norbert:
Where is this natural law? Where is it specifically written in nature that it’s wrong to use condoms, for instance? It isn’t written anywhere.
I don’t believe you understand what philosophers and theologians mean when they use the term “natural law”. The natural law does NOT refer to the physical laws that govern nature, i.e., the laws of physics, or the law of the jungle. Natural Law is the Law of Right and Wrong, a knowledge of which human beings innately possess because they have a human nature.… this Law or Rule about Right and Wrong use to be called the Law of Nature **. Nowadays, when we talk of the “laws of nature” we usually mean things like gravitation or heredity, or the laws of chemistry. But when the older thinkers called the Law of Right and Wrong “the Law of Nature,” they really meant the Law of
Human Nature. The idea was that, just as all bodies are governed by law of gravitation and organisms by biological laws, so the creature called man also had his
law – with this great difference, that a body could not choose whether it obeyed the law of gravitation or not, but a man could choose either to obey the Law of Human Nature or to disobey it.
C.S. Lewis,
Mere ChristianityThe natural law points to a divine spiritual reality that is above and beyond the physical laws that govern the created universe. C. S. Lewis points out that man, because he possesses human nature, is actually aware of two realities in his life:The Moral Law, or the Law of Human Nature, is not simply a fact about human behaviour in the same way as the Law of Gravitation is, or may be, simply a fact about how heavy objects behave. On the other hand it is not a mere fancy, for we cannot get rid of the idea, and most of the things we say and think about men would be reduced to nonsense if we did. And it is not simply a statement about how we should like men to behave for our own convenience; for the behaviour we call bad or unfair is not exactly the same as the behaviour we find inconvenient, and may even be the opposite. Consequently, the Rule of Right and Wrong, or the Law of Human Nature, or whatever you call it, must somehow or other be a real thing – a thing that really is there, not made up by ourselves. And yet it is not a fact in the ordinary sense, in the same way as our actual behaviour is a fact. It begins to look as if we shall have to admit that there is more than one kind of reality; that in this particular case, there is something above and beyond the ordinary facts of men’s behaviour, and yet quite definitely real – a real law, which none of us made, but which we find pressing on us.
C.S. Lewis,
Mere Christianity
God gave me a conscience which for me exists as my most reliable moral compass.
God did indeed give you a conscience that convicts you when you disobey the natural law. But one cannot be a Catholic and assert that personal conscience is the “most reliable moral compass” that exists. Such a belief is the assertion of the “autonomy of conscience”, a belief that the Catholic Church calls mistaken. Protestantism is founded on this mistaken belief, and that is why all Protestants are heretics.**Catechism of the Catholic Church
ERRONEOUS JUDGMENT
1792** Ignorance of Christ and his Gospel, bad example given by others, enslavement to one’s passions, assertion of
a mistaken notion of autonomy of conscience, rejection of the Church’s authority and her teaching, lack of conversion and of charity: these can be at the source of errors of judgment in moral conduct.The Catholic Church teaches that we are all born with
defective consciences that are in need of formation. The most reliable moral compass that you have access to are the infallible moral teachings of the Catholic Church. What
you feel is right and wrong is not the be all and end all of what determines what is actually right and wrong. If your conscience does not agree with what the Catholic Church teaches about morality, then that means one thing, and one thing only. It means that your conscience is defective and in need of formation. It does not mean that you are right, and the Catholic Church is wrong.
Of course, Protestants refuse to accept this as being true, and that is why Protestants live in a sea of confusion about what constitutes moral behavior.
