As I read it, the explosive Vanity Fair article on what sexual hookup apps like Tinder, Hinge, and Happn have done to dating has two messages, not one.

1.  Sexual practices are becoming more meaningless than ever, even in the view of the participants.

2.  We had better get used to it, because this is how things will be from now on.

One would think these two messages are inconsistent.  Because men and women can’t live without meaning, things can’t go on like this.  The only question is whether cultural change will come through change of heart, or through conquest by some other culture.

But the sexperts the author quotes don’t see it that way:  “‘We are in uncharted territory’ ... says Justin Garcia, a research scientist at Indiana University’s Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender, and Reproduction. ‘There have been two major transitions’ in heterosexual mating ‘in the last four million years,’ he says. ‘The first was around 10,000 to 15,000 years ago, in the agricultural revolution, when we became less migratory and more settled,’ leading to the establishment of marriage as a cultural contract.  ‘And the second major transition is with the rise of the Internet.’”

Never mind that we have no evidence whatsoever that true human beings have ever lived without marriage.  Focus instead on that blather about evolution.  In order to find it convincing, you have to believe two things at once:

1.  Because nothing endures forever, the sexual wisdom of the past is not valid any more.

2.  Because they are next stage in evolution, the bizarre customs which have arisen during the last fifteen minutes of human history will endure forever.

“There's no use trying," said Alice.  “One can't believe impossible things.”  “I daresay you haven't had much practice,” said the Queen.
 

Mondays are for questions from young people.  In this case I can only give the answer.  You may apply your imagination to what the question was like.

Reply

Let me tell you what I think may be happening.  I think you’re right that your laziness in college isn’t a “compensation for working too hard in high school” – but I don’t think you have lost your perfectionism.  It seems to me that your obsession with being perfect is still in business, and that’s why you’ve been so lazy in college.

Perfectionists want to be perfect at whatever they turn their hands too, but they are willing to turn their hands only to what they can do perfectly.  So when they can’t be perfect, they give up.  That seems to be just what you’ve been doing, not just in schoolwork but in other matters too.  You aren’t satisfied with being the best you can.  You insist on being best, or you quit.

In high school you worked hard, because there you could be best.  Since you couldn’t be best in college, you withdrew from the competition.  Judging from your letter, the same thing has happened in your relationships.  Just because your first serious friendship with a young man wasn’t perfect, you’ve simply withdrawn from friendships with the opposite sex.

It would be a shame to find yourself someday giving up on marriage because no marriage is perfect, or on your children because no children are perfect, or on life because no life is perfect.  So I hope you won’t give up on getting over your perfectionism too.  You can do it.

Now don’t be a perfectionist about getting over perfectionism; that will take time, and progress will come little by little.  But don’t be discouraged.  God will help; counselors have a lot of experience with this problem; as you ask, I will certainly pray for you; and now that they know about you from reading this, a lot of other people will be praying for you too.

“Some today argue that respect for freedom of the individual makes it wrong to seek truth, including the truth about what is good.  In some circles to speak of truth is seen as controversial or divisive, and consequently best kept in the private sphere.  And in truth’s place -- or better said its absence -- an idea has spread which, in giving value to everything indiscriminately, claims to assure freedom and to liberate conscience.  This we call relativism. …

“Dear friends, truth is not an imposition. Nor is it simply a set of rules.  It is a discovery of the One who never fails us; the One whom we can always trust.  In seeking truth we come to live by belief because ultimately truth is a person: Jesus Christ.  That is why authentic freedom is not an opting out.  It is an opting in; nothing less than letting go of self and allowing oneself to be drawn into Christ’s very being for others.”

-- Benedict XVI, 2008

There is no such thing as liberty in general; there are only specific liberties.  Fine-sounding principles like “The greatest possible liberty compatible with equal liberty for others” settle nothing, because there is more than one possible arrangement of equal so-called liberties.  So one must bite the bullet and decide which liberties are real liberties in the sense of belonging to our true good.  Every claim of liberty P entails denial of liberty Q.

If the slaveholder has a right to own slaves, then his slaves have no right to be free; if they have a right to be free; then he has no right to own slaves.

If a mother has a right to an abortion, then her baby has no right to live; if her baby has a right to live, then his mother has no right to an abortion.

If the registrar of marriages has a right to uphold natural law, then two persons in an unnatural association do not have a right to be called married; if they have the right to be called married, then he does not have to right to uphold natural law.

So those who try to protect themselves by appealing to liberty without appealing to natural law will find their appeal to liberty empty.  It is terribly easy to establish tyranny (by the standards of natural law) in the very name of liberty (by the standards of revolt against natural law).  And that is how it is happening.

This concludes the Monday correspondence which began on August 31 and continued on September 7.

Question:

Thanks again for your response - this has been a remarkably helpful explanation of the content of natural law.  I have been reading several treatments of natural law over the past few months and not quite “got it,” I think largely because I was unclear about what exactly the content of natural law is.  If natural law is simply identical to Scripture, why is it necessary?  If it is not, how can we know whether a purported law is genuinely part of the natural law? There seems to me a remarkable lack of clarity in the literature on these questions.  Your explanation deals with these considerations, and it does not even fall foul of my delicate protestant sensibilities about laying down moral obligations outside Scripture!

However, several of the natural law treatments I have read have included things as part of natural law which to my mind do not fit easily within the subject matter of the Ten Commandments.  For example, Samuel Pufendorf in The Whole Duty of Man wrote that we have a natural duty to “regulate the dispositions of our minds, in reducing and conforming them to the dictates of right reason,” and held that "widely accepted maxims of political morality" are part of the natural law, for example that those who exercise public power should be held accountable for the way they exercise that power, although the detail will vary depending on circumstances.

While all this seems valid, useful, and wise, it's not easy to see how it fits with the Ten Commandments, even on a wide reading of them.  Other examples could be given.  Do you consider maxims like Pufendorf's to be a part of the natural law?

Reply:

Before answering your question let me clear up another point.  Although the Decalogue is a good summary of the natural law, considering what the Decalogue commands is not the method of natural law.  The method of natural law in itself is not to reflect on revelation, but simply to reflect on the natural goods in the light of natural reason.

Our natural goods are those things which pertain to our well-being, those things which are necessary to the fulfillment of beings of our kind, to the proper unfolding of our potentialities.  These have three dimensions.  Some things are good for us simply because they fulfill the inbuilt purposes we share with all organized beings or “substances,” for example our inclinations toward preservation.  Other things are good for us because they fulfill the inbuilt purposes we share with other animals.  These go beyond preservation; for example, they include our inclinations toward procreation and the raising of young.  Still other things are good for us because they fulfill the inbuilt purposes we have as rational creatures.  These have to do with seeking and knowing the truth in partnership with others, especially the truth about God.

Of course, if the natural law thinker is a Christian, he will reflect on both the natural goods and revelation, because he believes that natural law and divine law come from the same God and co-illuminate each other.  So I think you would like me to explain two different things.  One is how a principle like the responsibility of rulers to those whom they rule can be known even apart from revelation, by natural reason alone; the other is how the same principle is implied by revelation itself.  So let me try to do so.

As to the natural goods:  Classical natural law thinkers would begin by observing that by nature we humans are social and political beings.  To say that we are social beings is not to say that we have a mere instinct to get together, like cows.  Rather it means we cannot flourish except in society; we are beings of such a kind that the good life is not good unless we can share it with others.  To say that we are political beings is not to say that we are born into subjection or anything like that.  Rather it means that we cannot flourish except under institutions of public justice, such as law and adjudication.  These too are a matter of shared pursuit, for we cooperate is in seeking the common good.  To put it another way, it is not good for humans to be ruled like slaves; when they have the moral capacity to take part in the organization of the community, they should be allowed to do so.  That cannot always be accomplished, because it requires a certain level of virtue and public responsibility on the part of the citizens.  But when it can be done, it ought to.

As to revelation:  Theologians would begin by observing that Scripture embraces the same view of human beings, for God does not jerk us around; he invites us into His own wisdom.  Even in the midst of his indictment of Israel for its sins in the book of the prophet Isaiah, He says “Come, let us reason together.”  Similarly, the book of Wisdom -- which is not part of the Protestant Bible but which Protestants such as yourself have often held in high regard -- declares that God left man in the hands of his own counsel, not meaning that man should defy God’s laws, but that he should understand them and participate in them voluntarily.  Thomas Aquinas observes that the form of government established under Moses included a monarchical element, in that one person presided, but also an aristocratic element, in that men of wisdom assisted, and a democratic element, in that these men of wisdom were chosen both by and from the people.  If you want to connect all this with the Decalogue, one place to start is the prohibition of bearing false witness, which clearly presupposes institutions of public justice.  The rest can be worked out by the exercise of prudence.  (I don’t say that’s easy!)

One more thing:  I think you are right that Pufendorf’s account is rather puzzling, but Pufendorf isn’t a representative of the classical natural law tradition.  Actually he represents the early modern revisionists who broke off from that tradition.  Although they tried to hold onto some of its elements, they rejected or distorted others, and they tried to hold everything together with nonsense about a so-called state of nature and a so-called social contract.  This is a long story.  It’s enough to say here that not everyone who says “natural law” holds the same view of how natural law works.