THE HUMAN FAMILY AND NATURAL LAW
The natural law is another key source of Catholic social teaching. The natural law is an
expression of the moral law. Because the natural law is written on the human heart and can
be discovered through human reason, every thinking person can discover it. Even people
without faith can use the natural law as a source of moral guidance. The natural law is
human reason commanding us to do good and counseling us to avoid evil. The four instincts
of human beings upon which natural law is based are life, procreation, use of reason, and
living in community.
ETERNAL LAW
(Divine Providence – God's loving plan for the universe)
DIVINE/REVEALED LAW
(God's revelation)
NATURAL LAW
(God's eternal law discernible
by reason alone)
“Love God above all else and
love your neighbout as yourself”
HUMAN LAW
(The practical application of
natural law to human communities)
“Do good and avoid evil”
First Three: Divine Law = 'Love God above all”
Natural Law = “Do good”
Last seven: Divine law = “Love your neighbour as yourself”
Natural law = “Avoid evil”
TEN COMMANDMENTS
1. Have no false gods.
2. Do not take the name of the Lord in vain.
3. Keep the Sabbath holy.
4. Honour your mother and father.
5. Do not kill.
6. Do not commit adultery
7. Do not steal
8. Do not bear false witness against your neighbour
9. Do not covet your neighbour's wife.
10. Do not covet your neighbour's goods.
RESPONSIBILITIES OF INDIVIDUALS AND SOCIETY
Obligations of individuals
1. Help shape a just, loving, society so it promotes love of God and neighbour. A key way
to do this is to live a life of inner conversion so that the individual is a just, loving, moral
person. Minimally, be on the alert to root out any laws or practices that cause sin or
undermine human dignity.
2. Take special vigilance to see that God's little ones are cared for in society. Support
those causes, laws, and institutions that guarantee the rights of the poor in our midst.
3. Treat each person as another self. Exercise the virtue of solidarity by viewing others
as members of one family under a loving God.
4. Exercise one's right to participate in society. Everyone has a duty to engage in
voluntary and generous social interchange according to one's position, role, talents,
and interests. Minimally, one must meet family and work obligations, contribute to the
church community, and be involved in public affairs.
5. Respect those who have legitimate positions of authority and obey established laws.
As good citizens, pay taxes, exercise the right to vote and defend one's country.
Welcome immigrants. Protest, even through civil disobedience, unjust laws that
undermine human dignity.
SOCIETAL OBLIGATIONS
1. Guarantee the conditions that allow associations and individuals to obtain their due,
according to their vocation and nature.
2. Root our any form of social, religious cultural, racial, economic, ethnic, or sexual
discrimination that denies people their fundamental human rights.
3. Guarantee the most basic right of all, the right to life. Outlaw unspeakable crimes like
abortion, murder, euthanasia, assisted suicide, fetal experimentation.
4. Create a climate where people can participate and contribute to the common good.
See to honest, just , and open communication based on truth, freedom, justice, and
solidarity.
5. Those who hold public authority must always promote the common good, recognize
the sovereignty of the law, promote the principle of subsidiarity and the practice of
limited government. Besides certain duties listed above:
 support and defend the family
 look out for the needs of the poor and defenseless through distributive justice,
 guarantee the right of religious freedom,
 promote peace within and outside the country,
 see that all have access to the economic and political spheres,
 ensure a morally fit environment where virtue can thrive, for example, by
outlawing pornography.
CENTRALITY OF THE FAMILY
Society and government have a duty to honour and assist the family and to guarantee
basic rights. The Charter of the Rights of the Family presented by Pope John Paul II at
the request of the Synod of Bishops spelled out some of these rights:
1. All persons have the right to the free choice of their state of life and thus to marry and
establish a family or to remain single.
2. Marriage cannot be contracted except by free and full consent duly expressed by the
spouses.
3. The spouses have the inalienable right to found a family.
4. Human life must be respected and protected absolutely from the moment of
conception.
5. Since they have conferred life on their children, parents have the original, primary and
inalienable right to educate them, hence they must be acknowledge as the first and
foremost educators of their children.
6. The family has the right to exist and to progress as a family.
7. Every family has the right to live freely its own domestic religious life under the
guidance of the parents, as well as the right to profess publicly and to propagate the
faith, to take part in public worship and in freely chosen programs of religious
instruction, without suffering discrimination.
8. The family has the right to exercise its social and political function in the construction of
society.
9. Families have the right to be able to rely on an adequate family policy on the part of
public authorities in the juridical, economic, social and fiscal domains, without any
discrimination whatsoever.
10. Families have a right to a social and economic order in which the organization or work
permits the members to live together, and does not hinder the unity, well-being, health
and the stability of the family, while offering also the possibility of wholesome
recreation.
11. The family has the right to decent housing, fitting for family life and commensurate to
the number of the members, in a physical environment that provides the basic services
for the life of the family and the community.
12. The families of migrants have the right to the same protection as that accorded other
families.
REFLECTION:
You are going to devote yourself to doing “random acts of kindness” around your homes:
offering babysitting services free of charge so that their parents can have a “night on the
town”, offering to make dinner, do dishes, do extra yard work, etc., to show appreciation to
your parents. Write a reflection paper recounting the deeds you did, your parents' responses,
and your own feelings about the experience.