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.

Ever since Sen. Marco Rubio’s comments about vocational training during last Tuesday’s Republican debate, I’ve been getting letters from friends, students, and former students who know my checkered past.  Like this one:

[C]onscientia est sicut praeco Dei, et nuntius; et quod dicit, non mandat ex se, sed mandat quasi ex Deo, sicut praeco, cum divulgat edictum regis.  Et hinc est, quod conscienta habet virtutem ligandi in his, quae possunt aliquo modo bene fieri.

In a conversation with grad students the other day, I suggested that all other things being equal, adoption policy should give preference to couples.  Though a few of them agreed, others objected that such a policy would amount to “punishing singles.”

I found that an interesting expression.

New lecture video:  True Toleration

The logician’s wife is having a baby.  As soon as the baby is born, it is placed in the father’s arms.  The mother asks, “Is it a boy or a girl?”  The father replies, “Yes.”

Next post:  Punishing Singles

Question:

To grasp what natural law is all about, we have to understand nature as fashioned according to certain purposes.  We have to view every kind of thing there is as an arrow directed naturally to its goal.  The way Thomas Aquinas put this was to say that the “nature” of any particular thing is “a purpose, implanted by the Divine Art, that it be moved to a determinate end.”