From Colin Burke on difficult reasoning.

Ian Hunter in his May column ("Our lost Morality," p.10) says that men have failed to establish a moral system compelling assent by reason alone. I'm not so certain; I think it is quite possible that, as Chesterton said of Christianity, the project was not so much tried and found wanting as found difficult and left untried. For there are self-evident moral principles perceptible by reason, such as "Things belong to those who make them"; "Deeds ought to be done as directly as possible"; "Means must not outweigh ends"; and "No one is a judge in his own case."

I myself am convinced that logical reasoning from these premises upholds the validity of the Distributism preached by Chesterton and Hilaire Belloc and the justice of capital punishment, and condemns unwed parenthood, among other desirable and interesting results. I'd gladly elaborate here, but I'm reliably informed that my reasoning is too difficult and complicated for the purposes of periodicals like Catholic Insight (not tried and found wanting, but difficult and therefore untried).

Maybe Prof. Hunter might be equal to the task of comprehending my efforts and judging whether they succeed, in their difficult and complicated fashion. He might even, if he feels they do succeed, make them more comprehensible to readers of periodicals like CI. If he'd like to try, he may write to me for a copy of an essay on the subject. After all, C.S. Lewis reasoned from our perception of natural, objective morality to establish the existence of God. I'm not sure he established satisfactorily the existence of God by that method, but he did point to the presence of natural morality in the lives of men.

Port au Port, NL