Natural Law Not Going Out of Style, Says Commission
ROME, JUNE 11, 2009 (Zenit.org).- The objective values of natural law continue serving as the base for universal ethics, according to a new document from the International Theological Commission.
The document, "The Search for Universal Ethics: A New Look at Natural Law," was published on the Holy See's Web page in Italian and French.
L'Osservatore Romano published today a summary of the document in an article by French Dominican Father Serge-Thomas Bonino, a member of the commission.
The commission emphasizes the need for a consensus on objective and universal ethical values, which should be promoted to avoid the ups and downs of public opinion and government manipulation.
"These values can guarantee for human rights, for example, a more solid base than fragile juridical positivism," Father Bonino explained. "They should be founded on what defines human beings as humans and in how human nature is concretized is each person, regardless of race, culture or religion."
The document suggests that natural law as the base of ethics continues maintaining its validity, in a culture that elevates the individual to the level of a final reference point who creates his own values and acts outside of objective ethical norms, making use of ideologies that have little concern for human dignity.
The International Theological Commission document thus contributes to the current debate on the search for universal ethics, aiming to combat the growing separation between the ethical order on the one hand, and the economic, social, juridical and political orders on the other.
These latter sectors of human activity try to develop without normative references to a moral good that is objective and universal, the document notes.
It goes on to offer two alternatives, Father Bonino explained: Either globalization advances "more or less regulated in a
juridical framework that is purely positivist, incapable of avoiding in the long-term the power and rights of the strongest, or else man involves himself in
the process to orient it based on the finality that is properly human...."
Continued here.
