Rev. James V. Schall, S.J. (1928-2019): On Natural Law (Publd. Aug. 2012)

James V. Schall, S.J., The Catholic Thing, August 21, 2012

James V. Schall, S.J. (1928-2019), who served as a professor at Georgetown University for thirty-five years, was one of the most prolific Catholic writers in America. Among his many books are The Mind That Is Catholic, The Modern Age, Political Philosophy and Revelation: A Catholic Reading, Reasonable Pleasures, Docilitas: On Teaching and Being Taught, Catholicism and Intelligence, and, most recently, On Islam: A Chronological Record, 2002-2018.

We live in a time when more good books and essays have been written on natural law than any time in history. I think of Maritain, Simon, Rommen, Veatch, Finnis, Hittinger, Kreeft, Fortin, Benestad, Rice, Budziszewski, Arkes, Kries, George, Sokolowski, d’Entrèves, and a host of others.

Yet in both the public order and in our private lives, we see natural law receding to transform itself into its opposite. We are quite close in many, if not most, areas to establishing “un-natural ‘natural’ law” as the norm of our morality and civil law.

By the term “un-natural ‘natural’ law” I mean the notion that, if every one or most people do this or that, it must be “natural.” Therefore, any notion of a natural law that would forbid, say, abortion, must be wrong according to “natural law” since so many practice it.

But the natural law principles and logic that identify abortion for what it is, the deliberate killing of a human person, are irrefutable – even if few will acknowledge them. The only real alternative to valid natural law, as many clearly see, is to deny any reason or order in things so that we be free to establish whatever we want by will alone. …

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