The first supernatural light upon nature is the light of precept: God commands or forbids something that the mind itself can recognize as right or wrong. Telling us what we already know or could have known may seem superfluous. Yet, as equatorial sunlight prickles the skin, so revelation prickles the mind and wakes it up, and it does this in several different ways.
First Things 88 (1998)
Continuing my reply to yesterday’s letter from a student:
Your second question is about what you call “moral miracles.” Can God make it right to do what is intrinsically wrong, just by commanding it? This question arises especially for those who not only accept natural law, but also accept the Bible as authentic divine revelation.
Mondays are reserved for questions from students. This student is writing from Oxford.
It’s strange how the notion that men and women are identical works against the very equality that it tries to uphold. The same, are they? The same as what? Though with some dissimulation, identicalists almost always answer, "The same as men."
People used to be taught to associate with persons who are good. Since the cardinal sin is now viewed as having opinions about the matter, we don’t consider whether people are good any more. Now we ask whether they are “nice.”
It is still a moral judgment, but it doesn’t look so much like one.