Comments on: Religious Freedom: A Natural Right?

By: Michael PS

Michael PS — Thu, 01 Nov 2012 18:57:31 +0000

Ray Inglis

Blondel believed that Christians should adopt the strategy of orienting themselves to the “social collectivity” rather than continuing to embrace a posture of purely “religious defence” within the “Catholic collectivity.” Blondel demanded the openness of Catholics to secular movements for justice. These movements are evidence of “silent causes [at] work on the world in its depths” in search of “equity.” Efforts “from below” to establish a just society would lead persons of good will to respect Christianity. The nature of this collaboration consisted of combined efforts to enact legislation to remedy injustices and to show that that the practice of “democracy” was a necessary consequence of living the Gospel.

This is the “integralism” for which both he and Maritain contended; “a cure of contemporary society by way of education, of penetration, and of methodical reconstitution.”

By: Ray Ingles

Ray Ingles — Thu, 01 Nov 2012 16:02:24 +0000

Michael PS –

Unless we insist, in Blondel’s words, that we can “find only in the spirit of the gospel the supreme and decisive guarantee of justice and of the moral conditions of peace, stability, and social prosperity,” we shall inevitable acquiesce in practice in the Liberal privatisation of religion.

And what would the alternative look like? What would be the fate of people who don’t agree that we all “have a supernatural destiny”?

By: Michael PS

Michael PS — Thu, 01 Nov 2012 09:51:23 +0000

Too many Catholics have embraced a false notion of the relationship between religion and politics. Basing themselves on Suarez’s interpretation of St Thomas, they have talked of a “natural order,” governed by Natural Law, consisting of truths accessible to unaided human reason, as something that can be kept separate from the supernatural truths revealed in the Gospel. “Under such circumstances, the supernatural is no longer properly speaking another order, something unprecedented, overwhelming and transfiguring” (Henri de Lubac)

It was this that led Laberthonnière, a hundred years ago now, to accuse the Neo-Thomists of his day of “a false theological notion of some state of pure nature and therefore imagined the state could be self-sufficient in the sense that it could be properly independent of any specifically Christian sense of justice.”

It led his friend and contemporary, Maurice Blondel, to insist that we must never forget “that one cannot think or act anywhere as if we do not all have a supernatural destiny. Because, since it concerns the human being such as he is, in concreto, in his living and total reality, not in a simple state of hypothetical nature, nothing is truly complete (boucle), even in the sheerly natural order”

Jacques Maritain, too, declared that “the knowledge of human actions and of the good conduct of the human State in particular can exist as an integral science, as a complete body of doctrine, only if related to the ultimate end of the human being . . . the rule of conduct governing individual and social life cannot therefore leave the supernatural order out of account”

Unless we insist, in Blondel’s words, that we can “find only in the spirit of the gospel the supreme and decisive guarantee of justice and of the moral conditions of peace, stability, and social prosperity,” we shall inevitable acquiesce in practice in the Liberal privatisation of religion.

By: Tristian

Tristian — Wed, 31 Oct 2012 21:47:48 +0000

This is a very interesting article that is worth more than a quick read. My initial impression is that Arkes has put his finger on a big problem for what people like to call the Murray project, which, roughly, holds that Natural Law Theory can work as a ‘public philosophy’ for religiously pluralistic modern liberal democracies. It can do this, folks claim, by providing a language for working out moral and political disagreements in the public square in a way that is religiously neutral. It can do this precisely because it makes moral claims accessible to reason, rather than revelation, and so should be amendable to all regardless of their religious faith (or lack thereof). In this respect Murray anticipates Rawls’ idea of public reason (as Rawls acknowledged actually). The problem is that once we make everything accessible to reason save for very specific claims of specific religions (things like the Holy Trinity), it’s hard to carve out that line beyond which the state shouldn’t go. Specifically, if religion is generally accessible to reason, why can’t the state legislate it? As David, a little unfairly (but only a little) suggests, Arkes seems to bite the bullet and suggests religion ought to be political, and that all roads lead to Rome as it were.

I think a better alternative would be to develop further what I’ve come to think Murray needed to say a lot more about, namely a Natural Law counterpart to Rawls’ idea of the “burdens of judgment.” Rawls meant by this those aspects of our lives and experiences that shape our beliefs and values in non-rational ways. He uses this to explain why, even among generally reasonable and good willed people, we will find diversity in beliefs and values, what he called the “fact of reasonable pluralism.” He could then use the most profound locus of our disagreements to carve out the private realm while still putting to one side comprehensive doctrines that are mad or just silly. What the natural lawyers need is an explanation of why reasonable people of good will disagree about the judgments of the Natural Law that can similarly carve out the space within which we can demand our religious freedom

By: David Nickol

David Nickol — Wed, 31 Oct 2012 19:38:02 +0000

I read the Hadley Arkes piece with great interest, and based on one reading (which for such a piece is insufficient), it seems to me that Arkes is basically saying that ultimately, Catholicism should be the judge of everything. That is, ultimately, everything rests on “natural law,” and the Catholic Church claims to be the organization that best understands it (and, in fact, can make infallible pronouncements about it). Of course, Catholicism maintains that what it sees as the truths of natural law should be seen—by reason alone—by those who do not share a belief in Catholicism. But what if their reason tells them something other than what the Church teaches?

By: Ray Ingles

Ray Ingles — Wed, 31 Oct 2012 19:21:33 +0000

From the article:

I take it that we would never think of treating as a legitimate religion, with a “ministerial exception,” a Satanic cult. Even in the current state of our culture, we can summon enough conviction to reject evil.

Well, actually…
http://www.med.uscourts.gov/Opinions/Kravchuk/2012/MJK_01042012_1-10cv256_Cookson_v_Commissioner_AFFIRMED_03152012.pdf

There’s also a timely article that challenges Arkes’ claim of “refusal of the law to allow a religious exemption from laws on… child labor”:

http://www.tampabay.com/news/publicsafety/religious-exemption-at-some-florida-childrens-homes-shields-prying-eyes/1258390