the tradition is fairly uniform in insisting that natural law must be interpreted from a theological point of view at least with reference to the eternal law which is a way of speaking about god himself you know that god's simplicity that is to say the fact that he is not made up of parts means that we can't put things into god everything that is god is he possesses nothing the theologians debate whether eternal law is a name for god but they do agree that to the extent that eternal law is god's way of governing the universe then eternal law is a name for god himself for god has no alternative but to govern through himself through his very being and this of course leads to a question that perhaps divides some of traditions within catholic moral theology and it is the question of whether the eternal law points refers more to the divine will or to the divine intellect or knowledge i think you can see some of the implications for that discussion among schools of moral theologians if you for a moment simply reflect that will and knowledge are two alternative ways of interpreting the divine plan or pattern if we agree with aquinas that natural law is our participation in the eternal law then we have to ask the question of what constitutes that participation is it because god wills certain actions for me and does not will others is my participation and therefore natural law to be thought of as residing in or shaping principally my affective powers or the executive powers of my will you might say my choosing is that how i participate in natural law when my choices conform to god's choices well you can see why some theologians would want to develop that line because law after all has to do with regulation and regulation of activity and so surely the eternal law must be the supreme regulation of all activity and when we look at the human creature and ask how is it that man's activity is regulated we come away with the self-evident truth that we are masters of our own activity because of our capacity to direct our actions and that capacity is one associated with our will if you will our free choice our capacity to make choices but there is another school of theologians who prefer to interpret eternal law less as a function if you will or less in terms of or in light of the divine will and more in terms of god's knowledge of his divine knowledge these theologians rather than relying upon the will and its executive powers as a way of introducing divine regulation into human affairs see the eternal law as a way of representing how it is that god knows the world to be they see then the natural law as part of the imprint or pattern of the image but now more specifically associated with the dynamism of the image and the movement of the creature towards perfection of fulfillment that is to say a toward the end or the telos or the fenus you may wonder why i introduce these other terms or translations in other languages for end the reason of course will is that shortly we will return to the expression or the word the term teleology and that means a moral theological discourse that centers around a concern for the end thus telos teleology to return then to those theologians who understand the that natural law is a participation in eternal law and that eternal law represents how it is that god knows the world to be these theologians then argue that natural law is a heightening of the image it is a heightening of the image with respect specifically to those good ends that themselves are god given and which represent those things which perfect or complete the human person and which constitute then his or her felicity or happiness or beatitude when aquinas addresses natural law and one of the things that he discovered in my judgment was very useful about the concept he immediately points to what he calls the very first and most basic features of the natural law life coupling of male and female human sexuality if you will and truthful exchange among rational creatures you see what has he has pointed to certain ends ends indispensable for the perfection completion if you will the flourishing of every man the most obvious is life itself if something is done to end our biological life someone slits our throat or snips the aorta or whatever then the question of flourishing perfection and completeness completion for that individual has ended the first movement of natural law the first inclination of natural law you could even keep the legal metaphor and say the first precept of natural law is to protect and preserve and to make life flourish the same can be said for the whole human race the coupling of male and female and the procreative act that is inscribed in that coupling by divine design [Music] and the fact that male husband and wife once become parents assume a responsibility for the upbringing and rearing of their children this is an end that is inscribed in the human race in such a way that without it we wouldn't be here conducting these lectures and that this is a natural end and that this is a an inclination that is part of natural law that this reflects how god knows the world to be should be clear to everyone who's listening to these lectures indeed should be transparently clear to every human being i sometimes tell the seminarians if god had made human sexuality the coupling of male and female coitus as difficult to accomplish as calculus the human race of course would have expired long long long ago the very fact that man and woman come together with a natural spontaneity that we have come to identify as speak about in terms of human sexuality is a witness and perhaps the most transparent witness when it is not abused in one way or another to the natural law and to the natural laws of participation in the eternal law let me stop here and return to my translation or definition if you will eternal law so you see how god knows the world to be it makes sense doesn't it what are we talking about in these very basic examples of moral theology that deal with life and with human sexuality are we talking about options or choices are we talking about high-minded goals or objectives or are we rather talking about something that is so plainly evident that to deny gain say to take a favorite expression of professor ralph mcinerney that to gain say these or deny these principles of natural law would be to commit philosophical suicide certainly to commit theological heresy but there's something deeper isn't it is there not it would be to commit a kind of self-destructive act either individually or corporately for the whole species and what is true about life human life our biological life the breathing the blood the rhythms the blood pressure the cholesterol level the functions of the pancreas all of that what is true about the about human life what is true about the dynamics of sexual congress between male and female the complementarity of the sexes because we call the divine plan is that that cup that action the coupling of male and female is fruitful be fruitful as part of the divine plan and design as we all know from the debates around umani vita you have to take an action to stop it from being from to stop quetus from being fruitful and to sterilize them therein lies by the way the malice of sterilization sterilizing the mating act because it takes away from the union of man and woman something that by god's plan design pattern how god knows the world to be is there and is there for a purpose a goal an end of perfection in this case of course it is the perfection of the human race that needs to develop and multiply to speak about a living organism or what i should say the human creature shares with a living organism to speak about human reproduction which excuse me human procreation which the human creature shares with animals who do reproduce and whom there is no procreation to speak is to say an awful lot already about the creature and about the creature made in the image of god you know it had been the case from the time of the the fathers and the reasons for this are for historians to judge to back away from the claim that the image of god resided in the human body the theologian said well yes it's there but it's there derivatively secondarily rather they asserted the image of god of course lies mainly in the soul the spiritual power the spiritual part of man if you will they made that claim of course because it seemed that the spiritual part of man most imaged or resembled and looked like the pure spirit that god is and it is to the great credit of the present holy father pope john paul ii to have modified that claim in a very significant way and to say that we should not speak so much about the body as a secondary and derivative participation in the imaging of god but we should look to the body itself as reflecting the truthfulness the beauty even and the image of god you know his beautiful phrase the nuptial meaning of the body by which he communicates so much about the coupling of male and female and it strikes me that this uh insistence on the part of john paul ii is a very uh important one and that we should not overlook its significance why because the temptation on the part of many of our fellows contemporaries is of course to want to reduce the body to something to a thing and to be sure for something short of the of bearing the divine image this explains without jumping ahead too much why it is that there's so much controversy about moral sexual morality and now about morality that deals with human life the holy father has to had to has written an encyclical evangelium vitae the gospel of life in which he announces that the the gospel needs to make it very clear the value of human life the first inclination of the natural law and if the gospel doesn't illumine this truth without necessarily changing any of the precepts because you don't need revelation to know that murder euthanasia or abortion are wrong still without the illumination that the magisterium and the gospel brings to these points then we fall into what he is of course termed the culture of death that having been said there still remains the perfection of the human person which is the specifying perfection the capacity for man to exchange to engage excuse me in communication rational communication and this brings us to the one of the third examples uh that aquinas gives as the primary principle foundational inclination precept determination of natural law and that's truth telling i remember an old french dominican who began a conference once by reminding us of something that seems very obvious and yet that many of us had forgotten i suspect along the way that the greatest harm that can befall the rational creature is error an error about the highest truths the highest goods constitutes the most serious harm i say many of us had forgotten it because in a climate uh that surrounded much of the theological writing of the mid 20th century we had been introduced into pluralism and into the notions of respect for the opinion of others these notions are of course of great importance still in the church and yet at the same time as pope john paul ii has observed on a number of occasions pluralism is never a code word for a false erenicism still less for relativism and it is still the case that just as the a order needs to be integral in order to pump do the job it needs to do for the circulate circulatory system and just as human intercourse has to be carried out in the way in which god ordained it for it to be unitive and fruitful so also the human creature needs truth needs truth to perfect him or herself precisely as a rational or intelligent creature capable of knowing the truth capable of distinguishing truth from error think about the relationship of truth and friendship perhaps you've had the experience of meeting someone who on first encounter first exchange seems pleasant enough and someone with whom you could perhaps have exchanges that would lead to friendship but in the course of those exchanges you have come or you discover that the potential friend never completely communicates the full truth about whatever it is that is appropriate to communicate at a given moment he hides dissimulants perhaps deceives but in any event backs away from the kind of truthful exchange or communication that is appropriate for the kind of friendship that is at stake when that happens which is to say truth is not pursued truth is not achieved the perfection of truth doesn't happen there's something of course missing in the one who deceives or is untruthful perhaps incapable of being truthful and such a person is constitutionally unable to enter in to the kind of friendship and to the kind of communication with others that is a mark of our life together as human beings and as aristotle said social animals i think you see now why i like to translate on perhaps the better i hope eternal law is how god knows the world to be and not how god wills the world to be how god knows the world to be and not how god wills me to act because natural law is a way of expressing those things we need to embrace to pursue and embrace in order to achieve the perfection of what john paul ii most recently has termed the good of the human person teleology is a code word it is shorthand for everything that is constitutive of the good of the human person it is about this good that the church claims to be a master and this explains why to the surprise of some in the 1993 encyclical veritas splendor pope john paul ii provided very elaborate and substantial remarks about the natural law i say it came to the to the surprises of some because many had thought that natural law thinking formed part of the church's patrimony or legacy but a former part of it and that some new model had been introduced in the wake of the second vatican council that no longer made it necessary to talk about natural law a key factor it goes without saying in that movement was the reaction to the encyclical letter humane vitae i want to point out for those of you that are interested uh in natural law and in the other themes that are part of this series insofar as it is uh informed immediately by the encyclical letter veritas splenda a book that i edited with father augustin denoya who is the chief theologian for the u.s bishops it contains essays by outstanding theologians and one essay by myself so there are nine outstanding and one not so outstanding theologians uh whose commentary on veritatis splenda uh have been conveniently collected in a book published by midwest theological forum and distributed by our sunday visitor the book is entitled the splendor of the truth veritas splendor and the renewal of moral theology studies by nine outstanding scholars to return to our discussion of natural law you may have heard me in the course of talking about teleology and the ends that perfect or complete the human creature refer variously to natural law inclinations or precepts i do that because it is a matter of honest dispute among theologians of goodwill whether to interpret the natural laws working within the human person as something that flows from the whole being of imago thus the inclinations of natural law inclinations because they rep the natural law represents settled convictions within human nature that can be verified by experience and i have in the course of talking about human life human sexuality and truth telling tried to give some examples of how those settled in convictions would work themselves out other theologians drawing on texts that are found in aquinas prefer to think about the natural law as appearing principally within the spiritual powers of the imago in particular our capacity for practical reasoning and to say that natural law is a way of figuring out the truth about life by reference to certain principles which themselves cannot be denied if one wants to achieve a integral a state of integral human perfection my own view is that both of these views by major theologians are compatible they can be interpreted uh in a way that uh that is complementary whichever model you want uh to use that is to say whether you see natural laws emerging principally within human reason or natural law as emerging out of the composite of the human being settled convictions of human nature all theologians agree that it establishes a dynamism within the human creature that moves him along moves man along remember we're talking here about nature moves man along towards an end towards a kind of life that is in a word for the moral theologian a godly life because life lived according to the natural law embodies how god knows the world to be that is to say it is a participation in the eternal law we have confidence that to the extent that we allow ourselves to be directed or guided by the eternal law we are being guided by god's very own wisdom we know from the scriptures that that wisdom is first of all manifested in the cross of christ folly to those who do not accept it stumbling block to those unable to see the value of suffering you