A Defense of Thomistic Natural Law - by Howard P. Kainz, Ph.D.

In HPR

Natural law theory has a long and distinguished pedigree in the Western world, beginning in ancient Greece, where major philosophers refer to a certain law or laws superseding human laws. Anaximander, Pythagoras, Heraclitus, and Anaxagoras propounded theories of cosmic harmony and the way that humans should, or do, participate in it; and Hippias (ca. 460-390 B.C.) spoke about a divine law that can never and nowhere be superseded. Plato in his Republic and Laws speaks of an ideal “divine” law existing prior to all human affairs; and Aristotle, in offering advice to defense lawyers in his Rhetoric gives examples of civil and criminal cases where the lawyer could cite generally recognized but unwritten “universal” laws which have priority over the state-sanctioned laws which their clients are accused of breaking.

Natural law attained a certain preeminence in Christianity due to St. Paul’s invocation (Romans 2:14-16, 21-24) of a “law engraved on the hearts” of pagans who had never heard of Jewish laws, and Paul’s favorable contrast of such unbelievers with Jews who disobey the laws laid down in the Ten Commandments – Jews who “preach against stealing, yet steal; forbid adultery, yet commit adultery,” etc.

St. Paul may have been influenced by Stoic philosophers who held sway in his time, and extolled a supreme law of nature for all peoples. Among the Stoics, Cicero offered the first and strongest explicit defense of a law which:

cannot be contradicted by any other law, and is not liable either to derogation or abrogation. Neither the senate nor the people can give us any dispensation for not obeying this universal law of justice. It needs no other expositor and interpreter than our own conscience. It is not one thing at Rome, and another at Athens; one thing today and another tomorrow, but in all times and nations this universal law must for ever reign, eternal and imperishable. It is the sovereign master and emperor of all beings. God himself is its author, its promulgator, its enforcer.

Cicero’s concept of natural law was connected, of course, with his ideal of human participation in a harmonious and finely-tuned universe, presenting individuals and societies with an exemplar for ideal moral decision-making and conduct. In our own era of the “Big Bang” theory of cosmic explosion, and Darwinian theories about the evolution of the earth and living species, notions about human coordination with the “rhythms of nature” may seem overly idealistic or even poetic – although for some nature-lovers this idea still has appeal.

During the Middle Ages, Roman jurists like Ulpian and Gaius distinguished natural law from civil law and the “law of nations.”  Canonists of the Church, like Gratian and Rufinus, developed the theory of natural law even further, including incipient concepts of natural rights, as Brian Tierney shows in his excellent book, The Idea of Natural Rights.

St. Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274), and other Scholastics, brought these efforts to final fruition. Aquinas, in his Summa theologiae 1^a2^ae, Q. 94, discusses the general self-evident principle of ethics, “good is to be done, and evil avoided. In article 94:2, he shows how this general principle takes on flesh, so to speak, in three concrete precepts of the natural law:

The order of precepts of the natural law exists according to the order of natural inclinations … (1) Every substance seeks the preservation of its own being, according to its nature: and by reason of this inclination, whatever is a means of preserving human life, and of warding off its obstacles, belongs to the natural law … (2) Those things are said to belong to the natural law, which nature has taught to all animals, such as sexual intercourse, education of offspring and so forth … (3) Man has a natural inclination to know the truth about God, and to live in society: and in this respect, whatever pertains to this inclination belongs to the natural law; for instance, to shun ignorance, to avoid offending those among whom one has to live, and other such things regarding the above inclination.

These three precepts are not original with Aquinas, but were also held by predecessors, such as William of Auxerre and Roland of Cremona, and cited by subsequent scholastics, such as Francisco Suarez, S.J. (1548-1617), who writes, along the same lines, but with a slightly different emphasis:

Man is (as it were) an individual entity, and as such has an inclination to preserve his own being, and to safeguard his own welfare; he is also a being corruptible – that is to say, mortal – and as such is inclined towards the preservation of the species, and towards the actions necessary to that end; and finally, he is a rational being, and as such is suited for immortality, for spiritual perfection, and for communication with God, and social intercourse with rational creatures. Hence, the natural law brings man to perfection, with regard to every one of his tendencies and, in this capacity, it contains various precepts – for example, precepts of temperance and of fortitude, relating to the first tendency mentioned above; those of chastity and prudence, relating to the second tendency; and those of religion, justice and so forth, relating to the third tendency.

During the French Enlightenment, Montesquieu (1689-1775), in The Spirit of the Laws, describes the basic inclinations of the “law of nature” along the same lines as Aquinas:  “the preservation of one’s being” and “seeking for nourishment”; “the attraction arising from the difference of sexes”; and the “advantage of acquired knowledge” and the “desire of living in society.”

Without doubt, the third precept, which has to do with the special exigencies of rational beings, is the most important natural law mandate. It is this third precept that was reiterated by Protestant natural-law theorists, such as Grotius (1583-1645), Cumberland (1631-1718), and Pufendorf (1632-1694), who emphasized the natural altruism of humans and, like Aquinas, the necessity of developing rational and harmonious social structures.

It is often asserted that David Hume (1711-1776) “upset the apple cart” for natural law with the following pithy statement, widely taken out of context, in his Treatise of Human Nature, about not deriving an “ought” from an “is”:

{Morality} consists not in any matter of fact which can be discovered by the understanding … Can there be any difficulty in proving that vice and virtue are not matters of fact, whose existence we can infer by reason? … {However,} in every system of morality which I have hitherto met with … the author proceeds for some time in the ordinary way of reasoning, and establishes the being of a God, or makes observations concerning human affairs; when of a sudden I am surpriz’d to find that, instead of … Is, and Is not, I meet with … ought, or an ought not… This ought, or ought not … should be observ’d and explain’d… A reason should be given … how this new relation can be a deduction from others, which are entirely different from it.

This prohibition (popularly called “Hume’s Guillotine”) is interpreted by many contemporary philosophers as interdicting any further attempts to make moral judgements based on essential aspects of human nature. As an example of this interpretation, Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) would stand out as one of the first practitioners of Hume’s caveat. Kant, in his moral philosophy, proposed his “Categorical Imperative” (CI) as the general format for proper ethical reasoning: Employing the CI, the ethical decision-maker must dismiss all human inclinations, and, purely on the basis of the cerebral deliberations of practical reason, formulate only those “maxims” which one would be willing to stand as a universal norm for all humans. This formula has been widely criticized by modern philosophers. For example, R.M. Hare shows that, with a little tweaking, a hypothetical Nazi could devise a CI which would justify him in exterminating Jews.

Nevertheless, Darwin’s theory of natural selection of the species, coupled with various theories of the evolution of homo sapiens from the hunter-gatherer stage, have led to a conception of human nature as almost infinitely variable. This assumed variability seems to stand in the way of any attempts by moralists to derive some reasonably stable moral norms based on human nature.

Thus many contemporary ethicists try, like Kant, to adhere religiously to Hume’s “Guillotine,” focusing only on moral conclusions that can be derived from pure practical reason alone, without any distracting attention to the “facts” of human nature or the welter of human inclinations.

Philosophers are an ornery bunch, however, and many of them have tried to beat Hume at his game, by showing ways in which “oughts” can be, and are indeed, derived from “is.” But probably the best refutation of the supposed is-ought Guillotine comes from Hume himself, who, if one reads a little further in the Treatise, shows how he thinks the task of deriving “oughts” should take place:

See if you can find that matter of fact, or real existence, which you call vice. In which-ever way you take it, you find only certain passions, motives, volitions, and thoughts. There is no other matter of fact in the case. The vice entirely escapes you, as long as you consider the object. You never can find it, till you turn your reflection into your own breast, and find a sentiment of disapprobation, which arises in you, towards this action. Here is a matter of fact; but `tis the object of feeling, not of reason. It lies in yourself, not in the object. The fact that we feel a strong repugnance against murder leads us to conclude that murder is wrong.

In other words, there are facts … and there are facts. Hume was against deriving moral principles from certain “external” facts. Alasdair MacIntyre points to a tract read by Hume as a young man in a Presbyterian household, The Whole Duty of Man, which tried to deduce moral duties from Christian “facts” about creation of the world and man. I have suggested in my 2004 book, Natural Law: an Introduction and Reexamination, that Hume’s reaction was triggered by Ralph Cudworth (1617-1688) and Samuel Clarke (1675-1729), proponents of “rational morality” deducing moral truths from metaphysical and religious “facts.”

But Hume was not against derivation from “internal” facts. Quite the contrary, his moral theory is based on internal facts; and, because of that, he is frequently categorized as a “moral-sense” theorist. Moral-sense theory, insofar as it is concerned with basic human tendencies, has some affinity with natural law theory. As Frederick Copleston, S.J., concludes in Volume 5 of his History of Philosophy:

{Hume’s} insistence on the original constitution or fabric of human nature suggests that this nature is in some sense the foundation of morality or, in other words, that there is a natural law which is promulgated by reason apprehending human nature in its teleological and dynamic aspect.

In the 20^th century, some unsettling developments led to a re-consideration of the existence of a natural law. In 1945-46, the Nuremberg trials, in which the victors in WWII condemned and executed Nazi officials who arguably were following the laws of their country, raised the question, “on the basis of what law are we judging them?” Is there some superior law, or are there superior laws, to which even the properly legislated laws of the nations have to be subject? For infractions of these higher laws can “law-abiding” citizens of those nations be condemned?

Proponents of such an overarching law began to speak out. Lon Fuller, Jerome Frank, and others voiced renewed support of natural law, and skepticism about the prevailing hegemony of “legal realism.” The Universal Declaration of Human Rights adopted by the U.N. in 1948 may be seen as an additional movement for clarifying laws and rights that stand above all national and civil enactments.

In the Catholic Church during the 60s, new cultural strains added to the quest for information about eternal and universal laws which might trump the positive laws enacted by regimes, and even democratic polities. The emergence and popularity of the contraceptive pill, combined with the invocation of natural law against contraception by Pope Paul VI, led to renewed debates by theologians and philosophers concerning the validity of natural law. The widespread opposition of theologians, priests and prelates, as well as lay Catholics, to Pope Paul VI’s 1968 encyclical against contraception, Humanae vitae, is still fresh in the memory of many older Catholics. Dissident theologians published a full page ad in the New York Times advising Catholics to just follow their conscience, and not be concerned about the overly negative restrictions in the encyclical.

But then, in an attempt to dispel the confusion and defend Catholic tradition, a “New Natural Law” theory arrived on the scene, championed by Catholic “analytic” philosophers – John Finnis, Germain Grisez, and others. Depending on reason and logical analysis alone, and purporting to avoid any dependence on the facts connected with human nature, they devised a set of seven basic, self-evident values from which moral norms could be safely derived: (1) knowledge; (2) life; (3) play; (4) aesthetic experience; (5) sociability (friendship); (6) practical reasonableness (applying one’s intelligence to problems and situations); and (7) religion and pursuit of ultimate questions about the cosmos and life.

They came to the defense of the Pope with a robust brief for defending reproductive sexuality, against the inroads of the contraceptive mentality. Finnis, in a 1970 article, Natural Law and Unnatural Acts,” in the Heythrop Journal, argued:

What, in the last analysis, makes sense of the conditions of the marital enterprise, its stability and exclusiveness, is not the worthy and delightful sentiments of love and affection which invite one to marry, but the desire for and demands of a procreative community, a family. Some sexual acts are (as types of choice) always wrong because of an inadequate response, or direct closure, to the basic procreative value that they put in question.

This “new” natural law style of thinking is arguably connected with the second “self-evident” value – namely, life – proposed by Finnis; but Finnis, in his discussion of the value of “practical reasonableness,” presents it as a demonstration of the way that this “6^th value” must be coordinated with respect for other “basic values.” He takes as one example, the position of the Catholic Church regarding contraception:

The principal bearer of an explicit theory about natural law happens, in our civilization, to have been the Roman Catholic Church … That Church has stringently elaborated the implications of the seventh requirement {of the sixth value – namely, that practical reasonableness should embody respect for every basic value in every act}, as those implications concern the basic values of life (including the procreative transmission of life), truth (including truth in communication), and religion. And it has formulated those implications in strict negative principle, such as those declaring wrongful any killing of the innocent, any anti-procreative sexual acts, and lying and blasphemy.

The New Natural Law theory offers to many an approach to moral decision-making, based on important values; but, because of its lack of interest in facts about human nature, constitutes a break with the tradition and history of natural law discussed above. Most importantly, the claim to self-evidence of the seven pivotal values (and their subdivisions) is less than persuasive. I became somewhat skeptical about this in reading the chapters concerning each of the self-evident values, in Finnis’ book, Natural Law and Natural Rights. When, for instance, one reads the relatively long chapter (20 pages), full of arguments, about the value of knowledge, one begins to wonder about the purported “self-evidence” of this value: What are we to conclude ethically from knowledge-valuation? That education is important? That knowledge is to be sought for its own sake? That we should not do anything until we have sufficient knowledge of consequences?

Similar excogitations could result regarding the interrelationships between the seven “basic values”: One could, for example, argue in favor of contraception from a reflection on Finnis’ sixth value, practical reasonableness – the desire of spacing offspring in view of economic contingencies, social frameworks, etc.

Like other critics, I have come to view New Natural Law as an interesting moral theory, which may give some guidance for people of good will in making moral decisions, but is not strictly a natural law theory.

Traditional natural law theories, beginning with an analysis of major human inclinations, lead to a philosophical examination of what it means to be a human being, a member of the animal species, and, most importantly, a rational animal. An interesting characteristic of the three precepts of natural law defined by Aquinas, and others, is that they are also, at one and the same time, natural rights. As Brian Tierney points out in The Idea of Natural Rights, self-preservation is one of the chief intuitively obvious duties discussed, over and over again, by medieval and late medieval thinkers; but it is also considered an inalienable right. The dual nature of self-preservation as a duty and a right is frequently brought up in commentaries on the ideas of William of Ockham and Jean Gerson. Thus, the medievalists defended, for example, giving a starving person the moral right to steal from the rich; and the moral right of a person whose life is threatened to kill the aggressor, if necessary.

This dual duty/right aspect is common to all three precepts of natural law: The duty of self-preservation is likewise the right of self-preservation; the duty of conscientious reproduction is also the right of reproducing (now restricted or prohibited for millions by totalitarian governments); and the duty of seeking the truth and building up rational societies is also the right of knowing the truth and contributing to the development of a rightly organized society. Other inclinations do not have this characteristic. The tendency to have power over others is not the right to do so; the tendency to be promiscuous is not the right to be so; the tendencies to lie or steal are not rights to do so.

Jeremy Bentham, the 18^th century champion of utilitarian moral theory, criticized natural law as a theory which was so vague and indeterminate that almost anything could be justified by an appeal to “nature.” Stephen Buckle, in his article on “Natural Law” in the Cambridge Companion to Ethics, complains that natural law cannot go beyond a few generalities concerned with being “rational.” However, in Aquinas’ theory, each of the three precepts intuitively generates very specific duties.

No extensive ratiocination is necessary to realize that self-preservation obligates individuals to take care of their health, not overeat, avoid drunkenness, refrain from unnecessary risks, work to earn subsistence, not overwork, and avoid greed – just to mention a few of the obvious implications. The precept about procreation and nurturance of offspring should lead the thoughtful person, without too much hair-splitting, to take sex seriously, avoiding casual liaisons, avoiding a contraceptive mentality, caring for physical and spiritual well being of offspring, even into adulthood, cooperating with even difficult spouses in raising offspring, except where violence, etc. infringes on one’s rights or the rights of one’s children, and possibly even working to overcome anti-reproductive policies of oppressive governments. Finally, as mentioned above, the precept to pursue the truth, both in the theoretic and practical realms, is the most important for humans, and indicates that everyone, according to their capacities, should educate themselves on all important issues, especially regarding God and religion, examining both sides to avoid bias; that voters should inform themselves on issues and candidates in democratic societies; that all should contribute according to their talents and opportunities to their neighborhood or community; and so forth.

Some contemporary values seem to contradict each of the three natural law precepts, and need to be considered:(1) Suicidal tendencies can be understood as desires to escape what appear to be intolerable suffering, either physical or mental or emotional; and seem to contradict the self-preservation instinct, and sometimes require heroic resistance. But with these tendencies the desire for self-preservation is still there, but thought to be no longer possible because of the loss of a sense of health or well-being. And there is, of course, no mandate to use extraordinary measures to stay alive when natural death is imminent. (2) The problem of “overpopulation” is a mythical problem, as I have argued elsewhere, along with many others (see e.g. www.pop.org), and a very strange myth in a world where numerous countries are now facing a demographic winter. In any case, one does nothing for the world by contraception, although personal increases in wealth and lifestyle may result from childless marriages. (3) Most importantly, contradictory theories and relativism in morals may discourage many from even trying to pursue the truth. How can we ever know the truth when there are so many contradictory theories about the cosmos and the world? How can we be sure about right and wrong when there are such rampant disagreements about basic life choices? But this is the wrong question. The important thing is to seek the truth, both in theoretical and practical matters; this is a lifelong pursuit, and ordinarily will result in some successes.

Christianity, with the Decalogue and the Golden Rule, receives welcome support from natural law theory, but of course, goes seriously beyond it with its commandment of love even of enemies, of going the “extra mile,” of forgiveness, of lending without asking for repayment, etc. So natural law has built-in limitations. If there is any other moral theory besides natural law that provides even better guidance for major and common life decisions, then this theory should be proposed, and natural law should take the proverbial back seat.

The chief alternate choices of moral theories at present seem to be reduced to two: Kantian moral theory, depending on moral “universalizability” is taught in most courses on ethics now in our colleges and universities. But I am not the only one who has found it almost impossible, after ignoring (according to Kant’s requirement), my inclinations, to come to good, solid ethical decisions in the crossroads of life by deliberating whether I could, without self-contradiction, will everyone in the world to make the decision I am contemplating.

Probably the most popular ethical theory today, for public officials as well as for private citizens who have never heard of the theory, is utilitarianism, which instructs us to always do what will procure the greatest amount of happiness for the greatest number of people. If we were clear on what the greatest “happiness” consists of, and what sort of happiness the greatest number of people are looking for, it would be easier to apply the theory. But, as it stands, noted utilitarian theorists like Peter Singer, and ordinary practicing utilitarians like Barak Obama, strangely find even things like infanticide to be moral. We may react to such things like the observers of the Nuremberg Trials, wondering whether there might be some basic, maybe unwritten, universal laws that trump some of the strange avatars of moral laws that come on the scene and seem to be considered authoritative by masses of “experts.”

Threats to Religious Freedom in Europe - by Roger Trigg

In The Public Discourse

At the end of May, the Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights (the final European Court of Appeal) rejected a request for referral to it of three contentious religious freedom cases from the United Kingdom. This means that the European Court’s initial less-than-friendly rulings on religious freedom still stand, and they will undoubtedly help erode respect for religious freedom throughout Europe.

The court, under the auspices of the Council of Europe, is distinct from the agencies of the European Union, and processes litigation from forty-seven countries, including Russia and Turkey. Over the years, the council’s Parliamentary Assembly has betrayed an endemic suspicion of religion, and following a tradition of French secularism, has tended to see religion as a threat to human freedom, instead of its possible basis.

This thinking can be traced to the later French Enlightenment, with its exaltation of a rationalism that led to materialism, and markedly differs from the early Enlightenment thought of John Locke. Locke believed reason was rooted in divine nature, the “candle of the Lord” as he put it. His deep influence on English politics in the Glorious Revolution of 1689 and the American founding resulted in documents that upheld a divine grounding for human rights.

In contradiction of this view, the Council of Europe affirmed in 2007 that “states must require religious leaders to take an unambiguous stand in favour of the precedence of human rights, as set forth in the European Convention of Human Rights, over any religious principle.”

It is ironic that freedom of religion is expressly protected by the Convention and that the council recognizes this protection, because now the right to manifest one’s religion is highly qualified. In the council’s words, “a religion whose doctrine or practice [runs] counter to other fundamental rights would be unacceptable.”

In Europe, as opposed to the United States, freedom of religion translates to “freedom of religion or belief,” a phrase that covers not just atheism, but “philosophies” like vegetarianism or environmentalism. “Religion,” however defined, is no longer regarded as a unique contribution to the common good.

The result of this is that when more systems of belief invoke protection, the less effective that protection can be. When everything is protected nothing can be. “Freedom of religion or belief,” a concept that can only be broadly and vaguely defined, is easily subordinated to wider considerations of public policy.

The idea that religion cannot claim rights when other “fundamental” rights are jeopardized fails to do justice to the freedom of religion. When rights clash, we shouldn’t think that one trumps another. If rights are important, each should continue to matter, despite a clash, and should be accommodated as far as possible. One of the cases that the Grand Chamber refused to take perfectly illustrates this problem.

Lillian Ladele was a civil registrar working in London for the Borough of Islington. When civil partnerships between same-sex couples were introduced, she believed she could not in good conscience, as a Christian, officiate at the ceremonies. The Borough wished to uphold gay rights, and made an example of her. She lost her job, although colleagues could easily have conducted the ceremonies, and she could have continued doing the same work she had done for many years.

No attempt was made to accommodate her, and the court seemed to take no interest in the promising idea of reasonable accommodation. The reason could only be that social priorities, such as the promotion of homosexual equality, have to take precedence over any idea of religious freedom.

Even in England, there seems to be a growing suspicion of religion, and a desire to minimize its influence. This is particularly true as Parliament seems set to redefine marriage without ensuring adequate safeguards for those with conscientious objections, such as civil registrars, teachers, and parents, among many others.

Religion is too often seen in Europe as divisive and threatening, and associated with bigotry and dogmatism rather than reason. The view seems to be that we need freedom from religion, not for it. All too often religion is thought of as opposed to reason. An immediate corollary of this view is that it cannot contribute to public, rational debate. It may be tolerated as the private pursuit of those who choose it, but public policy should not take account of it, let alone be grounded on any religious view. It is in this spirit that public displays of religious belief are often prohibited. That prohibition is itself a symbol of deeper attitudes concerning the public role of religion.

The other two cases that the court refused to hear concerned the wearing of crosses. One case invoked somewhat spurious health and safety grounds against wearing the cross, but the court was unwilling to correct hospital managers who claimed that a nurse’s wearing of a cross was a health hazard.

In the second case, the initial European Court hearing accepted that a British Airways employee could wear a cross, as a manifestation of her belief. This ruling was an advance on the rulings of other English courts that wearing a cross is not a “core” requirement of the Christian faith, and so is not a proper manifestation of that faith.

A disturbing feature of this case was different courts’ willingness to venture into theological territory and rule on theological priorities. Lillian Ladele had been similarly told that beliefs about marriage are not central to Christianity, and courts have also recently said the same about not working on Sundays. Some Christians work on Sunday, the line goes, so there can be no substantive objection. These cases show us that freedom of religion is progressively narrowing down to freedom of worship. The right to worship in church on a Sunday is enough, though ironically that criterion doesn’t seem to protect those who wish not to work on Sundays so that they can worship.

In England, following previous European judgments, the view has been that freedom of religion is adequately protected by freedom of contract. If you do not wish to work on Sunday, and your employer requires you to, you can resign. Yet the freedom to be unemployed is not much of a freedom.

At root is an undervaluing not just of religious freedom, but of religion itself. Attitudes are typified by the remarks of Lord Justice Laws in the English Court of Appeal, concerning a case that went to the European Court. A relationship counselor who had conscientious objections to advising same-sex couples lost his job. Laws responded, “in the eye of everyone save the believer, religious faith is necessarily subjective, being incommunicable by any kind of proof or evidence.” He further said that protecting a position on purely religious grounds “is irrational, as preferring the subjective over the objective, but it is also divisive, capricious and arbitrary.”

By thus glibly separating religious faith from any claim to rationality, Laws rejected centuries of theological and philosophical thought. He followed our modern tendency to see reason and religion as fundamentally opposed. The result is inevitably to see religion as a potential danger to society, outside the scope of rational discourse, and hence able to contribute little to the wider good.

All religions form minority communities in Europe today, and secularist assumptions are becoming daily more influential. Different countries still recognize the traditional relationship between church and state, but even where this recognition exists it is more and more under threat.

Muslims and Jews, for example, both see in the Establishment of the Church of England a lingering respect for the role of religion in society. “Establishment” is no longer a vehicle for Anglican privilege, as it perhaps once was, let alone any financial advantage. Instead it provides an umbrella under which different religions can shelter and still claim a public voice together.

Despite efforts to sideline the Christian faith in particular, and all religion in general, the Anglican Church still reminds people that religion has formed the fabric of the nation. Yet the danger is that, as Locke saw, human rights themselves may not be justifiable without some religious foundation. Allowing human rights always to “trump” any manifestation of religious belief is in the end going to corrode one of the most important supports for our collective understanding of the role and importance of those rights.

In a new resolution on human rights and religion and belief in April, the Council of Europe seemed to stress more positively than previously “the importance of upholding freedom of conscience and religion.” The Parliamentary Assembly called on member states to “ensure that the religious beliefs and traditions of individuals and communities of the society are respected, while guaranteeing that a due balance is struck with the rights of others in accordance with the case law of the European Court of Human Rights.” It also stressed that states should “accommodate religious beliefs in the public sphere . . . providing that the rights of others to be free from discrimination are respected and that the access to lawful services is guaranteed.”

All this sounds well and good, but the qualifications ensure that religious rights are likely still to be trumped by other rights. The recent refusal by the Grand Chamber to hear the cases described above proves the point. Freedom from discrimination will not include freedom from discrimination on grounds of religion. Words like “accommodation” and “balance” won’t carry any real weight in the European Court. If reasonable accommodation were the aim, the Grand Chamber would have seized the opportunity to hear the cases, in which other demands trumped the right to manifest religious belief.

Obispos exhortan a uruguayos a buscar derogación del aborto

MONTEVIDEO, 20 Jun. 13 / 12:35 pm (ACI/EWTN Noticias).- La Conferencia Episcopal del Uruguay (CEU) dio a conocer una exhortación en la que solicitan a los fieles que apoyen la realización del referéndum para derogar la ley del aborto, expresando esta postura de manera explícita el próximo domingo 23 de junio.

A continuación, el texto completo de la exhortación de los prelados uruguayos:

1. Como dijimos en nuestra declaración del 13 de noviembre pasado: "Los derechos humanos y este primordial derecho a la vida no pueden quedar sujetos a mayorías circunstanciales de un cuerpo legislativo o electoral. Sin embargo, ante la situación que se ha creado, sigue siendo el deber de los laicos católicos y de los hombres y mujeres de buena voluntad aportar sus esfuerzos para procurar que nuestra legislación respete el derecho a la vida humana desde su concepción. Quedando en manos de los ciudadanos la elección de los medios que estimen oportunos, alentamos las iniciativas legítimas que busquen la derogación de esta ley."

2. Los uruguayos tenemos ahora la oportunidad de cambiar con nuestro voto el rumbo de las cosas y darle un sí a la vida de los niños, lo que nos permitirá mirar con esperanza nuestro futuro como nación.

3. El derecho a la vida no puede nunca ser objeto de un referéndum, desde el momento que proviene de Dios. Sin embargo, ante esta ley injusta, dado que nuestra Constitución prevé que los ciudadanos puedan expresar su voluntad de derogarla, exhortamos a votar el próximo domingo 23 de junio con el fin de que se habilite la convocatoria del referéndum sobre la ley que hoy permite el crimen del aborto.Los Obispos del Uruguay.

Cultural imperialism on the march - Obama Promotes Gay Pride Worldwide - by Robert R. Reilly

In MercatorNet

As June approaches, get ready for the official celebration of “Gay Pride Month” by US embassies abroad.

If sodomy and same-sex marriage are constitutional rights, what is their relationship to American foreign policy? Despite the tremendous controversy regarding these issues within the United States, the Obama administration has gone ahead and placed them at the center of US diplomacy. Why? In Libido Dominandi, E. Michael Jones wrote that the rationalization of sexual misbehavior “could only calm the troubled conscience in an effective manner when it was legitimized by the regime in power… [which] went on in the name of high moral purpose to make this vision normative for the entire world.”

Therefore, the Obama administration, after promoting homosexual rights and marriage in the US, has undertaken the task of universalizing the rationalization for sodomitical behavior and is doing so with high moral rhetoric – in this case, by appropriating the language of human rights.

The effort began in earnest on International Human Rights Day, December 6, 2011, with a powerful pair of events. President Obama issued a memorandum for the heads of executive departments and agencies, directing them “to ensure that US diplomacy and foreign assistance promote and protect the human rights of LGBT persons”. Mr Obama said that, “The struggle to end discrimination against lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) persons is a global challenge, and one that is central to the United States commitment to promoting human rights”.

The departments and agencies included the Departments of State, the Treasury, Defense, Justice, Agriculture, Commerce, Health and Human Services, and Homeland Security, the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), the Millennium Challenge Corporation, the Export Import Bank, the United States Trade Representative, and “such other agencies as the President may designate.” All US agencies engaged abroad were directed to prepare a report each year “on their progress toward advancing these initiatives”.

Austin Ruse, president of the Catholic Family and Human Rights Institute, explained,

“They have directed their embassies everywhere to monitor and assist domestic homosexual movements whether the host country and their people accept it or not. The US is very powerful and can force governments to submit to its social-policy views. They are intent on forcing homosexual ‘marriage’ and homosexual adoption on countries that are offended by such things. They are intent on forcing sexual orientation and gender identity as new categories of non-discrimination that will trump the rights of religious believers… Most people recognize that the homosexual lifestyle is harmful to public health and morals. The effect of the Obama policy is to offend billions of people and force this view on reluctant governments. This is most especially offensive to countries that are predominantly Christian and Muslim. In fact, Christianity and Islam are among the chief obstacles of this agenda and policy.” 

State Department sophistry

While President Obama took the action, Hillary Clinton, then US Secretary of State, gave the rationale in an International Human Rights Day speech on the same day, December 6, in which she proclaimed that that “gay rights are human rights, and human rights are gay rights”. She also announced that the US would give more than US$3 million to a new Global Equality Fund in order to help civil society organizations promote homosexual advocacy.

Mrs. Clinton came energetically to the defense of those “forced to suppress or deny who they are to protect themselves from harm. I am talking about gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender people”, whom she described with a strong Rousseauian echo as “human beings born free and given bestowed equality and dignity…” But, if they were born free, why are they not free now? No doubt, because society oppresses them, just as South Africa once oppressed its black population through apartheid – an example Mrs. Clinton gives. But history overcame that, and since, as Rousseau taught, man is a product of history, history can overcome this, too. Thus, Mrs. Clinton ends with the admonition, “Be on the right side of history”.  

It is a testimony to the influence of Rousseau that Secretary Clinton should have appealed to history for the vindication of “gay” rights rather than to moral principle. Had it been the latter, she would have had to say rather that, in order “to protect themselves from harm”, LGBT persons should “suppress” precisely that part of themselves inclined to indulge in disordered sexual acts, just as anyone should resist their inclinations to immoral acts, whatever their kind.

Mrs Clinton averred that “being LGBT does not make you less human”. That is certainly so, unless you consistently give in to one of these disordered inclinations. In a parallel case, being an alcoholic also does not make you less human. However, practicing alcoholism by living life in an inebriated stupor does make you less human in the Aristotelian sense that it impairs your Nature or incapacitates you fulfilling it. If it is virtue that enables man to reach his natural end in becoming fully human, then it is vice that prevents him from doing so, thus making him less human.

Fully embracing the rationalization of the same-sex cause, Secretary Clinton espoused “gender identity” as equivalent to being black or being a woman. It is “who they are”. In a moment of humility, she stated that, “my own country’s record on human rights for gay people is far from perfect. Until 2003, it was still a crime in parts of our country.”

It was? What was it? Being homosexual or lesbian was not a crime in the United States, so what was she referring to? Mrs. Clinton never said, but the it to which she alluded is sodomy, the elephant in the room. She repeated the mantra that “it is a violation of human rights when governments declare it illegal to be gay…” and “it should never be a crime to be gay”. One would have to agree in so far as persecution of and violence against homosexuals is concerned but, as Austin Ruse has pointed out, “Such attacks upon individuals are already recognized as violations of human rights in international law particularly in the 1966 Covenants implementing the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and other existing treaties”. This, then, is moving beyond that to the moral and legal endorsement of certain behavior. Some governments continue to have laws against homosexual acts, which is not the same thing as violating their rights as human beings. Was Mrs Clinton saying that it is a violation of human rights to declare sodomy illegal?

Apparently, for that would be consistent with an understanding of Section 1 in the Obama directive, instructing agencies abroad to engage in “Combating Criminalization of LGBT Status or Conduct Abroad”(emphasis added). What kind of conduct might this be? The only conduct that is or has been consistently criminalized by many countries is sodomy. Morally speaking, sodomy is a fairly unattractive act. Why should it not be criminalized? Perhaps there are prudential reasons for not doing so, but what might be the moral objections to such laws?

The somewhat evasive answer in the Presidential Memorandum is because “no country should deny people their rights because of who they love…” In her speech, Mrs Clinton echoed this response and set this test: “We need to ask ourselves, ‘How would it feel if it were a crime to love the person I love?’”

Well, that depends.

What if the person one loves is already married? What if the person one loves is a sibling? How about a teacher in love with a student? Or a pastor in love with a choir boy? Or an uncle with his niece? Acting upon any of these loves in a sexual relationship is, in most places, a crime. It is not so much whom one loves, but how one loves. How it would feel does not really matter since, in each of these cases, it is morally wrong to sexualize the relationship. Feelings do not change the moral nature of an act.

Why, if all the above cases deserve prohibition, do homosexuals deserve an exemption when it comes to sodomy? Secretary Clinton never said why we should feel for them and not for any of those mentioned above, nor did she raise any of the above examples of criminal love as violations of human rights. Why not?

Rationalizing immoral behaviour

As with all rationalizations for moral misbehavior, Mrs. Clinton’s speech was rife with denials of reality, three of which came in one sentence. She said, “Now, there are some who say and believe that all gay people are pedophiles, that homosexuality is a disease that can become caught or cured, or that gays recruit others to become gay. Well, these notions are simply not true”.

Well, these notions have to be seen as not true for her to promote the “gay” agenda internationally and get away with it. I have never met anyone who believes that all homosexuals are pedophiles, but many of them are certainly pederasts. By setting up the pedophile straw man, Mrs. Clinton avoids this unpleasant reality. Whether homosexuality is a disease or not (it is certainly a disorder), there is ample evidence that it can be cured. Of course, a fair number of people float into homosexuality in their youth and float out again as they mature – no cure required. So much for its being an immutable characteristic.

Others who have become immersed in this life and who later wish to leave it have successfully done so through a variety of therapies. In 1995, the New York Times reported that “Dr Charles W. Socarides offered the closest thing to hope that many homosexuals had in the 1960s: the prospect of a cure. Rather than brand them as immoral or regard them as criminal, Dr Socarides, a New York psychoanalyst, told homosexuals that they suffered from an illness whose effects could be reversed.” Dr Socarides said that his cure rate was about one third. For Secretary Clinton to deny this is an enormous disservice to the very people whose rights she purports to be defending.

Lastly, the bigger the lie, the bolder the assertion – as in Mrs. Clinton’s outright denial that “gays recruit others to become gay”. In my professional career in the arts, I witnessed such recruitment, saw its occasional success, and was several times the object of it. Anyone with a rudimentary knowledge of the homosexual subculture could not possibly make such a statement.

Otherwise, Mrs. Clinton could have referred to homosexual literature, such as Lavender Culture (1994), in which Gerald Hannon described the need for a youth recruitment campaign: “I believe…we have to behave in a certain way vis-à-vis young people. I believe that means we have to proselytize… The answer is to proselytize. Aggressively so”. He added that, “To attract young people to the gay movement in large numbers should be the challenge to the next phase of the movement. It is a challenge we have set ourselves…” This is not to say that all homosexuals recruit, but to assert that none do is a complete denial of reality – which, after all, is the point of the rationalization.

The State Department celebrates

What this is all about was very clear from the 2006 Yogykarta Principles on the Application of International Human Rights Law in relation to Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity, adopted by the International Commission of Jurists, the International Service for Human Rights, and homosexual activists to influence the interpretation of the articles of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, all UN human rights treaties, and international law as a whole. One requirement of the Principles is to: “Repeal criminal and other legal provisions that prohibit or are, in effect, employed to prohibit consensual sexual activity among people of the same sex who are over the age of consent…” This is the nub of the issue. It is not the status of homosexuals that is so much the matter, as it is the status of their conduct.

In 2008, the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, France introduced a statement at the UN General Assembly, titled Joint Statement on Sexual Orientation, Gender Identity and Human Rights. It proclaimed that, “We urge States to take all the necessary measures, in particular legislative or administrative, to ensure that sexual orientation or gender identity may under no circumstances be the basis for criminal penalties, in particular executions, arrests or detention”. The Statement was signed by 66 nations.

Under the George W. Bush administration, the United States declined, but in 2009 the Barack Obama administration signed the Statement. While the Statement did not go as far as the Yogykarta Principles, it was clearly headed in that direction. The majority of the criminal penalties it was decrying were not, as the Statement disingenuously suggests, aimed at orientation, but at activity. It is the activity that must be vindicated and blessed as a universal human right.

One of the most immediate results of the priority given to the homosexual cause by President Obama and Secretary Clinton has been the profusion of “gay pride” commemorations and celebrations in US embassies abroad. June is the month singled out for this because, in 2000, President Bill Clinton declared June “Gay and Lesbian Pride Month”, with the last Sunday reserved as Gay Pride Day. June was chosen to commemorate the anniversary of the Stonewall riots as the beginning of “gay” liberation. Ever since, every government agency has observed it. As of 2011, it moved overseas as part of US foreign policy.

Therefore, the US Embassy in Islamabad celebrated its first-ever lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) “pride celebration” with an event on June 26, 2011. The embassy said the purpose of meeting was to demonstrate “support for human rights, including LGBT rights, in Pakistan at a time when those rights are increasingly under attack from extremist elements throughout Pakistani society.” Richard Hoagland, the US deputy chief of mission, was quoted on the embassy website, as saying, “I want to be clear that the US Embassy is here to support you and stand by your side every step of the way”.

However, it is Pakistan’s Penal Code, not extremist elements, that, in Section 377 (introduced at the time of British colonialism), states, “Whoever voluntarily has carnal intercourse against the order of nature with any man, woman or animal, shall be punished… with imprisonment of either description for a term which shall not be less than two years nor more than ten years, and shall also be liable to fine.”

If the Pakistani embassy in Washington DC held a public event in which it encouraged that the domestic laws in the United States be changed in order to re-criminalize sodomy, we might be somewhat surprised and irritated. Why should the Pakistani people be less annoyed by the US Embassy telling them to change its laws in order to decriminalize sodomy? Why exactly is that our business?

All Islamic groups in Pakistan condemned the “pride” event as a form of “cultural terrorism” against democratic Pakistan. Students protested against what they called “the attempts of the United States to promote vulgarity in Islamic societies under the pretext of human rights”. One speaker at a demonstration said, “Now the United States wants to project and promote objectionable, unnatural, abnormal behaviors under the pretext of equality and human rights, which is not at all acceptable… If you destroy the morality of the society, you have destroyed it completely.”  

In Nairobi, Kenya, June, 2012, the US Embassy hosted what is thought to be the first “Gay Pride” event in that country. John Haynes, a public affairs officer at the US embassy, introduced the event: "The US government for its part has made it clear that the advancement of human rights for LGBT people is central to our human rights policies around the world and to the realization of our foreign policy goals". Homosexual acts are illegal in Kenya, just as they were in parts of the United States until 2003. Now, as part of our foreign policy, apparently we tell Kenya to change its laws.

The US Embassy in Vientiane, Laos, proudly displays webpage news from its 2012 “first-ever Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender (LGBT) Pride event on June 25 in Vientiane. The event, called ‘Proud to be Us!’, was produced by a group of young Lao LGBT activists and featured music, dance, skits, and dramas exploring issues faced by LGBT people in Laos today, such as discrimination, gender roles, and sexual health”.

On the webpage of the US Embassy in Prague, Czech Republic, a joint statement was issued which the US ambassador, Norman Eisen, had signed. It declared: “On the occasion of the 2nd annual Prague Pride Festival (2012), we express our solidarity with the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender communities of the Czech Republic in their celebration… The Prague Pride Festival reminds us that ensuring LGBT rights is an important aspect of fulfilling our broader international human rights commitments since the full recognition of those rights is still one of the world’s remaining human rights challenges. Safeguarding human rights and guarding against intolerance requires constant vigilance in the Czech Republic, as in all our countries. Therefore today, we align ourselves with the Prague Pride participants…”

This type of thing at US embassies has become standard. As then-Secretary of State Clinton proclaimed in June, 2012: “United States Embassies and Missions throughout the world are working to defend the rights of LGBT people of all races, religions, and nationalities as part of our comprehensive human rights policy and as a priority of our foreign policy. From Riga, where two US Ambassadors and a Deputy Assistant Secretary marched in solidarity with Baltic Pride; to Nassau, where the Embassy joined together with civil society to screen a film about LGBT issues in Caribbean societies; to Albania, where our Embassy is coordinating the first-ever regional Pride conference for diplomats and activists to discuss human rights and shared experiences”.

Forcing other countries to adopt US standards

As in Pakistan, there has been some blowback from the effort to legitimize sodomy and promote same-sex marriage. When the acting ambassador in El Salvador, Mari Carmen Aponte, wrote an op-ed in a major Salvadoran newspaper, La Prensa Grafica, implying that the disapproval of homosexual behavior is animated by “brutal hostility” and “aggression” by “those who promote hatred”, a group of pro-family associations fought back. On July 6, 2011, they wrote,

“Ms. Aponte, in clear violation of the rules of diplomacy and international rights laws, you intend to impose to (sic) Salvadorans, disregarding our profound Christian values, rooted in natural law, a new vision of foreign and bizarre values, completely alien to our moral fiber, intending to disguise this as ‘human rights’… The only thing we agree with from your article, is to repudiate violence against homosexuals, bisexuals, transsexuals, etc.; Against these, just the same as against skinny, fat, tall or short ... This of course does not mean accepting the legal union between same sex individuals or to add new types of families like bisexual, tri-sexual, multi-sexual and the full range of sexual preferences. Not accepting the legitimacy of ‘sexual diversity’ does not mean we are violating any human right. There can be no talk of progress if this is how ‘modern’ is defined. We prefer to feel proudly ‘old fashioned’, keep our moral values, preserve our families and possess the clarity of what defines good and evil.” 

As mentioned above, Secretary Clinton said that “gay rights are human rights, and human rights are gay rights”. The problem with this should be self-evident. The promotion of gay rights must come at the expense of the promotion of human rights because the two notions are immiscible. One is founded on the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God and the other on moral relativism, which eviscerates the very idea of natural rights and the natural law on which they are based. If you have one, you cannot have the other. You have your rights by virtue of being a human being, and not by anything else – not ethnicity, not religion, not race, not tribe, not sexual orientation.

I deplore, for instance, the persecution of Baha’is in Iran and the persecution of Ahamdis in Pakistan. Being a Baha’i or being an Ahmadi no doubt constitutes the identity of these people who are being persecuted. Nonetheless, there is no such thing as Ahmadi rights or Baha’i rights: there are only human rights. And our defense of them comes precisely at the level of principle in the inalienable right to freedom of conscience, freedom of religion, and freedom of expression.

Were we to construct such a thing as Ahmadi rights or Baha’i rights or “gay” rights, we would be eviscerating the foundations for those very human rights, which have to be universal by definition in order to exist. If one has rights as a Baha’i, what happens to those rights if one converts to, say Christianity? Does one then lose one’s Baha’i rights and obtain new Christian rights? What happens to one’s “gay” rights if one goes straight?

One does not possess or attain rights in this way. They are inalienable because one possesses them by virtue of one’s human nature – not due to any other specificity regarding race, class, gender or religion. Either they exist at that level, or they do not exist at all. If someone tries to appropriate human rights for something that applies to less than everyone, then you may be sure that they are undermining very notion of human rights. If there are abuses, and this includes abuses against homosexuals, then they should be opposed from the perspective of human rights, not manufactured rights that obtain to just a specific group.

If the United States wishes to promote democratic principles and constitutional rule in other countries, but insists on inserting a manufactured right such as “gay” rights as integral to that program, it will be rejected overall by religious people and by those who, through the examination of moral philosophy, have arrived at the existence of human rights from natural law. If we wish not only to make ourselves irrelevant, but an object of derision in the Muslim and other parts of world, all we have to do is openly promote the rationalization of homosexual behavior, which is explicitly taught against as inherently immoral by Islam and, in fact, by every minority religion in those Muslim-majority countries, including Christianity and Judaism.

If we wish to make this part of American public diplomacy, as we have been doing, we can surrender the idea that the United States is promoting democracy in those countries because they are already responding, “If this is democracy, we don’t want it, thank you; we would rather keep our faith and morals.” This approach not only undermines the foundation of human rights abroad but here, as well.

But, of course, democracy is not the real goal; the goal is the universalization of the rationalization for sodomy. This is now one of the depraved purposes of US foreign policy. The light from the City on the Hill is casting a very dark shadow.

Nobel da Paz reafirma que Papa nada teve que ver com a ditadura argentina

In RR

Esta quinta-feira, o Papa Francisco encontrou-se com o argentino Adolfo Pérez Esquivel, prémio nobel da Paz em 1980 e uma das personalidades que desmentiu alegadas ligações do cardeal Bergoglio à ditadura militar, algo que voltou a fazer nesta entrevista à Renascença.

"O Papa não teve nada que ver com a ditadura, não foi cúmplice da ditadura. Não foi dos bispos que mais esteve na vanguarda da defesa dos direitos humanos, porque preferiu mais uma diplomacia silenciosa de pedir pelos desaparecidos, pelos presos. Mas não podemos ligá-lo à ditadura. Mesmo a justiça argentina garante não haver nenhuma acusação sobre ele", afirmou o nobel.

Esquivel falou da “satisfação, a alegria que temos de pela primeira vez ter sido eleito um Papa latino-americano e argentino. Isto é muito significativo para a Igreja que sai do eurocentrismo e se dá ao mundo de outra forma.”

Os dois conversaram durante algum tempo. “Falámos também da questão dos direitos humanos e o Papa disse, com muita clareza que é necessário procurar a verdade, a justiça, e a reparação das injustiças. Os direitos humanos são integrais, não têm que ver apenas com a época de violência e terrorismo de Estado, mas estão relacionados também com a pobreza, meio ambiente, e a vida do ser humano.”

Tem-se tornado hábito o Papa Francisco pedir as orações daqueles com quem se encontra e a quem se dirige, algo que já fazia enquanto Cardeal. Desta vez não foi excepção.

“Toda a reunião foi muito emotiva, estivemos muito emocionados os dois, neste reencontro e ele pediu que o acompanhemos através da oração. Pediu também o meu compromisso para eu o poder acompanhar, e poder trabalhar para que o seu papado possa estar ao serviço do povo de Deus e da humanidade", explica Adolfo Pérez Esquivel.