The Relativism Thing

I've been reading up on John Courtney Murray (Jesuit Priest) and his social philosophies based upon the Natural Law. I highly HIGHLY recommend this book: The Search for an American Public Theology, The Contribution of John Courtney Murray to anyone interested in finding a solution to our Church / State issues (from either a liberal or conservative perspective).

[I also highly HIGHLY recommend that Catholics read Dignitatis Humanae, from the documents of Vatican II, which was heavily influenced by John Courtney Murray.]

The notion of Natural Law comes from Thomas Aquinas and grounds Catholic Social Teaching. The Natural Law relies upon two suppositions: 1. A Realist Espitemology (that we can know what is real) and 2. that there is a God creating/ordering that reality.

From the Natural Law we derive the principle that human life is sacred, and that the role of government is to serve our Human Dignity. And from this notion of our Human Dignity come the "unalienable rights" of individuals and nations.

Now, in our pluralistic society there are many different ways of interpreting the law, different ways of forming values, different beliefs and different customs. These certainly include atheism and moral relativism. However, according to Natural Law, the law of justice is a law "written in the human heart" (St. Paul); so it belongs to our human nature and is accessible to all people. Even atheists and relativists have a sense of justice, whether they believe this comes from culture and is learned or is derived from some innate instinct.

Many (traditional) conservatives come from this Natural Law tradition. But I think few have a full grasp of it; and certainly many are abusing it toward their own ends.

For example, it is a distortion to say that Liberals are all relativists (a charge I often hear). We certainly are not. However, I think it would be true to say that many relativists are liberals. [If you are an atheist and/or a relativist, there's nowhere else to go but to appeal to the consensus of a pluralistic society in the forming of just laws. And this consensus is the very working of Natural Law.]

The irony here is that at heart, we are all subscribers of the Natural Law whether we recognize it or not; whether we distort it or not; whether we abuse it or not. At least for anyone who actually holds to the Natrual Law principle.

So by condemning consensus, or by stating that relativists are unfit to govern, or by assigning to all Liberals the relativisitic label, these conservatives are trashing the very Law they use to sustain their own conservative convictions. Imagine that.