Respecting life by recovering the natural law

The month of October, as Respect Life Month, calls us to focus our attention on the respect of human life in all its stages, moments and situations.  All human life, regardless of circumstance, is sacred and worthy of respect.  Human dignity is rooted in the nature of the human person made in the image and likeness of God (cf. Gn 1:26) and knowable to us through the natural law.

The natural law tends to be forgotten when we are surrounded by the contemporary belief that what feels good justifies our actions or that when something is legal it is also morally permissible. These mistaken notions have gained in popularity as our culture continues to disregard the natural moral law, which God has written on our hearts (cf. Rm 2:15), that is, built into our nature to be discovered and followed.  

Popular thinking assumes that if something is a law or if something is done out of consent, it is also morally right. Yet history shows us otherwise. Immediately after the Second World War, Nazi officers were put on trial at Nuremberg for crimes that included the attempted extermination of Jews, the disabled and others whom they considered undesirable or subhuman. While nearly everything that they did was legal under their laws, the Nuremberg court convicted them according to a higher law. It ruled that their actions, despite being legal, violated the humanity of their victims, that is, violated the natural law.  

In our own country, similar mistakes were made. It was once legal to own slaves based on the color of someone’s skin with our Supreme Court ruling that those of African descent do not have rights. Even after this was corrected, the Supreme Court held for decades that it was legal systematically to discriminate against persons of color. This same Supreme Court now holds that a child in the womb does not have the inherent rights of a person and that marriage is no longer a permanent relationship between just one man and one woman. Legal does not necessarily mean morally right.

Fortunately, our loving God has given us this gift of a higher law, one that is not dependent on the whims of government, the political winds of a society, or even on our individual desires. Rather it is a law “written on the heart,” that is, written in our nature and able to be known by us through reason. This is what we call the natural law.

How does the natural law work?  Natural law is understood in two ways: how the physical world functions and how we ought to act based on the nature of things. The functioning of the physical world is what we now call “science,” that is, the understanding of how the world works physically, according to God’s plan. Yet in addition to the mechanics of how things work, the natural law also plays out in another very significant way, namely in what is called the natural moral law.

This natural moral law shows us that by carefully and reasonably examining the nature of what something is, we can come to understand what it is for, and then come to know how we ought to act. We then use our wills to act in accordance with this. In other words, the true nature of something reveals its purpose and calls for our proper response to it.

Like the laws of nature, the natural moral law is built into the nature of a thing, person or act. As such, it can be discovered by reason examining that nature; the more basic the principle, the easier it is to see. For example: What should labor and wages look like if the nature of work is to provide the employee an opportunity to participate in God’s creation and to provide for the employee and his or her family? How should we treat the earth if we truly understood it to be the home wherein God’s human family dwells? How would we act if by nature marriage is a permanent relationship between a man and a woman ordered towards the procreation and education of children? How must we act, as individuals and as a society, if the child in the womb is not merely a collection of tissues but rather by nature truly a human being?  

What would society be like if everyone remembered that all human persons are made in the image and likeness of God—regardless of whether they are wanted by society or not, whether they have a sinful past or not, whether they have a home or not, whether they have money or not, whether they have a disability or not, or whether they are born or pre-born? Applying a natural law view to the human person, we see very quickly that each and every human person has a dignity that can never be extinguished or discarded.

Even our founding American Fathers recognized the truth of the natural law when in the Declaration of Independence they explicitly based the freedom of the United States on “the Laws of Nature and Nature’s God” which serve as the foundation of the self-evident truths that “all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

Time and again, when a society disregards the natural moral law, those who are poor, weak or unwanted are left to the mercy of those in power. When we stray from the natural law by failing to respect the nature and purpose of our minds, hearts or bodies, our actions become misguided by our ever-changing desires. However, when the natural moral law is respected, we realize that human life—every human life, including our own—is sacred, has dignity and should be treated as such. Natural law makes no exceptions and neither should we.

The natural moral law calls us to make every decision in accord with the truth of our nature. It urges us to work so that our society will once again be built on this firm foundation of reality as God has ordained it to be.  

Respect Life month is a time when we reflect on the sanctity of human life at all its stages and conditions. May it also be a time that we seek to recover the rich tradition of the natural law. I highly recommend beginning with Sections 1954-1960 of the Catechism of the Catholic Church.  

The month of October has also been the traditional month of the Rosary, when we honor Our Blessed Mother who accepted life so that we may have life through him who is the Way, the Truth, and the Life (cf. Jn 14:6).  Especially during this month of October, I urge all to pray the Rosary, particularly for a renewed appreciation of the natural law that God has given us, so that there may be an ever greater increase in the respect for life— all life—from conception to natural death.