As Advent progresses it is clear from casual observation the regard we as a nation once held for Christmas is no longer generally shared. Years ago, even among non-believers for whom the Nativity was only embellished legend, there was at least a respect for its significance. One wonders how the transformation of ‘holy day’ into ‘holiday’ relates to this and whether the disappearance of the traditional Christmas – like other vanishing commonalities we once shared – in some way reflects a threat to the ‘Unum” in the “E Pluribus Unum’ we tout as a nation. For instance, and by way of a specific example, is there a connection between diminished reverence for Christmas and our cavalier disregard for natural law?
Maybe there is. Christmas celebrates the Incarnation and reminds us that God is Love. It is the nature of love to give of itself: bonum diffusivum sui est. It is also the nature of love to be purposeful. In creating the world, as with the Incarnation, God – the Creator – gives of himself. Both the act of creating and what he creates have a purpose. Since ancient times this purposefulness has been recognized by all of humanity. Philosophers have called it natural law.
Just as Christmas should remind us Americans of God’s purposeful love, a review of the Declaration of Independence should highlight the role natural law has played in the foundation of our Republic:
When in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands that have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation. We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, and that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.
Seventy years ago, the Jesuit John Courtney Murray wrote ominously in his We Hold These Truths about the connection between our national integrity, our observance of natural law, and our Catholic faith.
Perhaps there will one day be wide dissent even from the political principles which emerge from natural law…..that this nation in all its aspects – as a society, a state, an ordered and free relationship between governors and governed – is under God. The possibility that widespread dissent from these principles should develop is not foreclosed. If that evil day should come, the results would introduce one more paradox into history. The Catholic community would still be speaking in the ethical and political idiom familiar to them as it was familiar to their fathers, both the Fathers of the Church and the Fathers of the American Republic. The guardianship of the original American consensus, based on Western heritage, would have passed to the Catholic community within which the heritage was elaborated long before American was.
Philanthropy is the ‘diffusion of goodness’ in action. As the practice of philanthropy grows in our country – Catholic and otherwise – let us hope its purposefulness restores and strengthens our understanding and embrace of the ‘laws of Nature and Nature’s God’.
As Advent’s third-week passes, may we light the rose candle with eager anticipation and renewed hope.