CathInfo.com

AI translation of a few excerpts. Again, posting doesn't mean total agreement with everything, I just find it an interesting theory. Probably of some interest to the BOD and EENS people too.

Now, they will tell us, for example, that there is no man in the world, sound in body and mind, even if he were in the most invincible ignorance of the law of God, who does not hold actions like theft, rape, murder, and assassination to be forbidden, and who is not conscious of doing wrong when committing them. To which we will answer, having made every concession as broadly and as liberally as possible, that this man will be conscious of acting wrongly—that is to say, of acting against the instinct of sensibility, or against the social order, and perhaps also against the human laws that protect it. To act wrongly—that is to say, to act against a higher law imposing upon him respect for this order, obliging him to place its interest above his own, and binding his freedom in that inner forum where no human eye penetrates, where no police regulation is valid in itself—that is what would remain to be demonstrated.

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We will be told further that the principle that one must do good and avoid evil is a principle of immediate evidence; that it is the first principle of practical reason, the one upon which, in the final analysis, all conclusions of morality rest, and which, as soon as it is presented to the mind, is admitted outright as sufficient unto itself by its own light. To which it is increasingly easy to answer that all this is doubtless very true, provided, however—and this is an essential and always implied condition—that the understanding of the terms is presupposed. For how would it be evident to me that I must do good and avoid evil if I do not first have the notion of good and evil? I mean the good and evil of a moral order, which is the subject here. Now, this notion is only provided to me by speculative reason, and is in necessary dependence, as has been demonstrated in its place, on the knowledge of God as the end, and of His law as the rule to which, in order to be upright, all my actions must conform. Thus, Saint Thomas, speaking of the principles self-evident in themselves, which are the first starting point of practical reason, says: "As is the one that one must not do evil, and that one must obey the precepts of God." Will it perhaps be said that it is evident to me that I must obey the precepts of God, even if I am supposed not to know God?

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We are told, then, first that the man of the forests, still assumed to be in invincible ignorance of the existence of God—qui invincibiliter nunquam audivit de Dei existentia—would nonetheless perceive the impropriety that exists between certain actions and the dictate of right reason. This is the first link to which the whole chain of reasoning will be hooked, and already, even before going any further, how many reservations might one not have here? For, in short, what truly firm dictate will one claim to find in one whose one-eyed reason, open only to the temporal and human order, would by hypothesis still be closed to the higher order, to the supreme end to which the life of man is ordered, to everything that transcends the arrangements, the proprieties, and the interests of the present life? If I am told, for example, that his reason will nevertheless not fail to dictate to him that theft and homicide are contrary to the good order of human living, I answer that it can even less conceal from him that in many cases, theft and homicide will be in full conformity with another good order, which is that of his own affairs. And deprived as he is of any higher idea, where will he find the principle that will teach him that the good order of society, that the alleged right of another, that the respect for the goods, or even the life of one's neighbor, must take precedence over his personal conveniences? After all, the principle that in case of conflict between one's own interest and the interest of another, one must give preference to the second, is a principle which, in its generality, is certainly not admitted by sound philosophy, nor by the Gospel itself. And on the other hand, will one perhaps want to claim that the distinctions and sub-distinctions that the subject entails will enter immediately into the mind of this ignorant person, this child of pure nature, whose conscience no religious culture has yet refined? But let us not insist, and let all this be said in passing, only to show that the famous "dictate of right reason," about which there is such a great noise, would, in the hypothesis, be neither as firm nor as clear as one would like to believe.

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It is that when one speaks of reason and the dictate of reason, it can be done in two very different senses. First, by taking reason purely and simply for what it is in itself, namely: nothing more or less than the faculty given to man to know, to judge, to reason, to deduce consequences from their principles, to go back from effects to their causes, or, if it is a question of practical reason, to order means to determined ends, to arrange them for the sake of action, to direct execution in all branches of human activity, whether of arts and industry, or of the conduct of life, both public and private; but—and let this be well noted—still in complete and total abstraction from a higher and divine reason, of which this same human reason would be like a reflection, of which it would have in itself the mark and the impression according to this word of Scripture: signatum est super nos lumen vultus tui, Domine, of which, finally, it would notify by its dictate the eternal law and the sovereign ordinances. Now, this first way of considering reason is also, and quite obviously, the only one that can be taken into account at the point we have reached, given that, at this point in the question, the existence of God is still supposed to be invincibly ignored, that this is the very thing that is to be demonstrated by hypothesis, and that, far from finding a place in the premises of the reasoning, it must, on the contrary, emerge from it as a final conclusion. This being once well established and put beyond all dispute, let us take up the argument of the adversaries again and consider the series of consequences that they claim to draw from the principle from which they start: that man, destitute of any prior notion of God, would nonetheless perceive the impropriety that exists between certain actions and the dictate of reason.
In the first place, from the fact that this man would perceive such or such an action as contrary to the dictate of reason, they claim to derive that, by that very fact, he would perceive it as illicit and forbidden. But, slowly. We stop them at this first step, by contesting the legitimacy of a deduction that cannot fail to appear, as soon as one reflects on it, as nothing if not forced. We would say that he will perceive this action, at most, as unreasonable, and that from opposition to reason, one will never derive anything else, as long as reason is taken as it must be here, in complete and total abstraction, as stated above, from a higher and divine reason, of which it would intimate the order and promulgate the law. Assuredly, it would be quite otherwise for one who, like us, knows in advance that there is a God commanding us to keep, and forbidding us to violate, the natural order that our reason shows us: ordinem naturalem, says Saint Augustine, servari jubens, perturbari vetans. In these conditions, indeed, reason would be taken as nothing more than the proximate rule of action—in other words, as the interpreter or herald of the supreme rule that stands above it. Under these conditions, too, moral philosophy, while explicitly considering only the dictate of reason, will nonetheless have as its implicit object, and as a always-presupposed prerequisite, the eternal ordinance by virtue of which, and not otherwise, conscience can bind free will. Finally, under these conditions, from the fact that an action is contrary to the rule of reason, one will very legitimately infer that it is illicit, that it is prohibited, that it is forbidden; and this is the proper procedure of natural ethics. But, if I am supposed to know no higher directory, of which that of my reason is only a participation; if, furthermore, in competition with the dictate of my reason, the dictate of my own pleasure enters; if, finally, using my freedom, I neglect the former to obey the latter, I will be conscious of doing something that reason reproves—as much as one might wish to call it a forbidden and prohibited thing—but, unless it is perhaps by some human law or convention - it will be more than difficult to ever demonstrate that to me [why it's wrong to ignore reason].