Natural Law, i.e. “the norm written by the Creator in man's heart” is the true guarantee of democracy and human rights, not ‘positivist’ law, even if it stems from the will of the majority of the population at a given time because History shows that “majorities can make mistakes.”Today’s meeting with the participants to the plenary session of the International Theological Commission gave Benedict XVI an opportunity to restate a point dear to him, namely the value and rationality of Natural law and his refusal of ethical relativism, seen by some of today’s thinkers as democracy’s real foundation.
On the one hand, there are “primary and essential norms that regulate moral life. . . . In its main precepts Natural Law is presented in the Decalogue;” it is called natural “not in relation to the nature of irrational beings but because the reason that proclaims it is a characteristic of human nature.”
The Pope noted that “starting from the basis of natural law—which of itself is accessible to all rational creatures—it lays the foundations for dialogue with all men and women of good will, and with civil and secular society more generally.”
But, “because of the influence of cultural and ideological factors, civil and secular society is today in a situation of loss and confusion.”
“The original evidence for the foundations of human beings and of their ethical behaviour has been lost, and the doctrine of natural moral law clashes with other concepts which run directly contrary to it. All this has enormous consequences on civil and social order.”
Nowadays a “positivist conception of law” prevails in quite a few thinkers.
According to them, “humanity, or society, or in effect the majority of citizens, become the ultimate source for civil legislation. The problem that arises is not, then, the search for good but the search for power, or rather the balance of power.
At the root of this tendency is ethical relativism, in which some people even see one of the principal conditions for democracy because, they feel, relativism guarantees tolerance and mutual respect.
But if this were true, the majority at any given moment would become the ultimate source for law, and history shows with great clarity that majorities can make mistakes. True rationality is not guaranteed by the consensus of the greater number, but only from the transparency of human reason to creative Reason and from shared listening to this Source to our rationality.”
Thus for the Pope, “natural law is a true guarantee for everyone to live freely and with respect for their dignity, protected from all ideological manipulation and from all arbitrary abuses of the powerful. No one can disregard this appeal.”
“If by reason of a tragic clouding of the collective conscience, scepticism and ethical relativism managed to annul the fundamental principles of natural moral law, the very democratic order itself would be profoundly undermined at its foundations. Against such clouding—which is a crisis for human, even more than for Christian, civilization—the consciences of all men and women of good will must be mobilized,” concluded the Pope, “both lay people and followers of religions other than Christianity, so that together they may make an effective commitment to creating . . . the conditions necessary for a full awareness of the inalienable value of natural moral law.”
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