Source: http://practicalmattersjournal.org/2016/05/25/creationism-of-another-kind/
Timestamp: 2019-04-26 04:02:46+00:00

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In his oft-cited paper on the historical roots of our ecologic crisis, Lynn White, Jr. points to religion (particularly Christianity in its Western form) as the major culprit. Following a brief review of this critique, I turn to a rendering of creation and the human-nature relationship from the Roman Catholic tradition, paying close attention to the value of corporeality (both human and non-human), the notion of body as place, and the emphasis on integration in the Church’s teaching.
In his rather melancholic commentary on the character and trajectory of the American conservation movement in the 1940s, Aldo Leopold lamented that “in our attempt to make conservation easy, we have made it trivial.” He pointed to a shallow ecology, at best, that was largely directed by economic renderings of what was considered valuable. This was certainly not helped by the Church (what Roderick Nash calls “the chief custodian of ethics”); Leopold was convinced that philosophy and religion had not even fathomed the inclusion of nature in conversations about the moral community.
Enter Lynn Townsend White, Jr., a professor of medieval history at Princeton, Stanford, and—for just about thirty years—the University of California, Los Angeles. When he took to the stage to deliver a talk on the historical roots of our ecologic crisis at a meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in December of 1966, it is almost a sure thing that he did not know that his words would stir a long-lasting debate. To be sure, he did not simply bring to the fore a discussion of the blindness—if not, all-out resistance—of the Western religious traditions to environmental ethics. Some say that he gave impetus to the contemporary study of religion and ecology as a serious academic discipline in its own right.
White turned, explicitly, to the model of Saint Francis of Assisi—styling him as the “the greatest radical in Christian history since Christ”—whose humility grasped a much more extensive notion of what (or whom, rather) constitutes community. Proposing Francis as patron of ecologists, White lauded the saint’s attempt “to depose [humankind] from … monarchy over creation and set up a democracy of all God’s creatures. With him the ant is no longer simply a homily for the lazy, flames a sign of the thrust of the soul toward union with God; now they are Brother Ant and Sister Fire, praising the Creator in their own ways” as Brother and Sister Humans do in theirs.
offers Christians an example of genuine and deep respect for the integrity of creation. As a friend of the poor who was loved by God’s creatures, Saint Francis invited all of creation—animals, plants, natural forces, even Brother Sun and Sister Moon—to give honor and praise to the Lord. The poor man of Assisi gives us striking witness that when we are at peace with God we are better able to devote ourselves to building up that peace with all creation which is inseparable from peace among all peoples.
The Catholic tradition also teaches—grounded, for instance, in the book of Psalms– that the reach of God’s compassion is over the whole of creation and is not limited to humanhood. To be sure, all of creation—collectively—is very good and it is all—collectively—in statu viae; that is, the whole of creation is in “a state of journeying” toward an ultimate perfection yet to be attained and to which it has been destined.
However, although the Catholic Church espouses a number of tenets that speak highly of the natural world, it would be misleading not to list those teachings of this tradition that do not. On the one hand, the Church claims that (1) Creation (which is good if not only by virtue of its Author) has inherent value, (2) each of the various creatures are said to be willed in their own being, (3) interdependence and solidarity are marks of the created order, and (4), God’s providence is over all existents and humans are called to imitate said providence through the mandate of stewardship.
On the other hand, the Catholic Church also speaks of the hierarchy of beings, with humankind as the summit of the Creator’s work since it alone shares in the light of the divine mind Furthermore, the destination of all material creatures for the good of the human race is underlined repeatedly. Even though the Catholic Church emphasizes the interdependence of all beings in the universal order and recognizes the value of the natural world in its own right (that is, aside from human utility), it nevertheless rejects biocentric and ecocentric worldviews, arguing that these erroneously propose “that the ontological and axiological difference between [humans] and other living beings be eliminated, since the biosphere is considered a biotic unity of undifferentiated value. Thus [humanity’s] superior responsibility can be eliminated in favour of an egalitarian consideration of the ‘dignity’ of all living beings.” And that, the Pontifical Council of Justice and Peace in its compendium on the Church’s social teaching, just cannot be. White was not, perhaps, entirely off the mark in his critique of Christianity, however sweeping it may have been.
Whereas some define the potential of the immortal soul as “the central locus of the human-God relationship and of God’s interaction with humans,” the body, too—unified with the soul in the composite nature of personhood—is a locus or a place. Pope Francis reminds that Christians have not always been quick to appropriate the truth that “the life of the spirit is not dissociated from the body or from nature or from worldly realities, but lived in and with them, in communion with all that surrounds us.” And, yet, this body as place motif is not unfamiliar to Christians. In his letter to the Church at Corinth, Saint Paul incites his reader with a metaphorical question: “do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, which you have from God, and that you are not your own?” All of this suggests that it is in the material, in the body, that the human, God, and nature come together in deeply integrative ways.
We are seeing its impacts in our own communities in the form of record-breaking temperatures, floods, droughts, hurricanes, and the list goes on and on. When your children suffer from asthma and cannot go outside to play, as is the case for many in Atlanta, it is a civil rights issue. When unprecedented weather disasters devastate the poorest neighborhoods in places like New Orleans, New Jersey, and New York, it is a civil rights issue. When farmers […] cannot feed their families because the rains will no longer come, it is a civil rights issue.
Even more, the evidence of poor environmental health in vulnerable communities that are disproportionately subjected to toxic air quality further emphasizes the importance of recognizing the bound realities of nature, body, and place, which together are threatened by the “throwaway culture” that Pope Francis has critiqued time and again. The realization that each body (human and non-human) is actually “a body among bodies” means that rendering a body (human or non-human) as “disposable,” impoverished, or as an object of exclusion automatically renders all other bodies as negligible in the same way.
Feature image by NASA, ESA, and the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA) [Public domain].
 Roderick Nash, “The Greening of Religion,” in This Sacred Earth: Religion, Nature, Environment, ed. Roger S. Gottlieb (New York: Routledge, 1996), 194.
 Nash, “Greening of Religion,” 194-195.
 Nash, “Greening of Religion,” 195.
 Lynn White, Jr., “The Historical Roots of Our Ecologic Crisis,” Science 155.3767 (1967): 1203-1207.
 Nash, “The Greening of Religion,” 198.
 John Paul II, “S. Franciscus Assisiensis Caelestis Patronus Oecologiae Cultorum Eligitur,” Inter Sanctos, November 29, 1979, accessed September 3, 2015, http://w2.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/la/apost_letters/1979/ documents/hf_jp-ii_apl_19791129_inter-sanctos.html.
 John Paul II, “Peace with God the Creator, Peace with All of Creation,” World Day of Peace, January 1, 1990, accessed September 3, 2015, https://w2.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/en/messages/peace/documents/hf_jp-ii_mes_ 19891208_xxiii-world-day-for-peace.html, §16.
 Catechism of the Catholic Church, §282-290.
 Catechism of the Catholic Church, §286.
 Paul VI, Gaudium et Spes, December 7, 1965, accessed September 5, 2015, http://www.vatican.va/archive/hist_ councils/ii_vatican_council/documents/vat-ii_const_19651207_gaudium-et-spes_en.html, §36.
 Joseph Ratzinger, “In the Beginning”: A Catholic Understanding of the Story of Creation and the Fall, trans. Boniface Ramsey (Huntington: Our Sunday Visitor, 1990) , 50.
 Francis, “Plenary Session of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences: Address of His Holiness Pope Francis on the Occasion of the Inauguration of the Bust in Honour of Pope Benedict XVI,” October 27, 2014, accessed September 5, 2015, http://w2.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/speeches/2014/october/documents/papa-francesco_ 20141027_plenaria-accademia-scienze.html, par. 3.
 See Ps. 145.9, for instance.
 Catechism of the Catholic Church, §302.
 Catechism of the Catholic Church, §307.
 Catechism of the Catholic Church, §343.
 Catechism of the Catholic Church, §299; §353; Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church, April 2, 2004, accessed September 5, 2015, http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/ pontifical_councils/justpeace/documents/rc_pc_justpeace_doc_20060526_compendio-dott-soc_en.html, §466.
 Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, Compendium, §463.
 Catechism of the Catholic Church, §293-294.
 Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, Compendium, §460.
 International Theological Commission, Communion and Stewardship: Human Persons Created in the Image of God, 2004, accessed September 5, 2015, http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cfaith/cti_documents/ rc_con_cfaith_doc_20040723_communion-stewardship_en.html, §73.
 Pope Francis is convinced that Jesus “was far removed from philosophies which despised the body, matter and the things of the world. Such unhealthy dualisms, nonetheless, left a mark on certain Christian thinkers in the course of history and disfigured the Gospel.” See Laudato Si’, §98.
 John Paul II, Man and Woman He Created Them: A Theology of the Body, trans. Michael Waldstein (Boston: Pauline Books, 2006), 681; §8:1; §55:2; §60:1-2.
 David B. McCurdy, “Personhood, Spirituality, and Hope in the Care of Human Beings with Dementia,” Journal of Clinical Ethics 9.1 (1998): 85.
 Echoing John Paul II, Pope Francis clarifies that “Christianity does not reject matter. Rather, bodiliness is considered in all its value in the liturgical act, whereby the human body is disclosed in its inner nature as a temple of the Holy Spirit and is united with the Lord Jesus, who himself took a body for the world’s salvation.” See Laudato Si’, §235.
 Edward S. Casey, Getting Back Into Place: Toward a Renewed Understanding of the Place-World (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1993), xv.
 Edward S. Casey, Getting Back Into Place, 104.
 Edward S. Casey, Getting Back Into Place, 103.
 Casey also contends that “the fate of the here is tied entirely and exclusively to that of the body.” See Getting Back Into Place, 51.
 See John Paul II, Man and Woman He Created Them, §19.5.
 See “Champions of Change: Climate Faith Leaders,” July 20, 2015, accessed September 5, 2015, https://www. whitehouse.gov/champions/climate-faith-leaders.
 Gerald Durley, “Why Climate Change Is a Civil Rights Issue,” HuffPost BlackVoices, August 30, 2013, accessed March 20, 2015, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rev-dr-gerald-durley/climate-change-civil-rights_b_3844986. html.
 Francis, Laudato Si’, §20; 25; 29; 45; 48; 49.
 Francis, Laudato Si’, §2. This discussion of the interdependence of bodies and the co-victimization and co-liberation of nature and bodies will be familiar, in part, to scholars of ecofeminism and to those who have studied the works of Sallie McFague. Not only does McFague contend that Jesus’ paradigmatic ministry is “mediated through bodies” and that the cosmic Christ is “present in and to all bodies,” she is also convinced that the fight for “the inclusion of excluded bodies” (with nature identified as the “new poor”) is very much a part of what it means to be Christian. See Sallie McFague, “The Scope of the Body: The Cosmic Christ,” in This Sacred Earth: Religion, Nature, Environment, ed. Roger S. Gottlieb (New York: Routledge, 1996), 286; 289; 292.
Cory Labrecque is the Raymond F. Schinazi Scholar in Bioethics and Religious Thought at the Emory Center for Ethics.

References: §16
 §282
 §286
 §36
 §302
 §307
 §343
 §299
 §353
 §466
 §463
 §293
 §460
 §73
 §98
 §8
 §55
 §60
 §235
 §19
 §20
 §2