Folia Theologica et Canonica 3. 25/17 (2014)

IUS CANONICUM - Michael Carragher, O.P., The sacrament of confirmation and personal development

THE SACRAMENT OF CONFIRMATION AND PERSONAL DEVELOPMENT 175

mais. Moreover, human creatures excel all other animals in the interior sensitive powers. As McCoy stated recently:7

One misdirected criticism of natural law is that it concentrates too much on what we have in common with other animals, failing to acknowledge those aspects of our human nature that distinguish us, namely, culture, society and a whole host of other factors belonging to human beings as social and political creatures. But the medieval notion of what it is to be human could not be detached from the idea that human beings are made in the image and likeness of God, which is the theological grounding for our social natures. Aquinas was clear that natural law referred to our existence in society and community, as much as our instincts shared with other animals.

On the surface level it is true that various non -rational creatures in virtue of their animal soul enjoy keener sight, a more acute sense of hearing, a sharper smell, swifter movement etc., than humans do. But human beings possess an intellectual soul which transforms all these activities and extracts from them information vital to their self preservation and quality of life. An owner and her dog see a red traffic light. For the former it is a signal to stop while the dog may run across a road and be injured fatally in an automobile accident. Animals see objects but not signals8. Humans see both. Children can be taught to use sign language but not pets. Likewise, a security guard and a trained dog can both spot an unaccompanied piece of luggage at an airport9 but they react differently, even though the dog can be trained to smell dangerous explosives or other prohibited substances.

7 McCoy, A., How to be Happy, in The Tablet 30 (November 2013) 6-7. See also Budziszewski, J., Commentary on Thomas Aquinas’s Treatise on Law, Cambridge 2014, where he presents a sustained commentary on the differences between a person’s participation of natural law and an irrational animal’s subjection to the promptings of natural instinct.

8 Hart, H. L. A., The Concept of Law, Oxford 1961. 87-88. “His view will be like the view of one who, having observed the working of a traffic signal in a busy street for some time, limits himself to saying that when the light turns red there is a high probability that the traffic will stop. He treats the light merely as a natural sign that people will behave in certain ways, as clouds are a sign that rain will come. In doing so he will miss out a whole dimension of the social life of those whom he is watching, since for them the red light is not merely a sign that others will stop: they look upon it as a signal for them to stop, and so a reason for stopping in conformity to rules which making stopping when the light is red a standard of behaviour and an obligation. To mention this is to bring into the account the way in which the group regards its own behaviour. It is to refer to the internal aspect of rules seen from their internal point of view.” Italics are in the original.

9 Turner, D., Thomas Aquinas a Portrait, New Haven 2013. 67-68. Finnis, J., Secularism and the ‘Culture of Death ’, in Religion and Public Reasons (Collected Essays V), Oxford 2011. 336: “St. Thomas puts this even more vigorously when he insists, again and again, that in animals (including us) soul is the body’s very act, so that in human beings the immortal spiritual soul,