Many Catholic brethren are scandalised because Our former, Pope Benedict XVI, had been given the nickname, “The Green Pope.” Many of my Catholic Brethren are ashamed of what Holy Mother Church has always taught and they are especially ashamed of her Tradition vis a vis the splendor of Creation and how it is our duty to acknowledge from whom it came and accept our responsibility to live in peaceful accord with it and not pollute it and/or destroy it.
But many of my Catholic brethren act as though Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity and Bill O'Reilly, Capitalists who profit handsomely doing the bidding of those who ruthlessly exploit and poision that which they did not create, are the legitimate moral authorities when it comes to God's Creation.
But, with just two quick citations, one recent, one from the 19th century, can illustrate that men like Limbaugh, Hannity, and O'Reilly (the last two nominal Catholics) are enemies of Creation in that they are happy to be paid to support Multinational Corporations which view Creation as but raw material to be exploited by the wealthy, clever, and industrious.
First, a citation from Pope Benedict XVI's Encyclical;
Caritas in Veritate (Charity in Truth)
48. Today the subject of development is also closely related to the duties arising from our relationship to the natural environment. The environment is God's gift to everyone, and in our use of it we have a responsibility towards the poor, towards future generations and towards humanity as a whole. When nature, including the human being, is viewed as the result of mere chance or evolutionary determinism, our sense of responsibility wanes. In nature, the believer recognizes the wonderful result of God's creative activity, which we may use responsibly to satisfy our legitimate needs, material or otherwise, while respecting the intrinsic balance of creation. If this vision is lost, we end up either considering nature an untouchable taboo or, on the contrary, abusing it. Neither attitude is consonant with the Christian vision of nature as the fruit of God's creation.
Nature expresses a design of love and truth. It is prior to us, and it has been given to us by God as the setting for our life. Nature speaks to us of the Creator (cf. Rom 1:20) and his love for humanity. It is destined to be “recapitulated” in Christ at the end of time (cf.Eph1:9-10; Col 1:19-20). Thus it too is a “vocation”115. Nature is at our disposal not as “a heap of scattered refuse”116, but as a gift of the Creator who has given it an inbuilt order, enabling man to draw from it the principles needed in order “to till it and keep it” (Gen 2:15). But it should also be stressed that it is contrary to authentic development to view nature as something more important than the human person. This position leads to attitudes of neo-paganism or a new pantheism — human salvation cannot come from nature alone, understood in a purely naturalistic sense. This having been said, it is also necessary to reject the opposite position, which aims at total technical dominion over nature, because the natural environment is more than raw material to be manipulated at our pleasure; it is a wondrous work of the Creator containing a “grammar” which sets forth ends and criteria for its wise use, not its reckless exploitation. Today much harm is done to development precisely as a result of these distorted notions. Reducing nature merely to a collection of contingent data ends up doing violence to the environment and even encouraging activity that fails to respect human nature itself. Our nature, constituted not only by matter but also by spirit, and as such, endowed with transcendent meaning and aspirations, is also normative for culture. Human beings interpret and shape the natural environment through culture, which in turn is given direction by the responsible use of freedom, in accordance with the dictates of the moral law. Consequently, projects for integral human development cannot ignore coming generations, but need to be marked by solidarity and inter-generational justice, while taking into account a variety of contexts: ecological, juridical, economic, political and cultural.
In 1842, The Abbe Gaume wrote a four volume Catechism, one of the best ever written, “The Catechism of Perseverance,”* in which, in Volume One, Lesson X, he delves into the marvels of God's Creation, especially birds, and what man, The Lord of Creation, oft times did to them out of arrogance and ignorance:
“Unfortunately, man has become, in his turn, the most ruthless enemy of the bird, on account of finding its flesh extremely delicate; and, as is all things, the lord of creation tends to extravagance, so instead of economising this precious aliment and exquisite luxury, he wastes it. He has pursued to death his most useful servant, the only one that could arrest the progress of myriads of little gnawers, often invisible to our eyes, generally inaccessible to our hands....
Start on page 186, but, if you have the time, scroll back a dozen or so pages to read how Catholic Catechesis, anchored in love, awe, and appreciation of God's Creation, was conducted before Catholic immigrants to America became immersed in and became corrupted by the Calvinistic Capitalism that suffuses our country.
- When ABS lived in Maine, he often worked a second or third shift and after his children went off to school, heused to drive down to the St. Anthony's Franciscan Monastery in Kennebunkport, go to Confession (ABS is a prolific sinner and The Lithuanian Franciscans who lived there were remarkably Holy and kind to him) and then he'd drive over to Wells and haunt the Bookstores searching for bargins. It was in Wells that he found The Abbe Gaume's remarkable Catechism, “An Historical, Dogmatical, Moral, Liturgical, Apologetical, Philosophical, and Social Exposition of Religion, from the Beginning of the world down to our own days.”The volumes were acquired by some sharp-eyed Used Book Seller in Wells (can't remember from which one of the several stores that used to exist there that ABS bought it from) after it had been discarded by The Redemptorist Fathers in Washington D.C.Long, slow, careful, walks through the Used and Rare Books Stores of Wells, Maine, eyes fastening on this or that discarded Ecclesiastical Classic was, for me, like the excitement my FIL (Father In Law) experienced as he walked carefully through the woods hunting the White Tail Deer.