“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.” (Benedict XVI)
Liberal Christians would agree whole-heartedly, until you point out that this applies to sex as well. Sex is more than “raw material to be manipulated at our pleasure”. It contains a “grammar” which sets forth “ends and criteria for its wise use, not its reckless exploitation.”
All they’re teaching my daughter in college (Fontbonne College, a Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondelete school) is “sustainability”. They teach it in every class – even classes that have nothing to do with the environment.
I wonder what would happen if they taught “sustainability” as applied toward the natural moral environment and not just the natural physical one?
Sexual hedonism, for example, is not “sustainable”. Sleeping around is not “sustainable”. Buggery is not “sustainable”.
For that matter, stealing, lying, killing and greed are not “sustainable”.
Is it not time for an environmentalism of the soul???
Good post! Eden Foods, a respected organic outfit, caught heck for opposing the HHS mandate because they deem contraceptives to be unnatural. While I disagree with them when it comes to farming practices, because they are very consistent in their approach it made me respect them more.
That “grammar” of which Benedict XVI speaks–yes, but who is in charge?
That’s the real issue with all things environmental–who will enforce, take charge of, “sustainability”?
That’s the real question–not whether creation (“the environment”) should be protected, but who will make sure that it is. It is tiresome now, after all these decades to discuss whether it’s right or wrong, whether it requires our protection, when all the while this discussing is going on, all the while this judgment of various forms of activism, all the while this bickering——it’s dying.
Is that not very like the soul’s sustainability? All the while we argue about whether or who or how—-it dies.