It is a wise and beautiful thing to allow people of many kinds and origins to enter and become part of our country in search of a better life.  It is a wise and prudent thing to regulate the inflow of new residents to make sure that terrorists are kept out and that the newcomers are brought into our institutions.

Why is it so difficult to say both of these things at once?  For two main reasons.

Because on one side, demagogues curry favor with crude nativists who want to keep Those People on the other side of the fence.  The Left is correct to say this.

Because on the other side, the party of the State angles to enlarge the underclass of clients whom it happily keeps in permanent dependence on itself.  The Right is correct to say this.

The analytical philosopher Peter Geach remarks in his book, The Virtues, “The profane habitually say (I read it recently in a school textbook of my daughter’s) that the Law of Moses was not given by God but cribbed from the code of Hammurabi:  They never seem to have noticed that the code of Hammurabi systematically discriminates between gentlemen and commoners, whereas the Divine Law lacks the very notion of a gentleman.”

We might add that the same sort of thing is said about the New Testament haustafeln or "household codes” – the rules for husbands and wives, parents and children, and masters and servants.  The profane habitually say that St. Paul wasn’t inspired by God but cribbed them from the domestic handbooks of the Stoics:  They never seem to have noticed that the Stoic household codes systematically subordinate the low to the high, whereas the Apostle commands both low and high to “be subject to one another out of reverence for Christ.”  The form that submission takes is different for high and low, but a greater burden is laid on the high.  Husbands, for example, are to lay themselves down for their wives as Christ laid himself down for the Church; wives only have to obey.

Nothing like this appears in Stoic teaching, where the aim is not mutual submission, but submission.

“Man ... is a person -- a spiritual being, a whole unto himself, a being that exists for itself and of itself, that wills its own proper perfection.  Therefore, and for that very reason, something is due to man in the fullest sense, for that reason he does inalienably have a suum, a ‘right’ which he can plead against everyone else, a right which imposes upon every one of his partners the obligation at least not to violate it.  Indeed, man’s personality, “the constitution of his spiritual being by virtue of which he is master of his own actions,” even requires (requirit), says Thomas, that Divine Providence guide the personality ‘for his own sake.’  Moreover, he takes literally that marvelous expression from the Book of Wisdom:  Even God Himself disposes of us ‘with great reverence’ (cum magna reverentia) ... [If] man’s personality is not acknowledged to be something wholly and entirely real, then right and justice cannot possibly be established.

"Nevertheless, even establishing them in this way still does not get at their deepest roots.  For how can human nature be the ultimate basis when it is not founded upon itself!  ... We must learn to experience as reality the knowledge that the establishment of right and justice has not received its fullest and most valid legitimation until we have gone back to the absolute foundation; and that there is no other way to make the demands of justice effective as absolute bounds set the will to power.

"This means in concrete terms:  Man has inalienable rights because he is created a person by the act of God, that is, an act beyond all human discussion.  In the ultimate analysis, then, something is inalienably due to man because he is creatura.  Moreover, as creatura, man has the absolute duty to give another his due.”

-- Josef Pieper, “Justice,” in The Four Cardinal Virtues

People today do so much to kill joy that you would think they don't want it.  Don't believe it.  They do want joy.  All humans do.  That is why in the long run, hedonism has no future.  We are put together in such a way that although we can be pushed and pulled and drowsied by the flickering images of joyless desire, we cannot be satisfied by them; we know too much even in oblivion. Fallow knowledge troubles our sleep.  We lie under the prickling enchantment of the law written on our hearts, which is stronger than the counterspell and can never be quite scratched out.

Upon hearing that I had visited the Diocese of Miami recently to talk about natural law and the crisis of marriage, a friend asked “What’s the good news?”

It’s not an easy question.  But there is good news.

Although the state and the popular culture have been turning against marriage for a long time, for most of that time people who had retained their moral sanity either didn’t notice or tried to tell themselves it wasn’t as bad as it seemed.  One part of the good news is that now they are noticing.

Another part of the good news is that the situation in many Catholic churches, seminaries, and dioceses is getting better.  The same friend said “In the eighties things seemed to be gray and indistinct.  Now you can see the battle lines.  I like it better this way.”

Still another part is that in the long run, the way the culture is going is unsustainable.  Members of the babbling professions say we are entering a new stage of human evolution in which families headed by married parents fall by the wayside.  This is nonsense.  The natural law cannot be destroyed; not even an army of social welfare bureaucrats can replace the natural order of the family.  After a few more generations of increasing unhappiness in the name of being happy, people will begin to figure that out.

Of course the previous piece of good news may not seem very good in the here and now.  But the most important part of the good news is the Good News.  There is always enough grace for the day.  Take heart.  Be of good cheer.