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Such is the case with the editorial in Monday’s Beacon Journal by Garry Wills. Even if someone might agree with his conclusion, his path to it was a strained one at best. There are so many problems with this article that one post would not be enough to point them all out. At least for today two will be pointed out.
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The second big area of difficulty is his understanding and use of natural law (which he labels as a “quaint theory.”) Again, if you need to make light of something in order to make your point, you’ve already begun to weaken your position.
But here is where I am stuck. I am not sure if Mr. Wills understands Natural Law so poorly that if he had a similar application in a term paper he might flunk the course, or if he understands it so brilliantly that he is attempting to misapply it so ingeniously in order to lead people astray. He makes the misleading statement that, “the first biological use of an activity is the only permissible use of that activity.” (Again, see the Eve problem above.) This would mean then, that a married couple is not permitted to enjoy sexual relations, that they must only engage in it for procreative purposes. This is “absurd” he says. As proof, he says that if we truly follow Natural Law then eating should only be for fuel and we would no longer be able to eat wedding cake or drink champagne. I would agree with him if this actually had anything to do with Natural Law or actual Church teaching. Yet he uses this example to say, in essence, if you see that as absurd, then one could logically see the ban on sexual relations outside of traditional marriage as absurd. But here, once again, he hurts his case.
A married couple can enjoy sex. There is a broad spectrum of activities in which they may engage. They may, so to speak, eat cake and drink champagne. What they may not do is eat things that are not good for them. We are not permitted by Natural Law to eat road tar for the same reason a person should not put sugar in the gas tank of their car. Neither should a person eat far more than they need for sustenance (that is called gluttony.) Except in cases of emergency, we should not try ingesting food through orifices that are not designed for the intake of nutrition. This is Natural Law, not the banning of champagne toasts.
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