By DONALD DeMARCO
I received a telephone call one day from a university colleague asking for my help. She had invited Professor Charles E. Rice, an expert on natural law, to speak and because of that was receiving death threats. I could not be of much help since I was about to leave the country on a teaching assignment. She had notified the police and was assured that they would provide adequate security.
Professor Rice delivered his lecture with police protection in the room. The threats were taken seriously, however, and other presentations that Professor Rice was scheduled to make while he was in the area were canceled.
Ironically, Professor Rice was not planning on talking about the natural law. Such is the temper of the times! The natural law provides an objective ground for constructing the argument that certain sexual acts, such as sodomy, are unnatural. It is a far more reasonable ground from which to construct moral argumentation than intimidating people by making threats of violence.
It is a sad commentary on our times that reason is often suppressed so that force can set the agenda.
Who was Charles E. Rice? He was a specialist in constitutional law and jurisprudence, edited The American Journal of Jurisprudence, was a colorful and popular teacher, a Marine, a boxing coach, author of 13 books, a staunch pro-life supporter, father of 10 children and an adopted son born in South Vietnam, and grandfather of 41 grandchildren.
He served as a consultant to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights and to various congressional committees on constitutional issues, and was a sought-after speaker.
Fr. Wilson Miscamble, CSC, a friend and colleague of Professor Rice, said of him what many people who knew him could also have said:
“His contribution as a teacher and scholar in the Law School influenced at least two generations of students to become lawyers who saw their work as a vocation and not just a career. His profound commitment to the pro-life cause and to the truths of natural law, which were so evident in his writings, and in his speaking and television appearances, gave him an influence far beyond the Notre Dame campus.”
Charlie Rice was born in Manhattan on August 7, 1931. He received a bachelor’s degree from the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Mass., his law degree from Boston College Law School, and his master’s and doctoral degree in law from New York University. He met his wife, Mary, at the Boston College Law School, practiced law in New York City, and taught at the New York University Law School and at Fordham Law School before joining the faculty at Notre Dame in 1969.
When I spoke at the Notre Dame Law School, Professor Rice gave me carte-blanche access to the law library. My research proved beneficial, not only by placing an article in a law review, but providing my benefactor with more ammunition that he later used in his talks. He could not have been more encouraging and considerate. There are few, if any people I have ever met that were easier to befriend than Charlie Rice.
His writing is straightforward, easy to read, and to the point. He was as keenly aware of moral philosophy as he was about the waywardness of the modern era.
In his book, Beyond Abortion: The Theory and Practice of the Secular State (1979), he illustrates in a striking way how things have changed for the worse. He cites an auction held in Louisiana where a lady won her bid of $30 for an abortion at the Delta Women’s Clinic. The auction was a fund-raising event sponsored by the American Civil Liberties Union.
Rice makes the comment that event “calls to mind the slave auctions so rhetorically opposed by the ACLU in other situations.”
In another sense, and on the subject of the family, has American society changed all that much since the time of pagan Rome?
“We have finally caught up with the pagan Romans,” he states, “who endowed the father, the paterfamilias, with the right to kill the child at his discretion. We give that right to the mother. But it is all the same to the victim.”
The situation is dire, but never too dire for prayer.
How does one understand the binding power of the opening words of the Declaration of Independence: “that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness?”
For many, it is the consent of the people. But, as Rice argues, some laws are unjust no matter what the majority says.
Drawing on the thought of St. Thomas Aquinas, Professor Rice argues that human law must be in conformity with natural law. Therefore, there must be something more than the consent of the people that gives the Declaration of Independence its binding power, its ultimate legitimacy. The right to life, therefore, is not based on consent. Rather, consent must be based on something higher, namely the natural law that is ordained by God.
Ever the realist, he recognized the growing persecution of the Catholic Church in the United States. He anticipated an “inevitable” clash between the secular state and the Catholic Church on issues of family, the right to life, economic justice, and issues related to same-sex marriage.
He saw the institution of federal mandates requiring Catholic employers to provide insurance coverage for contraception and sterilization as a salient example of “this accelerating persecution of the Church and of believing Catholics.”
Charlie Rice died on February 25, 2015 at the age of 83 at the University of Chicago Medical Center, surrounded by his loving family. He was a fighting Irishman for the Lord without ever disregarding the rules, and a teacher for his legion of listeners without ever compromising his integrity.
His legacy will not be ignored and will serve to help restore the fundamental and irreplaceable role of the natural law in establishing the true basis for human rights, while assisting in the effort to overcome the grave moral division that currently divides America.
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