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I once had an argument with a colleague about homosexuality. He told me, "I don't understand why the Church claims that homosexuality is against Natural Law. You find homosexuality all over the place in nature." My response was two-fold. One, you really don't find homosexuality in nature. What you find in nature is what I (tongue-in-cheek) call "trysexuality." Some animals will try anything. Secondly, Natural Law is not the same thing as the Law of the Jungle. In fact, it is quite the opposite of what my colleague implied. Natural Law is the part of the moral law that keeps us from becoming merely animals. Natural Law is the part of the moral law that helps us to become more human.

Philosophers in the Aristotilean and Platonic traditions differentiate between three general "natures" to describe what a species of organism is - vegetative nature, sensitive nature, and rational nature. They differentiate between these natures by the presence or absence of faculties - potential for abilities shared by members of a species. For example, vegetative nature is marked by the basic life faculties such as nutrition, growth, and reproduction with no faculties beyond those necessary to sustain life. Creatures with a sensitive nature (i.e. animals) possess these basic life faculties but also have other faculties. These other faculties are mostly based on the fives senses (thus the label "sensitive nature"), and are focused on attaining physical goods not only for survival but also for pleasure. Finally, the rational (human) nature includes all of the faculties of the sensitive and vegetative natures, but also includes the rational faculties of the intellect and the will. The intellect

allows humans to know the world beyond the limitations of physical reality, including abstract concepts and spiritual realities. The will allows humans the freedom to choose between spiritual and physical goods. By making these choices, human beings have the unique ability to choose their own destinies - to determine for themselves who they will become as persons. The phrase natural law refers to this human nature.

Because of free will, human beings are the only creatures who have the ability to be less than their nature. Human beings are physical and spiritual. If we foresake our physical bodies and focus only on the spiritual, we despise our physical bodies and so damage human dignity. On the other hand, if we foresake our spirits and embrace only our bodies, we become like animals, pursuing only pleasure. Furthermore, we use others and our own bodies as commodities in our search for pleasure. One of the purposes of human nature is to guide us to maximize the expression of our human nature by expressing both of these aspects of human life in balance.

How do we do this? Our intellect and our will empower us to balance our physical desires so that we don't neglect our spiritual needs (the virtue of temperance). Furthermore, they empower us to add a spiritual dimension to our physical striving.