What does it mean to be
The Natural Law:
“Written Upon Our Hearts”
God’s universal standard of right and wrong is rooted in
our human nature and knowable through reason
and a well-formed conscience.
Dr. Mark Latkovic
L
et’s face it. On the subject of morality,
Unfortunately, the terms “nature” and “law”
our world is really confused. Virtue is vice
aren’t looked at favorably these days. When our
and vice is virtue—although we don’t use
secular culture hears law, they primarily hear
the language of virtue and vice much anymore.
“no.” When they hear nature, they hear only
But we do talk a lot about rights. (Oh do we talk
“environment.”
about rights!) That’s not always a bad thing—by
But the Church uses these terms in a much
no means—particularly when we link rights with
duties. But the Catholic Church also has had
that teaching may involve a firm no—even an
guardianship of an older language: the language
absolute no—to a particular evil such as abortion
of natural law.
or euthanasia.
What is Natural Law?
Moral Right from Moral Wrong
When she speaks of “natural law,” the Church indicates
to us that it is a moral law whose principles pertain to free
human nature. This is the same law that St. Paul said God
has “written in our hearts” (cf., Rom 2:15).
So natural law is both a “supernatural” reality and a
“natural” one. St. Thomas Aquinas indicates this twofold
character when he defines natural law as “nothing else
than the rational creature’s participation of the eternal
law” (Summa Theologiae, I-II, Q. 91, a. 2). By eternal law,
St. Thomas means God’s wise and loving plan for all of his
creation. Thomas also calls it “Divine Providence.”
Natural law, then, is our way of sharing in God’s own
governance of the world by means of human reason. Put
another way: God has made all men and women with a
particular nature—one that can both reason and will—and,
when reasoning about practical matters, we can look at our
actions and ask, “Is this act in accord with the highest moral
standard of all: that of God’s eternal law?”
12
different sense in her moral teaching, even if
Here’s where man’s moral conscience comes in. It is
intimately related to natural law in that it mediates God’s
law to our minds. Without conscience, we wouldn’t even be
able to know what God’s law is.
This is why conscience is best understood as our basic
awareness of moral truth and not as a gut feeling or a
mysterious inner voice. It of course includes our feelings
(we are bodily beings after all), but ultimately it’s a rational
judgment about what is (or was) right or wrong to do. The
reason we must always follow the dictates of our conscience
is due to its “proximate” character: it is our final and best
assessment of what is morally good and bad.
But conscience can err! It doesn’t always tell us correctly
what the demands of God’s law are. So we must form it with
proper care.
MOSAIC
Applies to All and Everywhere
There is an objectivity and universality to natural law
because of its grounding in human nature. Thus it applies to