The Catholic antidote to our environmental ailments

From the perspective of an outside observer, it might appear that being a citizen of planet Earth involves a highly peculiar core requirement. Judging by our politics, news, and social media accounts, it would seem that a fundamental choice must be made between being pro-environment and being pro-life—between caring deeply about the natural world and honoring the sanctity of human life from conception to natural death.

On the one hand, those of us who value the sacredness of human life from its very conception are often disquietingly indifferent to broader issues that affect our planet. Indeed, in many ways Christians can rightly be accused of living in a way that is indistinguishable from our secular counterparts when it comes to the overall manner in which we inhabit creation. Even while professing the correct doctrines, our economic and social habits—how we spend our money and how we spend our time—may be every bit as bourgeois and “worldly” as those of our godless neighbors.

Indeed, even as they may lack nuance and be prone to extremes, those without faith are, at times, perhaps more virtuous than us in some areas, particularly in their concern for our fellow creatures. On the other hand, we probably all know someone who would go to great lengths to rescue an abused animal or preserve the habitat of a threatened species yet is perfectly content with the murder of unborn human children in the name of freedom.

The schizophrenic attitudes we humans maintain when it comes to nature can be truly astonishing. Cognizant of it or not, we have a vested interest in standing aloof from realities which, if accepted, would require a serious change in the way we live. Upton Sinclair once penned this haunting line that makes me cringe every time I think about how it must apply in some way in my own life: “It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.” And then there’s the issue diagnosed by Henri de Lubac: “The denser the ignorance, the more enlightened it thinks itself to be.”

The subject of the environment is about as fraught as any within our present cancel culture. Individuals across all belief spectrums appear to be in a race for an ideological purity that makes them reluctant to entertain the perspectives of those who operate within a circle other than their own. This tendency leads people to pursue overly simplistic solutions that leave no room for doubt and no tolerance for proposals that would raise the possibility that truth can be found on both sides of an issue.

Thanks be to God, the Catholic Church with her perennial “both/and” approach to reality possesses the antidote to this ailment when it comes to the environment—if only we are willing to embrace her wisdom. Our recent popes treat this vision of how to inhabit God’s good earth under the banner of integral ecology.

The intrinsic link between treatment of the environment and our fellow men

In my last entry, I reflected on how mankind’s unity with other creatures is so intimate that the Catholic tradition speaks of the universe as a single “organism” and “book.” The concept of integral ecology aptly captures the implications that flow from this holistic vision. Coined in the past century on the basis of the interconnectedness between humans and the wider created world, integral ecology is the holistic practice by which we seek to achieve the well-being of both in a society where they are often pitted against one another.

Benedict XVI sought to disabuse us of the notion that the good of mankind and that of non-human creatures are unrelated or even mutually opposed, declaring unequivocally: “The way humanity treats the environment influences the way it treats itself, and vice versa.” Operating on the classical understanding that all creatures together comprise a single body, the pontiff underscored this practical implication of our covenantal kinship: “Respect for the human being and respect for nature are one and the same.”

Consistent with this perspective, Benedict’s ecological thought emphasizes that authentic human fulfillment requires that we live in peace not only with God and our brothers and sisters but indeed with the whole of creation. Grounded in his conviction that all creatures are bound together in a cosmic covenant, this pontiff reflected often on the theme of “ecological responsibility” and the call to exercise “responsibility toward creation.”

Benedict even spoke of man’s “duties towards the environment,” which he identified as intrinsically “linked to our duties towards the human person.” It will come as no surprise that this pontiff’s teaching aligns well with that of the Catechism, which candidly states that humans “owe kindness” to animals. Connected with this imperative, Benedict invests considerable effort in combating the common error of privileging the good of man at the expense of other creatures or vice versa, which is to say “uphold[ing] one set of duties while trampling on the other.”

So profoundly does Benedict envision the connection between our duties toward our fellow man and our obligations concerning other creatures that he warned, “[T]he human family risks disappearing” unless we “review our entire approach to nature” in a holistic light. In saying this, Benedict is calling for a transformative “shift in mentality” wherein we cultivate the “art of living together” with all of God’s creatures. This means learning to see the earth not merely as a storehouse to be used for our private benefit but rather as our shared “home” with the other creature partners in the cosmic covenant.

If damage to the natural world leaves detrimental consequences for our species in its wake, then the converse is also true. Counter to the reductive philosophy that dominates much of environmentalism in our culture, the pontiff declares, “Every offense against [human] life, especially at its beginning, inevitably causes irreparable damage to development, peace, and the environment.” One of the marvelous features of this pontiff’s ecological thought is that he provides concrete illustrations of how his principles apply in our world:

If there is a lack of respect for the right to life and to a natural death, if human conception, gestation, and birth are made artificial, if human embryos are sacrificed to research, the conscience of society ends up losing the concept of human ecology and, along with it, that of environmental ecology. It is contradictory to insist that future generations respect the natural environment when our educational systems and laws do not help them to respect themselves.

From here, Benedict explains that the same underlying truth impacts all manner of issues touching on human life, sexuality, marriage, the family, and social relations. Here as elsewhere, the pontiff stressed that man’s unwillingness to live in accordance with his proper dignity leads to disastrous consequences in the wider natural world: from erosion to deforestation, to the depletion of global mineral and maritime resources, to an unequal distribution of basic resources like food, water, and energy across the globe.

Without buying into every sensationalist news headline pronouncing that the most recent hurricane or tornado is the result of human activity, on a number of occasions, Benedict further encouraged research into the field of climate science as a complex area that deserves our attention as Catholics. All this he carried out with full awareness of the widespread confusion and misinformation that abounds today surrounding the issue. A hallmark of the Bavarian pontiff’s approach to the subject was the generous pastoral spirit that he extended toward those who had yet to understand the importance of this issue. Aware of the complexities involved with judgments in this domain, Benedict refrained from endorsing particular empirical claims about the drivers of climate change. All the same, he considered it a serious issue and encouraged the development of concrete ways to address problems through such means as harnessing “the immense potential of solar energy.”

We could go on and on enumerating issues that Benedict held dear to his heart with regard to care for God’s creation, but doing justice to this enterprise would require far more space than we have here. Thankfully, the Magisterium’s doctrine of integral ecology is universally applicable, offering the fundamental principles required to address all these issues and any unforeseen challenges that may arise in the future.

Man, too, has a nature that must be respected: human ecology

From what I’ve outlined above, it should be clear that the Catholic Church has a robust commitment to care for the natural world in all its facets. In contrast with typical secular forms of environmentalism, however, Catholicism’s approach to integral ecology emphasizes that what we normally think of with ecology (understanding and caring for the natural world) is intimately bound up with human ecology, which is to say the truth of man’s integration in the created order and his endowment with a nature that has unique gifts and needs.

While Catholic integral ecology recognizes the interdependence between the two realms, Cardinal Razinger memorably pinpointed that the “defect of the ecological movements” is evident in a blatant discrepancy: “They crusade with an understandable and also legitimate passion against the pollution of the environment,” Ratzinger noted, yet they do little to address the fact that “man’s self-pollution of his soul continues to be treated as one of the rights of his freedom.”

So long as we persist in believing that we are free to manipulate the natural world according to our unbridled whims, Ratzinger underscores that the outward effects of our interior pollution will continue unabated. Without discounting the legitimacy of efforts to reduce the physical pollution of the “outward environment,” the cardinal was keen to point out that the ecological crisis that we are witnessing today “is only the mirror and the consequence of the pollution of the inward environment, to which we pay little heed.” On this front, Benedict’s successor has similarly remarked:

[I]t is troubling that, when some ecological movements defend the integrity of the environment, rightly they sometimes fail to apply those same principles to human life. There is a tendency to justify transgressing all boundaries when experimentation is carried out on living human embryos.

Our last three pontiffs have all stressed that a proper ecological understanding of the natural world must include the recognition that, in the words of Benedict, “man too has a nature that he must respect and that he cannot manipulate at will.” Just as nature has its laws, Ratzinger emphasized time and time again that man has laws by which he must abide to thrive: “Man is essentially a creature and has a creaturely order.” In a statement written decades prior to the present vogue of gender ideology in our society, he added that man’s status as a creature means that he “can’t arbitrarily make anything he wants out of himself.”

In short, integral ecology necessitates that those of us who bear the imago Dei exercise responsible care of all members of the cosmic covenant. In this, he concurs with the observation of environmentalists that manipulating the natural world without due respect for the creatures that inhabit it leads to disaster. But Benedict is here to remind us that the same is true regarding human nature, and so he adds that the same principles apply not only to God’s other creatures over whom we are called to exercise loving dominion, but also with respect to the most vulnerable of humanity—especially the unborn. From this perspective, it is simply not acceptable for a person to work for the protection of other creatures without exercising the utmost care for the unborn, the elderly, and the disabled of our society. In all of this, the pontiff stresses that the dignity of the human person is without rival in the natural world.

This truth has been reinforced often by our present pontiff, who has pointedly affirmed that “[t]here can be no ecology without an adequate anthropology” and that it is “contrary to authentic development to view nature as something more important than the human person.” Francis has bemoaned the widespread perception that man is the mere product of chance and just one creature among others. In this mistake he sees a serious contributor to our society’s loss of the sense of responsibility for creation. As Francis has taught, the attempt to counter anthropocentrism with a misguided biocentrism merely substitutes one imbalance with another, inadvertently undermining the very objective it purportedly seeks to achieve. In the frank words of our Argentine pontiff, “Human beings cannot be expected to feel responsibility for the world unless, at the same time, their unique capacities of knowledge, will, freedom, and responsibility are recognized and valued.”

Destructive as their activity may be, we don’t blame beavers or parasites for deforestation. We don’t blame other animals for altering ecosystems and the predation by which they can eradicate entire species. We don’t do that because they are not special. Pope Francis is urging people to bear this in mind when tempted to deny man’s uniqueness while rightly expecting those who bear God’s image to live by a higher law.

Conclusion

Catholicism’s doctrine of integral ecology is as timely today as ever. My experience as a college professor has been that young Catholics are increasingly yearning for such a vision but often don’t know it exists. They want an orthodox way to approach care for creation and are often not satisfied by professing traditional doctrines while living the same consumeristic lifestyle and practical atheism as everyone else in the developed world. In general, believers I know would prefer to avoid desecrating the natural world on the one hand or divinizing it on the other.

Unfortunately, in most places, a person consults for wisdom in the manner of the environment, humans tend to be reduced to the same level as other creatures. To take one instance, Aldo Leopold’s seminal concept of “The Land Ethic” remains a mainstay in ecological education. As I see it, this founding father of modern environmentalism did well when he advocated for an expanded perspective so as to envision our community as encompassing not only other humans but also soils, waters, plants, and animals which Leopold collectively terms “the land.” Yet, even as our popes would undoubtedly concur with Leopold’s proposal that we move away from viewing humans as creation’s conquerors and towards a sense of shared companionship with other creatures, an authentically Catholic approach must surely reject Leopold’s characterization of man as “a plain member and citizen” within the biotic community.

What I hope to have begun to show here—and to address further in future entries—is that integral ecology’s approach grounded in the covenantal intimacy that exists among all creatures provides a singularly holistic and compelling response to challenges in the arena of creation. In my next column, I plan to discuss how this vision stands out from the reductive approach on offer in much of present-day environmental discourse thanks to its firm grounding in divine revelation. With this foundation, the message of Catholicism with regard to the environment is one of charity and reconciliation. It is an attempt to share with the world the riches of the Catholic tradition and to fill in some important gaps between faith and reason, tradition and novelty, reverence for the Creator and the care for his creation. With any hope, this endeavor may just help us to discover a new dimension of Catholicism’s transformative power and how essential it is to flourishing in the garden of God’s good earth.