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| Rick Santorum on Face the Nation |
Santorum's full quote is:
When you have a worldview that elevates the Earth above man and says that we can’t take those resources because we’re going to harm the Earth; by things that frankly are just not scientifically proven, for example, the politicization of the whole global warming debate — this is all an attempt to, you know, to centralize power and to give more power to the government.I object to what Santorum said on factual grounds as well as on practical grounds, but most importantly I dissent from him on theological grounds.
Re: my objections on factual grounds, see Global Warming Real After All, Says Former Scientific Skeptic to learn why even scientists who have been climate skeptics are coming around to the view that man-made global warming is not a bogeyman concocted by liberals as an excuse to give the government more power.
As for practical considerations, consider for example the ultra-deep Texas Drought of 2011. It was, I believe, an example of "global weirding," in which global warming is causing major changes in normal weather patterns. Some regions are getting heavier floods, others deeper droughts, others vanishing snowpacks and ice sheets, and yet others hurricanes and tropical storms in greater quantity and severity than ever before. Whatever God one believes in — if any — one would be foolish to ignore the practical problems climate change will pose for us all.
Basics of a Theology of Catholic Environmentalism
But I want to talk now mostly about the theology of climate change and environmental concern.
First of all, let me admit that many environmentalists often seem to "elevate the earth above man." I think the debate, though, is truly about the relationship that humankind has, or ought to have, with the earth — where "the earth" is taken to be synonymous with "nature" in general. My interest is in what Catholic theology has to say about this relationship. It is a relationship that depends, first and foremost, on humankind's relationship with our Creator, God, since God made the natural world and (through biological evolution) us.
Right away I want to register my skepticism that "elevating the earth above man" is really the aim of most environmentalists, as Santorum seems to suggest. Rather, my belief is that they — we — want to keep man's dominion over nature from turning into a disaster for both nature and man. That requires us to revolutionize our present stance with respect to nature, it is true. But it does not require us to elevate nature above legitimate human concerns. And it does not require us to replace standard religious doctrine with "phony theology."
As I begin investigating Catholic ideas about our proper relationship to nature, I hope to find support for my idea that it contradicts our basic theological commitments as Catholics if we ignore, sidestep, or minimize pressing environmental concerns. In particular, I'm hoping to discover through this inquiry that our Church's doctrine, with its customary grounding in natural law à la the Summa Theologica of Thomas Aquinas, furnishes a solid basis for a truly Catholic environmentalism.
However, before turning to Aquinas, I'd like to examine the basics.
Catechism of the Catholic Church and the Holy Bible
I'll start with the Catechism of the Catholic Church. Under the heading "Respect for the Integrity of Creation" we find:
2415 The seventh commandment ["You shall not steal"] enjoins respect for the integrity of creation. Animals, like plants and inanimate beings, are by nature destined for the common good of past, present, and future humanity.[194] Use of the mineral, vegetable, and animal resources of the universe cannot be divorced from respect for moral imperatives. Man's dominion over inanimate and other living beings granted by the Creator is not absolute; it is limited by concern for the quality of life of his neighbor, including generations to come; it requires a religious respect for the integrity of creation.[195]Footnote 194 refers to Genesis 1:28-31 in the Holy Bible. For the sake of context, I'll cite those verses preceded by the previous pair:
26
Then God said: Let us make human beings in our image, after our likeness. Let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, the birds of the air, the tame animals, all the wild animals, and all the creatures that crawl on the earth.
27
God created mankind in his image;
in the image of God he created them;
male and female he created them.
28
God blessed them and God said to them: Be fertile and multiply; fill the earth and subdue it. Have dominion over the fish of the sea, the birds of the air, and all the living things that crawl on the earth.
29
God also said: See, I give you every seed-bearing plant on all the earth and every tree that has seed-bearing fruit on it to be your food;
30
and to all the wild animals, all the birds of the air, and all the living creatures that crawl on the earth, I give all the green plants for food. And so it happened.
31
God looked at everything he had made, and found it very good. Evening came, and morning followed—the sixth day.
(This citation is from The New American Bible, Revised Edition, online here at the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops website.)
"Being fertile." "Multiplying." "Filling the earth." "Subduing" it. "Having dominion" over it. It is here in scripture that these well-known divine commands are laid down. Clearly, humankind is given certain rights and responsibilities as the stewards of creation.
This, then, is not the same as viewing humanity as immersed in and indistinguishable from the natural order. Words like "subdue" and "dominion" make clear that other living things are not our equals. They are not at all the brother and sister creatures that some spiritual outlooks other than the Judeo-Christian may posit.
Yet, as the passage from the Catechism shows, there is a high level of respect due from us to other living things and toward nature. We have moral imperatives here, and our right of dominion is "limited by concern for the quality of life of [our] neighbor, including generations to come." If we abuse the gifts of nature, we harm our "neighbor," our posterity, and by extension our own selves.
Centesimus Annus
Footnote 198 of the Catechism passage refers to Centesimus Annus, Latin for "Hundredth Year," an encyclical written by Pope John Paul II in 1991 on the hundredth anniversary of Rerum Novarum. (The latter means "Of New Things." It is an encyclical written by Pope Leo XIII and issued on May 15, 1891.)
According to Wikipedia, Centesimus Annus "specifically examined contemporaneous political and economic issues" — most notably by presenting "a refutation of Marxist/communist ideology and a condemnation of the dictatorial regimes that practiced it" — and it "also expound[ed] on issues of social and economic justice."
John Paul II used Centesimus Annus to object to the rampant consumerism he abhorred in capitalist societies. In the passage cited by the Catechism footnote, he continued that thought by saying:
37. Equally worrying is the ecological question which accompanies the problem of consumerism and which is closely connected to it. In his desire to have and to enjoy rather than to be and to grow, man consumes the resources of the earth and his own life in an excessive and disordered way. At the root of the senseless destruction of the natural environment lies an anthropological error, which unfortunately is widespread in our day. Man, who discovers his capacity to transform and in a certain sense create the world through his own work, forgets that this is always based on God's prior and original gift of the things that are. Man thinks that he can make arbitrary use of the earth, subjecting it without restraint to his will, as though it did not have its own requisites and a prior God-given purpose, which man can indeed develop but must not betray. Instead of carrying out his role as a co-operator with God in the work of creation, man sets himself up in place of God and thus ends up provoking a rebellion on the part of nature, which is more tyrannized than governed by him.
In all this, one notes first the poverty or narrowness of man's outlook, motivated as he is by a desire to possess things rather than to relate them to the truth, and lacking that disinterested, unselfish and aesthetic attitude that is born of wonder in the presence of being and of the beauty which enables one to see in visible things the message of the invisible God who created them. In this regard, humanity today must be conscious of its duties and obligations towards future generations.
38. In addition to the irrational destruction of the natural environment, we must also mention the more serious destruction of the human environment, something which is by no means receiving the attention it deserves. Although people are rightly worried — though much less than they should be — about preserving the natural habitats of the various animal species threatened with extinction, because they realize that each of these species makes its particular contribution to the balance of nature in general, too little effort is made to safeguard the moral conditions for an authentic "human ecology". Not only has God given the earth to man, who must use it with respect for the original good purpose for which it was given to him, but man too is God's gift to man. He must therefore respect the natural and moral structure with which he has been endowed. In this context, mention should be made of the serious problems of modern urbanization, of the need for urban planning which is concerned with how people are to live, and of the attention which should be given to a "social ecology" of work.
Man receives from God his essential dignity and with it the capacity to transcend every social order so as to move towards truth and goodness. But he is also conditioned by the social structure in which he lives, by the education he has received and by his environment. These elements can either help or hinder his living in accordance with the truth. The decisions which create a human environment can give rise to specific structures of sin which impede the full realization of those who are in any way oppressed by them. To destroy such structures and replace them with more authentic forms of living in community is a task which demands courage and patience.(Underlined phrases above reflect italics in the original document.)
Environmentalists will generally agree with the late John Paul II that each of us typically "consumes the resources of the earth ... in an excessive and disordered way." We simply mustn't, says John Paul II, "make arbitrary use of the earth" in that way, because in doing so we traduce "God's prior and original gift of the things that are."
When this distinguished pope says, "Instead of carrying out his role as a co-operator with God in the work of creation, man sets himself up in place of God and thus ends up provoking a rebellion on the part of nature, which is more tyrannized than governed by him," he sounds like a radical environmentalist. This impression is augmented by his insistence on a "human ecology" which includes, he says, the need to offset the ravages of modern urbanization via urban planning. It also includes due concern for the "social ecology" of work.
Therein, possibly, lies a problem for the theology of Catholic environmentalism. "Work" includes, first and foremost in a modern capitalist economy like ours, what we do for a living: our jobs. Our jobs, many of them, help produce and deliver economic goods and services to feed our consumerist inclinations.
If we are to construct a "human environment" which would satisfy the ideals of Centesimus Annus, one thing we must do is to stop destroying and exhausting the "resources of the earth" — we must, in today's phrase, "go green." But doing so threatens our gross domestic product and our jobs. Car engines, to take one fairly recent example, once used carburetors. Today's engines use fuel injection, by virtue of which they burn less fuel. The switchover, which thankfully has already taken place, put people who made carburetors out of work. The GDP no longer includes carburetor production.
There are a lot of switchovers like that still to come, though, if we go green.
If "the truth" is that we need to go green, our being wedded to jobs and ingrained consumption patterns that "hinder [our] living in accordance with the truth" is a tall hurdle we'll need to leap. Yes, indeed, Your Late Holiness, there's no getting around it: "To destroy such structures and replace them with more authentic forms of living in community is a task which demands courage and patience."
One aspect of the courage that is needed is for us Catholics, Rick Santorum included, to accept that due concern for climate change is anything but "phony theology." In no way does it "elevate the Earth above man." In no way do we, if we are good Catholics, have the right to look the other way as humankind impoverishes Mother Nature.
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