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Viewing the environment through the lens of Aquinas |
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By Susan Klemond - For The Catholic Spirit
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Thursday, 05 November 2009 |
 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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