Although the Catholic Church hasn’t led on environmental issues to the extent that it has on other issues, the church shares common ground with the secular environmental movement. And, thanks to St. Thomas Aquinas’ comprehensive vision of the human person and created order, it has even more to offer.“There’s an incredible convergence of some of the key principles of Roman Catholicism and what I think is being raised in the movement,” said Christopher Thompson, St. Paul Seminary academic dean and associate professor of Catholic studies and theology. “That’s part of the . . . interest in what’s going on here."
To view modern environmental issues, especially through the lens of St. Thomas’ writings, 36 scholars from across the United States and England and Italy presented papers last week at a conference entitled “Renewing the Face of the Earth: The Church and the Order of Creation.” It was held at the University of St. Thomas and sponsored by the St. Paul Seminary School of Divinity, and supported by the National Catholic Rural Life Conference.
New conversations
The conference opened up unexplored conversation about the environment because it centered specifically on St. Thomas, who wrote on the order and dignity of creation. “I think Thomas provides us with the most comprehensive account of the issues in front of us in a way that others simply haven’t,” Thompson said.
St. Thomas, a 13th-century Dominican monk who is held as a model theologian of the church, was sidelined starting in the 1500s when Enlightenment thinkers and scientists moved away from his model of natural law and a created order of which humans are a part, he said.
Environmentalists today are rejecting the Enlightenment view that reduced natural things to functioning like machines in favor of seeing organisms as operating as part of a broader natural order as St. Thomas proposed, Thompson said.
This shift presents an opportunity for interaction with scientists and for evangelization, said Deborah Savage, St. Paul Seminary faculty member and one of the conference organizers. “If we can persuade those interested and concerned that the Catholic intellectual tradition has something to say that will help form an argument and provide the context they seek for their claims, then that may lead to more souls that respond to the invitation.”
The seminary plans to publish a book containing some of the papers presented at the conference, she said.
Savage presented a paper about a Catholic response to the perceived conflict between the health of the environment and the needs of humans. She recognized that humans are part of the created order but hold a unique place in creation, as well as having a responsibility to care for it.
The church may have been focusing on other important issues besides the environment, but it has an environmental theology and church leaders have long addressed environmental issues, said Father Robert Grant, assistant theology professor at St. Ambrose University in Davenport, Iowa.
In addition, in the 1930s the National Catholic Rural Life Conference promoted organic farming and warned against the dangers of the industrialization of farming, Thompson added.
Father Grant presented a paper on redistributive suffering based on the Gospel and St. Thomas’ teaching on three types of good. The priest asserted that voluntarily lowering our standard of living is the only way to save the planet.
Cutting back is painful but it doesn’t mean reducing our quality of life, Father Grant said. “We know that when we die our deaths — the thousand deaths that we experience: the loss of a loved one or the loss of a job — we also experience resurrections,” he said. “We know that we come out on the other side of the sufferings of our lives enriched, more aware of God’s presence in our lives.”
Being good stewards
Helping others should be the start of an environmental ethic, said Eric Boos, assistant philosophy professor at the University of Wisconsin at Fon du Lac. How we treat fellow humans and the rest of creation is a key to sustainability, along with using our intellect and having the proper attitude, said Boos, who helped found a completely self-sustaining college in Tanzania in the early 90s.
Humans are meant to be intermediaries in their treatment of created things, helping the creatures reach the fullness of their perfection for their proper end, Boos wrote interpreting St. Thomas. It’s not wrong to kill animals, but they should be treated ethically, he said.
Theologians’ and philosophers’ work is at the service of the church, and if it contributes to environmental questions, it would be a great service, Thompson said.
“Theologians are sort of the R&D [research and development] arm of the church, and even though some people think academia has nothing to do with ordinary life, as a matter of fact it has a lot to do with it and eventually does trickle down,” Thompson said.
Getting scholars to focus on St. Thomas and a Catholic approach to the environment will benefit the church, the environmental movement and all of society, he said.
“There’s no shortage of people talking about the environment now, but I think I’m fair in saying they’re not all speaking out of a Roman Catholic, much less Thomistic, voice and I’d just as soon create the generation that does that.”
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