FOR ANY DEEPLY Catholic or Orthodox mind, the Church is a person, typified in the Virgin Mary... Her actual boundaries extend far beyond her formal membership, into the realm of nature itself. It is in her that the flowers bloom and the rivers flow. Through his telescope the atheist scientist gazes at the stars. One can in fact only exclude oneself from her by a conscious act of rejection. The responsibility for the loss of this poetic or mystical sense of the Church as a cosmic, supernaturally organic community lies with the same dualist mindset that has pervaded Western society since the 17th century, and which is associated with the rise of industry and of the merchant classes.... The answer to that industrial mindset, however, is not Deep Ecology, it is Deep Christianity. In one way Lynn White was right. Christians helped to get us into this mess. They became shallow. And if Christians got us into it, Christians might bear a special responsibility for getting us out.
SO IT WAS THAT Pope Paul VI felt himself obliged to overrule a majority of his advisory committee, and issue his famous encyclical against the contraceptive pill. In the light of the potential population explosion in some parts of the world, that document encouraged the regulation of births to a level the earth could support -- but only through non-interventive methods (and he encouraged the scientific improvement of those methods). The Pope's decision reaffirmed the Church's whole latent, positive teaching on the body as a vital element of the human person. It reaffirmed the principles of ecology in the most intimate environment known to humankind. If the Pope had encouraged the use of the Pill, he would have been encouraging couples to pollute the waterways of the human body with chemicals, deliberately to prevent the body from functioning in a healthy way. A profane, industrial mentality would have been extended into the most sacred, private sphere.
--"Second Spring" is edited from the Centre for Faith & Culture at Westminster College, Oxford.
Alan KeyesI SHARE THE CONVICTION of many that the earth is the Lord's and that we as God's stewards must care for its well being. However, translating this weighty obligation into good public policy is no simple task. We should avoid the temptation of assuming, without further ado, that if God wants us to care about something, He must necessarily want us to put that something under government control....
The conventional wisdom in environmental matters is that more government is always better. Yet recent bitter experience suggests otherwise. Russia and Eastern Europe suffer from some of the world's worst ecological disasters, precisely because the former Soviet system suppressed markets and property rights. Under communism, factory managers had no incentives to conserve resources, and ordinary people had no legal standing to bring polluters to justice.
Keyes 2000 website
Fr. Lawrence E. MickExcerpts from the outstanding book, "Liturgy and Ecology in Dialogue," by Father Lawrence E. Mick. This book is highly recommended for parish and diocesan environmental justice education and action.
MANY PEOPLE HAVE explained their absence from Christian worship on Sunday by insisting that they can worship better in the woods than in church. Of course, many of them don't worship in the woods each Sunday either, but the point is still worth consideration. We need Christian worship for its fellowship and community. We are members of Christ's body, so we need to worship together. But it remains true that many people can sense the presence of the Lord more easily in the midst of nature than in the midst of the worshiping assembly. While this might lead us to some healthy questioning about the state of our worship and our worship spaces, it may also be that even the best worship experience in the best worship space possible will never be as powerful for some people as the experience of God in nature.
This fact should not induce us to posit an opposition between finding God in nature and encountering the Lord in worship. The two experiences should be complementary rather than conflicting. To be aware of God in nature should lead us to praise the Lord with the Christian assembly in worship. And our experience of worship should make us more aware of God in all of creation. The relationship between ecology and worship is truly of mutual benefit.
MORAL ISSUES HAVE always been a major part of Christian teaching and living and sacraments. In particular, the Catholic Church has continually insisted on the need for repentance and continuing conversion, turning away from sin and turning more fully to God. The sacrament of reconciliation is the most obvious expression of this belief, but it is not the only one. Baptism is celebrated "for the remission of sin," and every Eucharist proclaims Christ's triumph over sin through his death and resurrection. The penitential rite at the beginning of Mass and the sign of peace also attest to the continual human need for forgiveness and reconciliation. All the sacraments, in various ways, call for continuing conversion to Christ as the fundamental task of every Christian....
In the midst of worship, we are frequently invited to admit our sinfulness and to recognize our need for forgiveness. We celebrate God's great mercy, and in the light of the divine generosity in forgiving, we are set free to admit our need for healing, not because someone else made us do evil things, but because evil is part of our lives and finds a home in our hearts.
Until we are willing to recognize the sins that are involved in environmental destruction, we will have a very hard time confronting the evil that leads to this degradation of the environment. Every action that harms the ecology of the planet is ultimately a personal decision, and every decision is either in accord with or in violation of the will of God. Every decision human beings make is a moral decision; it is either an act of virtue or a sinful act.
Many of the human decisions and actions that degrade the environment are properly called sins. To pollute the air and water is a sin against the Creator and against all those who have a right to clean air and water. To contaminate the land with toxic chemicals is a sin against creation and against all those whose food comes from the land. To adopt farming practices that cause unnecessary erosion, to waste natural resources, to dump garbage in the oceans, and even to throw litter on the roadside and in the wilderness are all sinful actions.
So, too, sins of omission harm the environment: not recycling, not making provision for toxic and radioactive waste, not disposing of household chemicals properly, not voting for laws that will protect the environment. Our society needs to face honestly the sinfulness of the many ways we damage the environment. We need to ask for forgiveness and resolve not to continue living in this sinful manner....
When we learn to call sin by its true name and face the guilt of our actions, then we can begin to change our patterns of behavior and convert our lives to bring them into harmony with God's will and thus into harmony with all of God's creation. Allowing the liturgy to shape our recognition of the reality of evil within us as well as around us and learning to trust God's forgiving love will enable us to be more honest about our sins against creation and against others who have a right to share in the goods of creation.
ULTIMATELY, A CHRISTIAN approach to ecology is based on the dual commandment of Christ: we are called to love God above all things and to love our neighbor as ourselves. Love of God requires respect for God's gifts and for God's will for creation, and love of neighbor requires justice, which prohibits selfish destruction of the environment without regard for those in need today or for the needs of future generations.
THE RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE, properly understood, provides the best foundation for a lasting ecological awareness.... Far too often, those who espouse a greater ecological sensitivity find the struggle too hard and the quest too long to endure. It is all too common for people to get enthused about recycling and fighting pollution and stopping the cutting of the rain forests, but then to lose interest when things seem to change so little and the effort becomes difficult. The religious experience provides the lasting motivation to continue the effort because it finds God, the source of all meaning, in the midst of creation. The reverence we owe to God is linked to the reverence we show to the Creator's work.
TO THE EXTENT that we acquire a sense of wonder and awe at creation, we are naturally moved to give thanks to the One who created it all. An attitude of gratitude leads one to a more respectful response to creation.
Christian worship is fundamentally a response of thanksgiving. Worship is a response to what God has done and continues to do for us. The very term "Eucharist," the primary Christian form of worship, means "thanksgiving." The liturgy constantly leads us to offer thanks and praise to God for the gifts of creation and redemption. Participating regularly in this liturgy ought to gradually teach us to live constantly with a sense of profound gratitude. Each day our lives should be a thanksgiving day. If we acquire such a viewpoint, we are much more likely to care for creation as God's gift and thus to avoid abuse of the environment.
OUR WORSHIP IS a symbol of our life.... To enter into a common act means to surrender individual desires and individual control in order to function as a community. Community always requires compromise and self-surrender, whether that community is the family, the neighborhood, the Church, the nation, or the world community. Respect for the individual is important, but the individual is also part of a community, and in worship the community is the principle actor.
An ecological mindset can help here if it teaches us that we are always linked to others in our environment and that we influence one another for good or for ill.... Learning to worship as one assembly united in Christ is perhaps the biggest challenge facing the ongoing liturgical renewal. Learning to do so is important, however, both for worship and for other areas of our life. Facing our responsibilities to the common good and being willing to compromise our own desires for the sake of the community is essential to healthy human life. It is also clearly essential to action to preserve the environment of the planet....
The first gift that an ecological awareness brings to worship is simply the basic recognition that the environment in which we worship matters. Just as we are influenced in a thousand different ways by our links to the natural and manmade environment in which we live, so too our experience of worship is significantly influenced by a variety of factors in the worship environment....
Focusing on the connections between ecology and liturgy naturally raises the question of how our concern about the natural environment can be brought into the community's worship. Great caution and sensitivity to the nature of liturgy are necessary here. There is a great temptation to "use" worship as a tool to promote political and social agenda....
The key is to understand how liturgy teaches and forms us. The liturgy is a very powerful teacher. The way we worship shapes who we are, both as individuals and as a people, but it does not accomplish this in a direct and heavy-handed fashion. The experience of worship shapes us much more subtly and gradually than a political speech or a classroom exercise. Because it works at a much deeper and more subtle level, the liturgy can form us more powerfully and more deeply than these other approaches.
The liturgy forms us by gradually shaping our attitudes and emotions toward basic realities of life. The experience of worship plants in our minds and hearts images of how life can be or, more accurately, how things really are in God's sight. These images, planted repeatedly over time, begin to reshape our attitudes and thus to recast our emotions toward God, toward self, toward other people, and toward all creation. And once our emotions have changed, our behavior changes as well. This is the way worship fosters conversion, the gradual giving over of our whole life to God.
-Liturgy and Ecology in Dialogue. 1997. The Liturgical Press. Collegeville, Minnesota, USA. This is an outstanding book!
Gilbert Keith
ChestertonA THING CANNOT be completely wonderful so long as it remains sensible. So long as we regard a tree as an obvious thing, naturally and reasonably created for a giraffe to eat, we cannot properly wonder at it. It is when we consider it as a prodigious wave of the living soil sprawling up to the skies for no reason in particular that we take off our hats, to the astonishment of the park-keeper.
-Quoted in Treasured Volume of Thoughts, collected by John Scott. 1969. New York: The Oak Tree Press, Inc.
PROPERLY SPEAKING, of course, there is no such thing as a return to Nature, because there is no such thing as a departure from it. The phrase reminds one of the slightly intoxicated gentleman who gets up in his own dining room and declares firmly that he must be getting home.
-Chesterton Review, August 1993
THE AVERAGE autochthonous Irishman is close to patriotism because he is close to the earth; he is close to domesticity because he is close to the earth; he is close to doctrinal theology and elaborate ritual because he is close to the earth. In short, he is close to the heavens because he is close to the earth.
-George Bernard Shaw
I SINCERELY maintain that Nature-worship is more morally dangerous than the most vulgar Man-worship of the cities; since it can easily be perverted into the worship of an impersonal mystery, carelessness, or cruelty.
-Alarms and Discursions
THE ABSENCE from modern life of both the higher and the lower forms of faith is largely due to a divorce from Nature and the trees and clouds.
-Heretics
ALL CULTURE is infected with a faint unclean sense that Nature and all things behind us and below us are bad; that there is only praise to the highbrow in the height. St. Thomas exalted God without lowering Man; he exalted Man without lowering Nature. Therefore, he made a cosmos of common sense; terra viventium; a land of the living.
ST. FRANCIS did not only listen for the angels, but also listened to the birds.
-St. Thomas Aquinas
WHEN ONCE a god is admitted, even a false god, the Cosmos begins to know its place: which is the second place. When once it is the real God, the Cosmos falls down before Him, offering flowers in spring as flames in winter.... And when I look across the sun-struck fields, I know in my inmost bones that my joy is not solely in the spring, for spring alone, being always returning, would be always sad. There is somebody or something walking there, to be crowned with flowers: and my pleasure is in some promise yet possible and in the resurrection of the dead.
All around me as I write is a noise of Nature drinking: and Nature makes a noise when she is drinking, being by no means refined. If I count it Christian mercy to give a cup of cold water to a sufferer, shall I complain of these multitudinous cups of cold water handed round to all living things; a cup of water for every shrub; a cup of water for every weed? I would be ashamed to grumble at it.
-A Miscellany of Men (1912)
THE CATHOLIC CHURCH is tireless in encouraging civil authorities and all men and women of good will to rethink their attitudes and decisions in daily life which cannot be based on the insatiable and limitless search for material well being, but must keep in mind the fundamental needs of present and future generations.
--7th Economic Forum of the Organization for European Security and Cooperation, 27 May 1999
SINCE THE DIVISION of the Korean people, the DMZ [demilitarized zone] has been a symbol of separation, war, suffering and fratricidal conflict. However, quite ironically the DMZ is today a rare place in the world where ecology is preserved intact.... Our movement intends to preserve the DMZ area so that all life and creatures can live freely and peacefully in a "holy land of peace."
--As Secretary General of the Catholic Bishops Conference of Korea CBCK, 3/23/2001
THE FRANCISCAN APPROACH to life is marked by a recognition of the importance, beauty, and goodness of Creation created by a good God for no other reason than love. We share this earth, its resources, our lives and work with all of God's creatures, who are our brothers and sisters. Unlike some who strove to domesticate and dominate nature, the two great saints of Assisi expected to live lightly on our Sister, Mother Earth, being a burden to neither the Earth nor to those who fed and clothed them.
FRANCISCAN JOY is not a naive denial of human suffering and problems. It is a conviction that despite all that is bad in life, God's Spirit is always within us, in others, and in Creation.
-- Characteristics of Franciscan Work for Justice, Peace and the Integrity of Creation
IN THE UNITED STATES, studies dating from 1967 document the disproportionate impact of pollution and environmental problems on people of color and the poor. Notably, these studies demonstrate that race, even more than income, is the most significant predictor of exposure to environmental contamination. Increasingly in the United States, the public's view of the environment must include the elimination of discriminatory practices, policies, and programs that adversely affect both people of color and people with low incomes. Environmental justice directly challenges the effects of discrimination in communities of color and low income communities: economically and environmentally blighted urban habitats, disproportional waste facility siting, higher levels of lead poisoning, radioactive contamination, industrial pollutants, unsafe housing, as well as on-the-job exposure to toxic chemicals.
--Deeohn Ferris directs the Washington Office on Environmental Justice (1995).
THE SUPREME REALITY of our time is ... the vulnerability of our planet.
--From the web site of the Thurgood Marshall School of Law Environmental Justice Clinic
IT IS OUR TASK in our time and in our generation to hand down undiminished to those who come after us, as was handed down to us by those who went before, the natural wealth and beauty which is ours.
A BLESSED INTERCONNECTEDNESS is at the heart of nature. Theology has long proclaimed that the Holy Trinity, the source of creativity, is a community. Quantum physics is now revealing how creation itself is also an interdependent, energetic community. Like the great mandala of Chartres' rose window, all earth's parts come together as one community.
--Catholic Digest, December 2000
THERE IS NEED for a better appreciation and understanding of the signs of hope present in the last part of this century, even though they often remain hidden from our eyes. In society in general, such signs of hope include ... a greater awareness of our responsibility for the environment.
--Quoted in Promotio Justitiae, No. 70, April 1999
LACK OF RESPECT for a loving Creator leads to denial of the dignity of the human person and the wanton destruction of the environment.
--Quoted in Promotio Justitiae, No. 70, April 1999
UNSCRUPULOUS EXPLOITATION of natural resources and the environment degrades the quality of life; it destroys cultures and sinks the poor in misery.
ECOLOGICAL EQUILIBRIUM and a sustainable, equitable use of the world's resources are important elements of justice towards all the communities in our present 'global village;' they are also matters of justice toward future generations who will inherit whatever we leave them.
--Quoted in Promotio Justitiae, No. 70, April 1999
ACCORDING TO Christian faith, the human environment is more than merely a neutral realm for human life and actions. The repeated formula 'and God saw it was good' as well as the Noachic covenant, leave no doubt that all created beings and things were blessed. There is a special relationship between God and all created things. It is indisputable, then, that no life is worthless -- human, plant, or animal -- because even the simplest forms of life are blessed by God.
--Quoted in Promotio Justitiae, No. 70, April 1999
HIDDEN BEHIND societal violence today is ecological degradation. We cannot have healthy people on a sick planet. The structures and institutions we build and the plans and programs we create can no longer disregard the ways in which the earth works. Included here are economic, educational, legal, governmental, health, and religious structures. Such disregard is not good for any of us and is especially hard on the poor and marginal among us.
--Quoted in Promotio Justitiae, No. 70, April 1999
THE CURRENT development model is based almost entirely on economic considerations. This approach has led to the current environmental crisis, and a solution will not arise from within its internal logic but thanks only to a fundamental shift with regard to development itself. Human rights include 'rights such as development, peace, and a healthy environment.' There is therefore an urgent need for alternative development models, models which integrate cultural, environmental, and social justice values in their functioning.
--Promotio Justitiae No. 70, April 1999, "We Live in a Broken World: Reflections on Ecology"
FOR HUMAN BEINGS there is no authentic search for God without an insertion into the life of the creation, and, on the other hand, all solidarity with human beings and every engagement with the created world cannot be authentic without a discovery of God.
--Discourse to General Congregation 34, Society of Jesus, January 6, 1995. Quoted in Promotio Justitiae, No. 70, April 1999
GOD HAS ALWAYS been the God of the poor because the poor are the visible proof of a failure in the work of creation.
--"Our Mission Today and Tomorrow," Faith Doing Justice, 1991. Quoted in Promotio Justitiae, No. 70, April 1999
IF PEOPLE TRY to exclude any reference to God, the environment will remain an orphan, at the mercy of the profits and interests of hidden or manifest powers.... If one accepts the reference to God, the environment acquires a shield which prevents any desacralization of it.
--L'Osservatore Romano newspaper, April 25, 2001.
THE SENSE OF responsibility of those who are engaged in ecological issues is most worthy of respect. The reason is because they have a total vision of the life cycle and, as a result, they care for the welfare of the present generation that shares the same limited world, but, at the same time, their thoughts lean also towards the whole ecological basis which supports the life of future generations. Is there anything for us Christians to add so that we may expand the circle of our responsibility? As Christians, we can add the following questions: a responsibility demanded by whom? a responsibility we must accept before whom? One thing is clear for us who believe in Jesus Christ, who called the Lord of Heaven and Earth 'his Father': we are responsible before the Creator.
--Quoted in Promotio Justitiae, No. 70, April 1999
WE OFTEN SAW how little things became the occasion for him [Saint Ignatius of Loyola, founder of the Jesuits] to lift his spirit to God, and this -- even in the littlest things -- is admirable. Upon noticing a plant, a little herb, a leaf, a flower, some fruit, when considering a small worm or some other little animal, he would rise up above the heavens and enter the innermost and remotest of the senses; and out of each of these little things he drew advice and teaching useful for instructing the spiritual life.
--Vida del P. Ignacio V, 1 p. 743, as in Ricardo Garcia-Villoslada, S.J., San Ignacio de Loyola, Nueva Biografia, Madrid: Biblioteca de Autores Cristianos, 1986, p. 594. Quoted in Promotio Justitiae, No. 70, April 1999
E. F. SchumacherTHE ECONOMICS OF permanence implies a profound reorientation of science and technology, which have to open their doors to wisdom and, in fact, have to incorporate wisdom into their very structure. Scientific or technological "solutions" which poison the environment or degrade the social structure...are of no benefit, no matter how great their superficial attraction. Ever bigger machines, entailing ever bigger concentrations of economic power and exerting ever greater violence against the environment, do not represent progress: they are a denial of wisdom. Wisdom demands a new orientation of science and technology towards the organic, the gentle, the non-violent, the elegant and beautiful. Peace, as has often been said, is indivisible -- how then could peace be built on a foundation of reckless science and violent technology?
IT IS DOUBLY CHIMERICAL to build peace on economic foundations which, in turn, rest on the systematic cultivation of greed and envy, the very forces which drive humans to conflict. How could we even begin to disarm greed and envy? Perhaps by being much less greedy and envious ourselves; perhaps by resisting the temptation of letting our luxuries become needs; and perhaps by even scrutinizing our needs to see if they cannot be simplified and reduced. If we do not have the strength to do any of this, could we perhaps stop applauding the type of economic "progress" which palpably lacks the basis of permanence and give what modest support we can to those who, unafraid of being denounced as cranks, work for non-violence: as conservationists, ecologists, protectors of wildlife, promoters of organic agriculture, distributists, cottage producers, and so forth? An ounce of practice is generally worth more than a ton of theory.
AS GANDHI SAID, the poor of the world cannot be helped by mass production, only by production by the masses.... The system of production by the masses mobilizes the priceless resources which are possessed by all human beings, their clever brains and skillful hands, and supports them with first-class tools. The technology of mass production is inherently violent, ecologically damaging, self-defeating in terms of non-renewable resources, and stultifying for the human person. The technology of production by the masses, making use of the best of modern knowledge and experience, is conducive to decentralization, compatible with the laws of ecology, gentle in its use of scarce resources, and designed to serve humans instead of making them the servants of machines. I have named it intermediate technology to signify that it is vastly superior to the primitive technology of bygone ages but at the same time much simpler, cheaper, and freer than the super-technology of the rich. One can also call it self-help technology, or democratic or people's technology -- a technology to which everybody can gain admittance and which is not reserved to those already rich and powerful.
HUMANS CANNOT LIVE without science and technology any more than they can live against nature. What needs the most careful consideration, however, is the direction of scientific research....the direction should be towards non-violence rather than violence; towards an harmonious cooperation with nature rather than a warfare against nature; towards the noiseless, low-energy, elegant, and economical solutions normally applied in nature rather than the noisy, high-energy, brutal, wasteful, and clumsy solutions of our present-day sciences.
WE OFTEN HEAR IT said that we are entering the era of "the Learning Society." Let us hope this is true. We still have to learn how to live peacefully, not only with our fellow men but also with nature and, above all, with those Higher Powers which have made nature and have made us; for, assuredly, we have not come about by accident and certainly have not made ourselves.
FOSSIL FUELS ARE merely a part of the "natural capital" which we steadfastly insist on treating as expendable, as if it were income, and by no means the most important part. If we squander our fossil fuels, we threaten civilization; but if we squander the capital represented by living nature around us, we threaten life itself.
OUR PROBLEMS ARE so serious that the best way to talk about them is light-heartedly.
-Excerpts from Schumacher's book , Small is Beautiful: Economics as if People Mattered, 1973, and the book, Good Work.
ADDRESSING THE CRITICS of the current anthropocentrism, I would only like to point out that an anthropocentrism according to global principles of justice is very different and very demanding when it comes to the ecological care of the planet. And this should come as no great surprise. For that anthropocentrism which legitimates the sacking of the natural environment, usually began by dispossessing others having an equal or prior right, and today it also continues to ignore the rights of local populations and of future generations. When, by contrast, the rights of each man and woman are respected, one inevitably arrives at a universalistic anthropocentrism which, according to my way of seeing things, demands just as much care for the environment as do theories of deep ecology.
--Quoted in Promotio Justitiae, No. 70, April 1999
IF YOUR HEART is straight with God, then every creature will be to you a mirror of life and a book of holy doctrine. No creature is so little or so mean as not to show forth and represent the goodness of God.
Thomas à Kempis. The Imitation of Christ. Trans. Richard Whitford, moderenized by Harold C. Gardiner. New York: Doubleday, 1955.
Paraphrased: God enfolds creation, for in God all things are God. Yet God also unfolds creation in its diversity, for God is in various things like truth in an image. (p. 137)
FROM THE infinity of your mercy, I see, O Lord, that you are infinity embracing all things. There is nothing that exists outside you, but all things in you are not other than you. You teach me, Lord, how otherness, which is not in you, does not exist in itself, nor can it exist. Nor does otherness, which does not exist in you, make one creature other than another, although one creature is not another...
Paraphrased: But you speak in me, O Lord, and tell me that otherness has no positive principle, and thus it does not exist. Otherness is derived from not-being. That the sky is not the earth is because the sky is not infinity itself, which embraces all being. God's infinity gives being to all things. Because the sky participates in this infinity, it has being. But because it participates in infinity in a contracted manner, it takes on its own unique characteristics which differentiate it from "others." It is the lack of absolute infinity that produces creatures of all sorts. (p. 261)
GOD, THEREFORE, is the one most simple essence of the entire universe.... (p. 120)
Nicholas of Cusa: Selected Spiritual Writings. Trans. Hugh Lawrence Bond. Mahwah, New Jersey: Paulist Press, 1997.
At the center of the moral life the Church identifies four cardinal virtues: prudence, temperance, fortitude, and justice. Briefly, these virtues are pivotal for establishing a norm of behavior for human action, and, for our purposes here, those actions which adversely affect the environment.
As the mother of all virtue, prudence demands that we reflect deeply upon the highly complex particulars that are involved in environmental stewardship, along with those moral norms articulated in Church teaching. The most diligent application of prudence, however, will not solve all our dilemmas. Nonetheless, by prudently acknowledging the limits of our human knowledge and judgments, we will prevent ourselves from pursuing impossible utopias, and thus proceed cautiously toward the best possible solutions for both the good of the human family and the good of nature. Prudence necessitates humility in the face of complexity.
As the virtue that restrains and directs our disordered appetites, temperance has obvious applications for environmental stewardship. It suggests that simplicity of life, self-discipline, and self-sacrifice, as Pope John Paul II has reminded us, "must inform every-day life." Temperance is the virtue required for a proper ordering of consumption.
In earlier times, we needed great courage to face the challenges that the material world posed to our existence. Many of the discoveries that have benefited the human family required individuals to courageously discover the powers and potentials of nature. This tradition continues still, but with little regard for moral norms. While fortitude has often been of tremendous value, it requires that we avoid pursuing technologies that violate the natural law or could result in the mass destruction of nature and the human family.
As all people are impacted by ecological concerns, justice requires that each creature be given its due in accord with its own particular goodness. Consequently, where tradeoffs are necessary, human need must always be given priority. Wealthy societies are better able to absorb environmental costs, and, therefore, they should bear them; but they should also assist poorer nations in the process of economic development so as to help them secure their own dignity and will. In the long run, such efforts benefit both man and nature.
It is clear that, for the Catholic tradition, virtue is an indispensable foundation to understanding how human beings are called upon by God to play their proper role in restoring and developing God's creation in accordance with his original plan.
Editorial Board: Father J. Michael Beers, Dr. Russell Hittinger, Father Matthew Lamb, Father Richard John Neuhaus, Dr. Robert Royal, Father Fobert A. Sirico. 2000. Environmental Stewardship in the Judeo Christian Tradition, Edited by Michael B. Barkey. Acton Institute for the Study of Religion and Liberty.
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