Day 256: The Natural Moral Law (2026)
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What is the natural moral law and how is it written in every human heart?
My name is Father Mike Schmitz, and you're listening to the Catechism in a Year podcast, where we encounter God's plan of sheer goodness for us, revealed in Scripture and passed down through the tradition of the Catholic faith. The Catechism in a Year is brought to you by Ascension. In three hundred and sixty-five days, we'll read through the Catechism of the Catholic Church, discovering our identity in God's family as we journey together toward our heavenly home. This is day two hundred and fifty-six. We are reading paragraphs nineteen forty-nine to nineteen sixty. As always, I'm using The Ascension edition of the Catechism, which includes a foundations of faith approach, but you can follow along with any recent version of the Catechism of the Catholic Church.
You can also download your own Catechism in a Year Reading Plan by visiting AscensionPress.com slash CIY, and you can click follow or subscribe in your podcast app for daily updates and daily notifications so you don't miss a day or don't miss an episode. And we are just launching into the next section, chapter three, in fact, God's Salvation. We're talking about law and grace. And so today we're going to be talking about the moral law and how there are various kinds of laws. They're all connected. But we're going to begin with the natural moral law. So the natural moral law is is what the church has classically called natural law. It's not called natural law because it's like the law of nature. Sometimes people will confuse that and say, well, the law of nature is, you know, kind of like a we live in a dog-eat-dog world, that kind of thing when it comes to the law of nature.
This is the natural law, which is the moral law, the obligation to do some things and to avoid other things that every person finds in the human heart, right? Every person finds in themselves to some degree there are laws written, not in some book somewhere, but written on the human heart. Romans chapter one talks about this, but also the church has, for 2,000 years, has talked about the natural moral law that every person inside of them, Again, not not that we all see this clearly, not that we all necessarily even agree on every point of this natural moral law, but there are certain things that alwa virtually always and everywhere. That in every civilization, culture, throughout history, human beings have said, okay, this is the thing we're obliged to do, and these are the things we're obliged to avoid doing.
And so we're gonna talk about that. Also, of course, not of course, but maybe you don't know this. Today we're starting with a moral law. Tomorrow, with a quite a few paragraphs, you know, we're going from nineteen forty-nine to nineteen sixty, but tomorrow we're gonna talk about the old law, and then we move on to the new law or the law of the gospel. And so it's just this this this first Little article, article one, on what is what is the moral loss. We're talking about that today. And so, in order to ask the Lord, uh, in order to talk about this and actually let it change our hearts and change our minds, we approach that we approach our God, who is so good, the God who is the source of all truth, the God who is the source of all beauty, and the source of all goodness, who's given us in the depths of our hearts the moral law was also given through scripture.
moral law who's also given in Jesus Christ the moral loss. We that's the God we're approaching right now. And so we say, we pray. Father in heaven, you are the source of all goodness, you are the source of all grace, you just you are the source of all truth. We ask that you please unveil your truth in our lives, unveil your truth in our hearts so that we can know you more clearly and follow you more closely. Lord God, whatever your law is, reveal it to us. Especially breakthrough our sinful tendencies, our are the the way in which sin Clouds our judgment and clouds our intellect. We ask that you please please break through those things so we can know what it is you will us to do with clarity, and then to do it with great courage.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
What is the natural moral law and how is it written in every human heart?
0:06–4:00
2
Why does the Church distinguish between natural law, the old law, and the law of the Gospel?
4:00–8:34
3
How does the natural law relate to the Decalogue (Ten Commandments)?
8:34–12:00
4
What role do reason and freedom play in understanding natural moral law?
12:00–14:26
5
How do philosophers like Aquinas and Augustine explain the source of natural law?
14:26–16:51
6
Why can the application of natural law vary across cultures and history?
16:51–19:43
7
How does original sin affect our ability to perceive natural law?
19:43–22:54
8
What is the connection between natural law, revealed law, and civil/ecclesial law?
22:54–26:09