Is the Natural Law Still Natural?

Is the Natural Law Still Natural?

September 2012
By Donald DeMarco
New Oxford Review

The natural law, which does not change, provides the opportunity for an individual person to change, not automatically but through reason and freedom.

Donald DeMarco is a Senior Fellow of HLI America, an initiative of Human Life International. He is Professor Emeritus at St. Jerome’s University in Waterloo, Ontario, and an Adjunct Professor at Holy Apostles College and Seminary in Cromwell, Connecticut. Some of his recent writings can be found at HLI America’s Truth and Charity Forum, www.hliamerica.org/truth-and-charity-forum.

Ed. Note: The following article was written partly in response to Melinda Selmys’s June article, “Is the ‘Natural Law’ Concept Obsolete?” [ www.newoxfordreview.org/article.jsp?did=0612-selmys ] in which she argues that “natural-law theory as it appears in the modern political sphere…is eminently convincing to those who already believe in Christian virtue, but is alien and irrelevant to everyone else.” She maintains that “Christians must find a way to appeal to the truths about the human person” that makes sense to postmodern man.

Mrs. Selmys’s reply to Dr. DeMarco ["Is Postmodern Man Irrational?" is in the same September 2012 issue is at www.newoxfordreview.org/article.jsp?did=0912-selmys ]

More at www.newoxfordreview.org/article.jsp?did=0912-demarco