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I turned on Hugh Hewitt earlier, and he was reading from a new apostolic letter:

THE RAPID DEVELOPMENT OF THE HOLY FATHER JOHN PAUL II TO THOSE RESPONSIBLE FOR COMMUNICATIONS

in which the Pope encourages people to use the internet and modern communication systems to communicate the message, or specfically:

In fact, the Church is not only called upon to use the mass media to spread the Gospel but, today more than ever, to integrate the message of salvation into the “new culture” that these powerful means of communication create and amplify. It tells us that the use of the techniques and the technologies of contemporary communications is an integral part of its mission in the third millennium.

Moved by this awareness, the Christian community has taken significant steps in the use of the means of communication for religious information, for evangelization and catechesis, for the formation of pastoral workers in this area, and for the education to a mature responsibility of the users and the recipients of the various communications media.

This made Hugh joke that everyone should send the pope and their parish priests a copy of Blog, but isn’t it interesting that the old white guy who can barely speak and should obviously retire has written his latest apostolic letter about blogging? The guy’s more on top of this than CNN is, evidently.

Anyway, this whole thing reminded me to write about something that has kept popping up in the past few months.

My mother’s gotten big into the church, and lately her time’s been mostly filled up with planning a conference, taking place this weekend, for the California Catholic Women’s Forum, which will discuss women’s Role in the Church. The actual title of the conference is:

True Feminism for Real Women
The Church’s Perspective

I’m bringing this up, not to promote it, but because everyone on the Conservative side of the political divide has been talking about Bush’s “new” or “unique” or “bold” vision for the world, and that he’s an Evangelical. The thing is, and this is something that mom points out all the time, is that his speech writers have apparently been lifting whole paragraphs from the Pope’s writings, and even if Evangelicals strike me as the polar opposite of Catholics in the Christian world, Bush is sounding an awful lot like Thomas Aquinas. A Catholic saint, btw.

Two weeks ago, Joseph Bottom, writing for the Weekly Standard, wrote Just the Right Amount of God. It begins:

“WHO IS YOUR FAVORITE political philosopher?” a group of Republican candidates were asked early in the 2000 race for president. And the frontrunner at the time, a Texas governor named George W. Bush, calmly answered, “Christ, because he changed my life.”

Well. You could barely hear the other candidates’ answers in the crash and clatter of overturned chairs as reporters scrambled to reach the phones and call in the story. Some commentators decided Bush was nakedly pandering to Evangelical voters in a Machiavellian ploy so bold that he should have said his favorite political philosopher was, um, Machiavelli. [ And it goes on in a funny way about everyone thinking him stupid and mocking him, including Kerry. Then:

Funny thing. On a cold, bright day in January 2005, with the sun off the snow crinkling his eyes, President Bush gave his second inaugural address. And it seems he did actually mean what he had said before. The speech was as clear an assertion of a particular Christian political philosophy as we’re likely to hear in these latter days. “We go forward with complete confidence in the eventual triumph of freedom,” the president declared. “Not because history runs on the wheels of inevitability; it is human choices that move events. Not because we consider ourselves a chosen nation; God moves and chooses as He wills. We have confidence because freedom is the permanent hope of mankind, the hunger in dark places, the longing of the soul.”

There’s even a name for this kind of theistical philosophy. It’s called natural law. An inaugural address, by its very national purpose, walks the tightrope between powerful abstractions and empty platitudes, and sometimes it’s hard to tell the difference. “In America’s ideal of freedom, the exercise of rights is ennobled by service, and mercy, and a heart for the weak,” Bush said, and is that a truth or a truism? A wrenching call to greatness or a self-congratulatory pat on the back?

A little of both, no doubt. But the most interesting things in Bush’s inaugural rhetoric are the moments where justifications are offered for the various truths and truisms. The chain of explanation in his speech is always the logical progression of the natural-law argument. “Americans, of all people, should never be surprised by the power of our ideals,” Bush insisted. And why? Because there is, in fact, a universal human nature: “Eventually, the call of freedom comes to every mind and every soul.” If “across the generations we have proclaimed the imperative of self-government,” the reason must reside in the enduring essence of human beings as simultaneously corruptible and morally valuable: “Because no one is fit to be a master, and no one deserves to be a slave.”

As it happens, a natural-law explanation carries philosophical reasoning a step beyond the mere assertion of a nature for human beings. The problem for ethics is always how to match empirical and logical claims (”Humans want to be free”) with moral claims (”Humans should be free”). And, within philosophy, natural law is a way of bridging the gap by asserting a unity of fact and value–based on the endowment of human nature with moral worth by the model on which humans are based. “From the day of our Founding, we have proclaimed that every man and woman on this earth has rights, and dignity, and matchless value,” as President Bush explained. And the reason? Well, “because they bear the image of the Maker of heaven and earth.” …

And watch it all come together as Bush reaches toward his peroration in the speech’s penultimate moment: “When our Founders declared a new order of the ages; when soldiers died in wave upon wave for a union based on liberty; when citizens marched in peaceful outrage under the banner ‘Freedom Now’–they were acting on an ancient hope that is meant to be fulfilled. History has an ebb and flow of justice, but history also has a visible direction, set by liberty and the Author of Liberty.”

So, we’ve got an enduring and universal human nature (”ancient hope”). We’ve got final causation (”meant to be fulfilled”). We’ve got a moral problematic (the “ebb and flow of justice”). We’ve got intelligible formal causes (the ideal of “liberty” as shaping a “visible direction” for history). And we’ve even got a prime mover (”the Author of Liberty”). There isn’t much more a natural-law philosopher could want in an American president’s inaugural address about nature and nature’s God. I’d guess not a lot of gloating is allowed around the throne of the Maker of heaven and earth, but somewhere in the vicinity, St. Thomas Aquinas must be smiling.

See? For more on Natural Law, see here.

The second thesis constituting the core of natural law moral theory is the claim that standards of morality are in some sense derived from, or entailed by, the nature of the world and the nature of human beings. St. Thomas Aquinas, for example, identifies the rational nature of human beings as that which defines moral law: “the rule and measure of human acts is the reason, which is the first principle of human acts” (Aquinas, ST I-II, Q.90, A.I). On this common view, since human beings are by nature rational beings, it is morally appropriate that they should behave in a way that conforms to their rational nature. Thus, Aquinas derives the moral law from the nature of human beings (thus, “natural law”).

As for the conference, I’m flying down there Friday night, back here Monday night, so it’ll be a short trip. Medium to light blogging, I’d say. I’m looking forward to the rain. Anyway, while we’re discussing how unexpectedly “relevent” (gasp!) the Pope has turned out to be, I thought I’d just drop a few words about this thing mother’s working on. This quote, I thought was interesting:

“In transforming culture so that it supports life, women occupy a place in thought and action which is unique and decisive. It depends on them to promote a “New Feminism” which rejects the temptation of imitating models of “male domination” in order to acknowledge and affirm the true genius of women in every aspect of the life of society and overcome all discrimination, violence and exploitation.”

Pope John Paul II, Evangelium Vitae (1999)

Isn’t it interesting that he would see that so many people are looking to the male-dominating template to base their own actions on. But that assumes on or the other is dominant. You can’t both be dominant and equal.

Update:

I got linked to by Hugh Hewitt! Thanks, Hugh! I dunno how he ran into little ol’ me (he doesn’t take trackbacks), but at any rate, I listen to your show! You’re very smart and funny and entertaining! And as for his readers, welcome! Look around! Leave comments! I’m a sucker for comments!