The idea seems to have gotten about in the last couple of
centuries or so that “love” has triumphed over and abolished reason. Love conquers all. All you need is love. All that jazz about truth and justice . . .
feh. It just gets in the way.
The problem is that, separated from a solid grounding in the
natural virtues, principally justice, love isn’t really much of anything. Anything good, that is. It can actually turn into something very
harmful. The late Msgr. Ronald Knox, for
instance, defined “ultrasupernaturalism” or “enthusiasm” (not a good word in
this context) as “an excess of love that threatens unity.” People who base everything on “love” all too
often decide that others don’t love in the right way (or at all), and are
therefore either ungodly or inhuman.
We cannot, however, cut love off from justice. Human positive law is based on the natural
law, including the rights to life, liberty, and property, and the capacity to
acquire and develop the virtues of prudence, temperance, fortitude, and, above
all, justice. Human law is concerned with
the task of becoming more fully human, that is, conforming to human nature by
realizing our inherent capacity to acquire and develop the natural virtues.
The capacity for the supernatural law, faith, hope, and
charity, is not natural to humanity, but is infused as a free gift. It is concerned with making us more fully
adopted children of God.
Human law and divine law must not be in material conflict,
but, on the other hand, are not to be merged, as each has its own directed
end. Confusing these ends, or attempting
to dismiss reason in favor of faith, is the principal error of “modernism,” the
“synthesis of all heresies,” and operates to the detriment, as we have seen, of
both civil society (the State) and religious society (the Church), and,
increasingly, domestic society (the Family).
It’s called “agnosticism” (Pascendi
Dominici Gregis, § 6) and “Fideism” (ibid., § 7), e.g.,
“[T]he
need of the divine, according to the principles of Fideism, excites in a soul
with a propensity towards religion a certain special sentiment, without any
previous advertence of the mind: and this sentiment possesses, implied within
itself both as its own object and as its intrinsic cause, the reality of the
divine, and in a way unites man with God. It is this sentiment to which
Modernists give the name of faith, and this it is which they consider the
beginning of religion.”
Every pope since Pius IX in 1846 has, in some way, condemned
the idea that the supernatural law can supersede or replace the natural law, e.g., that charity can abolish or
replace justice, or that faith can contradict reason. Pius XII identified this error as the most
dangerous threat to Catholic doctrine in the modern world (Humani Generis, § 2).
The natural law applies to the entire human race. If the supernatural law is added to it, then
it, ipso facto, no longer applies to
anyone outside whatever religion has the power to coerce all others, thereby
obviating free will and human dignity.
This is an issue that falls under the natural law,
specifically justice and the right to life, not the supernatural law of faith,
hope, and charity. The supernatural law
may — and should — inspire and enlighten our conformity to the natural law, but
it cannot replace it, nor is it, strictly speaking, essential to come to
knowledge of God or of the natural law, which can be known by the force and
light of human reason alone.
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