David D. Kirkpatrick of the NY Times  discovered a new hero of conservative thought and given him a nice gushy little piece in the Sunday magazine for December 20.

On a September afternoon, about 60 prominent Christians assembled in the library of the Metropolitan Club on the east side of Central Park. It was a gathering of unusual diversity and power. Many in attendance were conservative evangelicals like the born-again Watergate felon Chuck Colson, who helped initiate the meeting. Metropolitan Jonah, the primate of the Orthodox Church in America, was there as well. And so were more than half a dozen of this country’s most influential Roman Catholic bishops, including Archbishop Timothy Dolan of New York, Archbishop John Myers of Newark and Cardinal Justin Rigali of Philadelphia.

At the center of the event was Robert P. George, a Princeton University professor of jurisprudence and a Roman Catholic who is this country’s most influential conservative Christian thinker. Dressed in his usual uniform of three-piece suit, New College, Oxford cuff links and rimless glasses­, George convened the meeting with a note of thanks and a reminder of its purpose. Alarmed at the liberal takeover of Washington and an apparent leadership vacuum among the Christian right, the group had come together to warn the country’s secular powers that the culture wars had not ended. As a starting point, George had drafted a 4,700-word manifesto that promised resistance to the point of civil disobedience against any legislation that might implicate their churches or charities in abortion, embryo-destructive research or same-sex marriage.

Two months later, at a Washington press conference to present the group’s “Manhattan Declaration,” George stepped aside to let Cardinal Rigali sum up just what made the statement, and much of George’s work, distinctive. These principles did not belong to the Christian faith alone, the cardinal declared; they rested on a foundation of universal reason. “They are principles that can be known and honored by men and women of good will even apart from divine revelation,” Rigali said. “They are principles of right reason and natural law.”

Someone has been reading Thomas Aquinas again and, in their reading, they have discovered a new, entirely non religious, reason why the state should spend as much time worrying about what you do with your dirty bits as the pope does.

You see its all natural law, the way things should be, discovered by reason and independent of any religious prejudices that these guys might entertain in their spare time. This is just what humans have to do to be happy and prosperous and what is the state for, if not to insure our happiness and prosperity?

To be sure the natural law does cast the same light on all aspects of human life. Per George:

He told them with typical bluntness that they should stop talking so much about the many policy issues they have taken up in the name of social justice. They should concentrate their authority on “the moral social” issues like abortion, embryonic stem-cell research and same-sex marriage, where, he argued, the natural law and Gospel principles were clear. To be sure, he said, he had no objections to bishops' “making utter nuisances of themselves” about poverty and injustice, like the Old Testament prophets, as long as they did not advocate specific remedies. They should stop lobbying for detailed economic policies like progressive tax rates, higher minimum wage and, presumably, the expansion of health care — “matters of public policy upon which Gospel principles by themselves do not resolve differences of opinion among reasonable and well-informed people of good will,” as George put it.

Wonks Anonymous will note that this clear distinction was not made by the Angelic Doctor in the 13th Century back when the whole natural law idea was being developed. Aquinas had a great deal to say about economic relations. In fact the minimum wage might be seen as a simple extension of the doctrine of the just price.

And it seems that other economic doctrines that no one would think of advocating today were very much a part of the 13th Century interpretation of the natural law. In particular, the taking of interest - any interest - for loans was considered to be something like theft. For an exposition of this doctrine Wonks Anonymous refers the reader to Dante's Inferno Cantos 14 and 15, much more entertaining than those theological tomes. Wonks Anonymous also notes that gay people share the same circle in Hell as moneylenders.

So why is usury different from gay marriage? Why is one bad only in the 13th Century and the other an abomination for all time? Wonks Anonymous supposes that Dr. George would argue that times change. Economic and social systems evolve, the world changes and our understanding of human nature an society change. We are no longer living in the 13th Century and it turns out that taking interest on loans is an important part of a modern economic and social system.

So why is usury any different from gay marriage? After all our understanding of human psychology and sexuality has changed since the 13th Century. We no longer live in a world where human survival depends on maximum reproduction and we can clearly see the importance of sexuality in bonding gay and straight couples who go on to raise children and support their communities in various ways.

It seems that reason alone is insufficient to establish the truth of any doctrine. Dr. George and Wonks Anonymous are both deploying reason to support positions that come from their experience and their hearts. Humans most often use reason to rationalize their preexisting beliefs. How can you tell who is right?

Like the devil, Wonks Anonymous claims the privilege of quoting scripture. You will know them by their fruits.

Wonks Anonymous is convinced that the ban on usury is wrong because he has seen modern nations that have attempted to abolish interest on loans. This ban created both economic dysfunction and gross inequities. There was no trade-off. It was just bad.

Now Wonks Anonymous suggests that we also have a test of Dr. George's doctrines concerning the natural law and our dirty bits. Most of us will agree that pedophilia is not really a good thing and it would seem that laws and customs that promoted pedophilia - however unwittingly - would have to be considered bad things.

Now, over the past fifty plus years which social institution has been most active in the promotion of pedophilia? Which institution has knowingly sheltered pedophiles, excused them, covered up their activities and moved them to new positions where they could continue to abuse children?

The Man Boy Love Association may talk about such things. The Catholic Church really delivers.

Dr. George and the bishops may argue that this is not at all what was intended when the Catholic Church set out to enforce its sexual code on its members. They will no doubt claim that the problems, repeated throughout the Church with banal similarity of detail, were the result of human imperfection.

Wonks Anonymous can present similar defenses of dysfunctional socialist economic systems. We are talking about natural law here. If your version of natural law makes people corrupt and unhappy it is false.

Any God, Marx or The Lord of Hosts, is free to impose all manner of strange practices on his devotees and they are free to accept this imposition within the bounds of the civil law. No one can promote an obviously false and outdated creed to the status of a law over us all.