St. Thomas More Society Reports (Consistent with the policies of The Catholic University of America Law Review, summaries of papers read at the annual meeting of the St. Thomas More Society will be published from time to time. Two summaries are included in this issue.

Twomey, L. J.

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The Catholic University of America Columbus School of Law

Catholic University Law Review Volume 1 Issue 3 May 1951 Article 8 1951 The Natural Law and a World in Crisis L. J. Twomey Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarship.law.edu/lawreview Recommended Citation L. J. Twomey, The Natural Law and a World in Crisis, 1 Cath. U. L. Rev. 170 (1951). Available at: https://scholarship.law.edu/lawreview/vol1/iss3/8 This Comments is brought to you for free and open access by CUA Law Scholarship Repository. It has been accepted for inclusion in Catholic University Law Review by an authorized editor of CUA Law Scholarship Repository. For more information, please contact edinger@law.edu. But concrete portrayals of ideal societies, after the manner of Utopiacontribute little or nothing to a general theory of society. General theoryis the proper basis of all science. Concrete idealizations are fragmentaryand localized and often fanciful. They do not present the panorama of changefor any considerable period, and as a result contribute nothing to the theoryof dynamics of change. A concrete idealization of culture, such as Utopiarepresents an atomistic method. It is in contrast to a universal method.THE NATURAL LAW AND A WORLD IN CRISISByRev. L. 3. Twomey, S.J.,Loyola University, New Orleans, LouisianaDelivered Edgewater Beach Hotel, Chicago, Illinois, December 1950.Few if any epochs in history have been as saddled with evil men and evilways as our own. Bewilderment, fear, frustration grip men's souls in adegree unparalleled at least in recent centuries.The fearful probability ofour world being plunged into its most devastating war is a present reality.The West is in a state of frantic preparation against the threat of annihilationfrom the East.Such a condition did not arise within the last decade or even within thelast several decades. What we are facing now is the centuried-cumulativeresult of the practical exclusion of God and His Law from the thoughts andactions of men.Every class in our society must bear its share of guilt. But no classhas a heavier burden of guilt than the legal profession. Followers of thisprofession for good or evil are among the most influential of men. And withspecific reference to America, it is by no means certain that the over-allinfluence of the legal profession has been for good.No system of law can rise above the fundamental principles upon whichit is based. To analyse the American legal system from this viewpoint isan alarming experience.In at least the large majority of American law schools -- with the notableexceptions of those under Catholic direction -- Positivism is the prevailingphilosophy. By Positivism is here meant that view of life, which either deniesor calls into question the existence of God, regards man as some highlydeveloped form of animal life and ascribes some temporal good as his ulti-mate end.The extent to which such a philosophy has permeated legal thinking in thiscountry can be gauged by the wide-spread acceptance of the jurisprudentialtenets of Oliver Wendell Holmes. Two cardinals points are a key to hisphilosophy. The first is that he sees " . . . no reason for attributing to mana significance different in kind from that which belongs to a baboon or agrain of sand," 2 Holmes-Pollock Letters 252 (1941), and secondly, as I re-call, he has written, "the law means force (and when it means anything elseI don't care who makes it and will do as I damn choose)."To weave a philosophy of law around these two pivotal considerations is tocreate a monster as deadly as Karl Marx ever conjured up. Only the basicsoundness and sanity of the American people have prevented Holmes and hisfollowers from destroying us altogether.Happily a reaction against the rank materialism of Holmes' school is- 170-beginning to set in. Thus are afforded a fateful challenge and a magnificentopportunity to the proponents of Natural Law philosophy. For between phys-ical force and the Natural Law, no one has yet been, or ever will be, ableto propose a valid alternative.The time was never more favorable for a scholarly dynamic presentationof the Eternal Truths comprising the Natural Law.God created the world. In the world there are two levels of being, rationaland irrational. God, an intelligent being, had a purpose in creating -- Hisextrinsic glory. To realize this purpose, God had a plan -- the Eternal Lawby which each creature is directed to its own specific end and through thisend to the end of all creation. Irrational creatures are directed to their endsby certain intrinsic determinations whereby they act in a certain uniformand constant way -- these intrinsic determinations we call the physical laws.Man in his free rational nature is guided to his end -- God's glory and hisown temporal and eternal happiness -- by certain clearly perceivably (byright reason) precepts, which he recognizes to be of inescapable obligation --these precepts and their universal binding force, we call the Natural MoralLaw, or simply the Natural Law. Man, because of his free will, can violatethese precepts, but he may (or ought) not violate them."Do (Moral) good, and avoid (Moral) evil" is the most general expressionof the Natural Law. Those readily deductible conclusions from this primaryprinciple form the secondary level of the Natural Law, e.g. the Ten Command-ments. The tertiary level includes those applications of the primary prin-ciple to the complex conditions of concrete situations. It is with the applica-tion of the Natural Law on this level that human (statute, civil) law is prin-cipally concerned. Here two important points are to be noted. The principlesof the Natural Law never change, but their application to the varying political,economic and social character of time and place "is a monumental taskdemanding the constant devotion of the best brains and the most maturescholarship of the legal profession."This Natural Law philosophy is the great heritage not alone of the CatholicChurch, but of all men who would find meaning and purpose in life and theonly valid foundation of the rights of man and of peace and order in society.With Natural Law philosophy, scholarly, God-fearing, zealous members ofthe legal profession can forge the one instrument that can protect man as anindividual in all his dignity as an Image of God, and insure for man as asocial being a reign of justice in society. Only thus can the lights of humanfreedom and human decency go on again all over the world.- 171 -

The Natural Law and a World in Crisis

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