In the beginning there were paper bags. Shoppers used them without thinking much about it. Kids turned them into makeshift covers for school books.
Then someone invented plastic bags, and soon a question arose during each shopping expedition: “Paper or plastic?”
Shoppers who wanted to help Mother Earth insisted on paper and felt rather virtuous since they weren’t clogging up landfills with that awful plastic stuff. Yes, it’s true that plastic bags can be recycled, but sometimes you’re just too busy.
But then one day they started wondering if perhaps they were encouraging the destruction of millions of trees through the supposedly environmentally-friendly choice of paper.
And so, when the bag boy chimed in with “paper or plastic?” many shoppers ended up mentally wringing their hands, wanting to scream, “It’s too big a decision!”
Recently, I’ve noticed shoppers who pride themselves on being “green” hauling in their own canvas bags—and thereby evading the whole “paper or plastic?” dilemma.
Canvas seems like the perfect solution—but is it really? After all, the bags will get tattered and worn and will need replacement—and if the cotton used to make them isn’t grown organically, won’t this be taxing on the soil?
Please. Let’s stop, take a deep breath, and repeat to ourselves: Something is terribly wrong here.
Instead of being concerned about the truly appalling things happening in the world—such as, say the destruction of millions of babies in the womb or the bombing of churches in the Middle East—Greenies suffer excruciating guilt pangs for all the wrong reasons. These include taking a long shower or (gasp!) driving to work instead of biking.
Mr. and Mrs. Green also feel terribly guilty because they filled two extra-large bags with garbage this week, unlike their oh-so-much-greener neighbors who had only one bag for their entire family—and there are eight of them.
Oh, eight, you say? But isn’t that cause for alarm? In the Green religion, large families, you see, are inherently bad.
Greenies ardently believe it is far preferable for couples to forgo having babies entirely—but if they absolutely must reproduce, then, please, just have one. This way, there will be more room on the planet for all the endangered animals.
In fact, if the entire human race were in danger of dying out, many disciples of the Green religion would secretly think, “Well, it serves us right. Humans are the bad guys anyway.”
I think it’s wonderful when a person does something truly virtuous and feels good about it.
Giving food and clothing to a poor family, for example, is certainly a virtuous cause, as is cheering up an elderly friend in a nursing home.
Problem is, with the Green religion, virtue often is associated with actions that have nothing to do with other human beings.
Mr. Green thinks he’s done his good deed for the day because his morning coffee was grown organically, brewed with clarified water and served in a cup made of recycled cardboard.
Mrs. Green prides herself on limiting the length of her showers to five minutes.
Of course, there are plenty of Christians who perform virtuous acts—such as helping the poor and visiting the sick—while also showing a rational level of concern for the environment. It is certainly not an either-or situation.
In fact, the catechism of the Catholic Church emphasizes that we should be good stewards of the earth. We should care for the world God has created by making good use of natural resources and trying not to pollute the world.
But this is a far cry from turning nature into a god, as Greenies do.
Radical environmentalists will talk about the “sins” of wasting resources and endangering species—but you don’t hear them fretting about breaking the Ten Commandments, which concern our relationship with God and our treatment of other human beings.
Maybe this is because Greenies are busy constructing their own commandments, such as: “Thou shall not consume too much energy,” “Thou shall not drive a big car” and “Thou shall carry thy own canvas bags into the supermarket.”
And the most basic commandment for the Greenies? It might be summed up as “I am Mother Earth, thy goddess. Worship me above everything else.”
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Lorraine’s latest books include “The Abbess of Andalusia,” a biography of Flannery O’Connor, and “Death of a Liturgist,” a wild and wacky mystery featuring the rather satisfying demise of a layman who tries to make Sunday mass more groovy.
See, this is the problem, Lorraine. I’m radically–yes, radically–pro-nature. I shan’t be apologetic for that. But I deny categorically that that makes me a pagan, or that it makes me indifferent to human suffering. And it certainly doesn’t give me any of the silly characteristics of what you pejoratively call a “greenie.” On the contrary, it means I care about God’s creation (as he instructed us to do in Genesis. It was his first commandment, for heaven’s sake! Even if no natural love for nature had found a home in some of his children.) And, last but very far from least, it does NOT make me pro-abortion–good heavens!. Logic should tell anyone that pro-nature and pro-abortion are incompatible.
This is a perfect example of how the cause of nature was hi-jacked from those who should have cared about it most and became a cause of people who use it to polarize, to define and categorize us into two opposing camps. There is SO much that concerns us as orthodox Christian that has been literally “taken” from us to serve on the political agendas of others, but nothing more obvious than the cause of nature.
To put all this another way: The quality of mercy is not strained …. it droppeth as the (excuse me, William) NON-COMPETITIVE rain from heaven….
Don’t let political agendas and artificial stereotyping obscure things and create divisions where they should not be. I could not be pro-life in the first place were I not pro-nature–or, as you’d call me–a “greenie.”