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Human Reason, the Inclination to Procreation and Education of Offspring, and Society
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 January 2024
Abstract
St Thomas's hylomorphic anthropology grounds his famous statement of the precepts of the natural law in the Summa Theologiae. When we come to the third precept of the natural law, namely man's inclination to good according to the nature of his reason, we enter into the realm of politics. On account of the incarnate nature of human reason, the other natural human inclinations are also imbued with political significance. Right reason, which is also incarnate reason, tells us that procreation and marriage have an intrinsic mutual ordination to each other. Heterosexual marriage is the unique locus in which children can both be procreated and be given the upbringing and education which is their right. Since society has a special purchase on children in order to ensure its future – and its future well-being – heterosexual marriage ought to enjoy a special legal status and protection. The corollary is that society can only undermine the conditions of its own well-being if it tries to tamper with the meaning of marriage as heretofore understood by granting gay unions the legal rights and duties of heterosexual marriage.
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References
1 Wojtyla, Karol, Love and Responsibility, trans. H.T Willetts (London: Collins, 1981), p. 87Google Scholar.
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3 Ibid., p. 130.
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5 In what follows I do engage in some interpretation; what I say has however a strong logical grounding in the thought of both Aristotle and St Thomas.
6 Pinckaers, Servais O.P., The Sources of Christian Ethics, trans. Sr.Noble, Mary o.p., (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1995), p. 438Google Scholar. Addressing the natural inclinations that correspond to these levels, Pinckaers later states that “they form a sheaf of closely linked yearnings and energies. We do indeed have to distinguish them, for the sake of analysis and clear perception, but we must never forget to regroup them again in a dynamic synthesis, for they act only together, as members of an organism” (ibid., p. 452).
7 The attempt in recent times to establish a sexual utopia by severing the intrinsic link between sexual intercourse and marriage has arguably led to increased rates of marital breakdown and divorce, to astronomic numbers of unwanted pregnancies being translated into abortions, and to demands to legislate for same-sex unions. Writing in relation to abortion, Janet E. Smith states: “When contraceptives became widely available we had the igniting of a sexual revolution which separated having babies from having sex. When that separation happened, babies were no longer welcomed as the natural and right outcome of sexual intercourse, but were considered an accident of sexual intercourse, an inconvenient burden, so inconvenient that we argue that we need abortion to keep our lifestyles going” (“Children: The Supreme Gift of Marriage” in Faith and Challenges to the Family, ed. Braintree, Russell Smith (The Pope John Center, 1994)Google Scholar. Accessed, 8 February 2008, at p.3 of the following address: http://www.aodonline.org/aodonline-sqlimages/shms/faculty/SmithJanet/Publications/Bioethics/Children.pdf
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10 In this article we have prescinded from the question of the morality of legislating for a state of affairs which facilitates a context in which immoral acts, namely homosexual acts, can be performed. A fuller treatment of the morality of same-sex unions from this perspective must await another occasion.