What is the proper Catholic attitude toward the Environment?
There are two rather wrong and simplistic attitudes toward the environment. One position is that humans are the enemy of the natural world, something like alien life forms that are rapidly destroying the earth, eating it up and heating it up and leaving nothing but barren, baked lake bottom. We have raped and ravaged poor old Mother Nature. The other attitude is that there is plenty of earth to be had, a bountiful cornucopia, and anybody who worries about the water, the whales, the oat bran or the ozone is a Chicken Little. And Mother Nature is a big girl who can take care of herself.
The problem comes down to one simple issue. It is this: Nature is not our Mother. Nature is our Sister, for we both have the same Father. This is how we must address the cant on both sides of the environmental debate. We treat our sister with respect, of course. We do not abuse her. We protect her. But we do not worship her. Nature is not a goddess, which is exactly how many environmentalists regard her. But she is a fellow creature, which the other side tends to forget. What some call Nature, others call Creation. By looking at the environment as creation, we remember the Creator, which is always the wisest thing we can do.
The term environmentalist is one of those large, urgent-sounding words that is actually quite devoid of real meaning. The word environment simply means one’s surroundings, the place in which one lives. We can, I suppose, be devoted to our surroundings to some degree, devoted to our home, to our garden, to our field and to the nearby forest. But these are secondary things. We cannot be an “ist” about them. We cannot be devoted to them with the same devotion as that of a religion, which is about ultimate things. Our devotion is misplaced if it is about the place in which we live and not about life itself, which is the supreme achievement of Creation, especially the lives of those who have been created in the image of the Creator. One of the oddest holes in the environmentalist arguments in defense of nature is the utter lack of respect for human life, especially that of the unborn. And lovers of nature often take a very unnatural view of sex, the natural purpose of which is to procreate.
But when environmentalists, for lack of a better term, warn about the dangers from excessive pollution and a total disregard for the earth, their misdirected devotion that may make them crazy does not necessarily make them liars. The pollution is still real. The arguments may not be clear, but neither is the air and water, which lends their cloudy arguments some weight.
Pollution and litter and waste, as well as wasteful consumption, are not merely disrespectful of nature; they are disrespectful of our neighbor. The commandment that we should love our neighbor as ourselves applies to almost everything we do, including the way we use things up and the way we throw things away. Keeping the environment clean as a way of loving our neighbor as ourselves is an idea that is lost on too many of us. For instance, my son’s room looks like a giant waste basket. Interestingly enough, so does my daughter’s. They need to grasp the second part of the equation before they can understand the first part. Self-respect begins with picking up your dirty clothes. Loving your neighbor as yourself is sure to follow.
Making our messes someone else’s problem is not a way of loving our neighbor. But claiming that our messes are not even a problem at all is simply a lie, which damages ourselves as much as our neighbor.
Psalm 24 begins: “The earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof, the world and those who dwell therein; for he has founded it upon the seas and established it upon the rivers.” We all belong to God. The world he has given us, and all its fullness, is a gift. It is something we do not deserve. Our proper attitude toward this gift is to treat it as something precious, worthy of its Creator. Our throw-away mentality diminishes our appreciation of things. Simply by having the attitude of thankfulness, we are inspired to take better care of things. And the Psalmist says, interestingly enough, that the earth is founded upon the waters. The image is significant. Water is basic. It soothes, it cleans, it refreshes. It must be clean. It must be pure. The Psalmist goes on to wonder how we may approach the hill of the Lord. “Who shall stand in his holy place?” Who? The one who is clean. We praise God “with clean hands and a pure heart.” A clean body and clean conscience. But we do not “lift up our soul to what is false.” That is, we don’t worship the earth, we don’t worship the environment. We take care of it, we enjoy it, we give God thanks for it. But we worship the Creator of Heaven and Earth.
