Saturday, October 6, 2007

Natural Law Basis of Freedom

ZENIT reports that Benedict XVI reiterated the foundation of truth, beauty, and goodness recently, affirming that natural law is actually a guarantee of freedom.

He explained: "When fundamental essentials are at stake: human dignity, human life, the institution of the family and the equity of the social order -- in other words the fundamental rights of man -- no law made by men and women can subvert the norm written by the Creator in man's heart without society itself being dramatically struck ... at its very core.

"Thus natural law is a true guarantee for everyone to live freely and with respect for their dignity, protected from all ideological manipulation and from all arbitrary abuses of the powerful.

"No one can disregard this appeal. If by reason of a tragic clouding of the collective conscience, skepticism and ethical relativism managed to annul the fundamental principles of natural moral law, the very democratic order itself would be profoundly undermined at its foundations."

This, of course, was what C. S. Lewis warned of in The Abolition of Man. As it is, such relativism has created at once a bloated hive of neo-paganism and milk-sops of its leaders, trying so hard to avoid the land mines of the politically-correct multiculturalism of the West.

Extreme examples of how such positivist relativism can destroy right judgment are rampant. It creates pagans of individuals unable to appeal to natural law, nattering nincompoops, and societies where might IS right for those with the money, savvy, and wherewithal to gain the upper hand through the democratic processes founded upon natural law in the first place. Read the ZENIT article here.

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