With environmental hysteria reaching new heights, it is helpful to take a look at what the Judeo-Christian tradition says about the relationship of man to his environment, and about the proper way to handle environmental concerns. The Acton Institute sponsored a conference of Jewish, Protestant and Catholic scholars in 1999 to do just that, and the results were enshrined in the Cornwall Declaration on Environmental Stewardship (the conference was held in West Cornwall, CT).

In the years since the Cornwall Declaration, the Acton Institute has also sponsored teams of scholars in writing on what they see as the wisdom of their respective traditions, producing essays by Jews, Protestants and Catholics which explain the principles by which each tradition seeks to assess and respond to environmental concerns. Then, in 2007, the Institute published a small volume which contains both the Cornwall Statement and the three essays, along with a Foreword by Institute President Fr. Robert Sirico, and an introduction by Jay W. Richards, the Director of Acton Media.

The primary purpose of this book is to convey the principles or attitudes which ought to shape a Judeo-Christian response to environmental issues. The most important of these principles is that human persons have been invested by their Creator with both the duty and the ability to enhance the fruitfulness of creation through proper stewardship. For this reason, environmentalism goes astray when it denigrates man or assumes that human flourishing must inevitably signal the destruction of the environment. Precisely because man participates in God's creative power, sound environmentalism is not a zero-sum game.

The three essays in the collection are especially interesting in their marked differences. The Jewish essay finds in the Torah a guide to evaluating every question by avoiding extremes; the Catholic essay sets forth a fairly comprehensive spiritual-social theory (with which CatholicCulture.org users will be largely familiar); and the Protestant essay goes beyond general principles to demonstrate the complexity of conflicting evidence on several key environmental questions, including global warming.

In 120 pages, the book can hardly answer every question. Readers should be aware that the Acton Institute typically places a strong emphasis on personal liberty and private property, whereas critics may well conclude that significant government involvement is essential. But specific solutions are not central to the argument; rather, the book outlines a proper understanding of man's relationship to his environment, enumerating the principles essential to reasonable discourse. Those who read it will quickly realize how far contemporary environmental discussions have wandered from their Judeo-Christian roots.

[Environmental Stewardship in the Judeo-Christian Tradition: Jewish, Catholic, and Protestant Wisdom on the Environment. Robert Sirico, Jay Richards, et al. (The Acton Institute, Grand Rapids, MI, 2007) Paperback, 120 pp. Trinity Communications will receive a percentage of the sale if you order on Amazon through this link: Environmental Stewardship.]

 If I understand the convention rhetoric properly, the Democratic Party leadership is promising to deliver the future.  A vote for Democrats, they tell us, is a vote for the future. 

As opposed to what?

The future is coming. Unless you're contemplating suicide or watching Groundhog Day, you live with the assumption that tomorrow is going to arrive right on schedule, with or without the help of our political leaders. In 24 hours, tomorrow will have become today. It's not up for grabs; you don't have any choice in the matter. 

When Ronald Reagan said that "it's always morning in America," you knew that it was a figure of speech. With the Democrats in Denver, I'm not so sure. Are they promising to make the sun rise? 

It was last Sunday. We were attending Mass in a strange town, and the Gospel was taken from St. Matthew (16:13-20). Christ asked his disciples, “Who do men say that the Son of man is?” It is a passage Catholics typically remember because it ends with a powerful ecclesiastical statement: “Blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jona! For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father who is in heaven. And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church.”

Strangely, the homily was presented as a point-by-point exposition of this text, but it was really about something else entirely. The priest preferred to “get into Jesus” from his human side. What Our Lord was essentially concerned with in this passage, he said, was to ask his disciples, “How am I doing?” After all, “he had to figure things out as he went along,” and so he asked them a question which was prompted by a very human anxiety. Like Christ, Peter was also very aware of his own inadequacies, but he had been strengthened immeasurably by the fact that Christ had compassion on him in spite of his faults. According to our homilist, Peter recognized Jesus as “the Son of the living God” because of His compassion toward Peter. Our Lord in turn found encouragement in Peter’s answer (and in the mutual compassion which engendered it). Hence the Church was built on the “rock of compassion” and the primary mission of each Christian is to be compassionate.

I have no quarrel, of course, with compassion. It is indeed an important Christian characteristic, a wonderful ability to put oneself in someone else’s shoes, to suffer along with the other, to forge bonds of solidarity in our common struggle toward goodness and truth. No, I have no problem with compassion at all, except that this gospel passage has nothing whatsoever to say about it. As any schoolboy knows, this passage is about Christian faith--about the proper understanding of who Jesus is that comes only through faith: “For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father who is in heaven.”

The entire Christian tradition, beginning with the Fathers of the Church, interprets this passage as an exposition of the importance of Faith in the very constitution of the Church. The passage gives us Peter's expression of faith, Christ's affirmation of that faith (and of its source), and Christ's promise to build the Church on Peter as the bastion (rock) of faith: “The powers of death shall not prevail against it. I will give you the keys to the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven” (Mt 16:18-19). In another passage, Jesus makes this even more explicit: "Simon, Simon, behold, Satan demanded to have you, that he might sift you like wheat, but I have prayed for you that you faith may not fail; and when you have turned again, strengthen your brethren" (Lk 22:31). But clearly this particular homilist wanted to talk about compassion; apparently compassion is his particular thing. So he simply forced the text to say what he wanted it to say. He might as well have proclaimed, “The Gospel is me.”

While we’re on the subject, perhaps a word is in order about this notion that Christ was uncertain or insecure and had to make it all up as he went along. All Catholics need to remember that Christ’s two natures (human and divine) are joined in one divine Person. In other words, considered as a person, Jesus is God. When we refer to Jesus by the personal pronoun “He”, we are referring to a divine Person, that is, to God the Son, who took on a human nature. When we say that “He” was uncertain or anxious or confused, we mean that God was uncertain or anxious or confused. Which is to say that we mean nonsense.

Jesus Christ was not a human person; he was a divine Person with a human nature. As a result, even in his human nature He beheld the beatific vision at all times. While through His human nature He could experience new things, grow after the human fashion, and even suffer and die, that human nature was at all times a component of a divine Person, a “He” who perfectly understood His mission, who knew what He was about. Thus the Gospels frequently refer to Our Lord’s knowledge of Himself, His mission, the future, and the thoughts and dispositions of others, but they never portray Him as bewildered, uncertain or out of His depth.

Because He never was. The first task of the Christian is to put his faith in this unconfused Christ who is God. We are called to respond to Jesus' Gospel, not  our own. Everything else, including compassion, follows from that.

With another pro-abortion Catholic on the Democratic national ticket, we can be quite sure that the issue will not go away this year.

It's remarkable: 25 years after Roe v. Wade, there's no realistic prospect for overturning that appalling decision, at least in the short term. There's no federal legislation currently under consideration that would ban abortion or even significantly curtail the slaughter of the unborn. Nevertheless it continues to be an important issue in every national campaign. 

In an odd way, the Obama-Biden ticket might be helpful to the pro-life movement, insofar as both Democratic candidates have been willing to discuss the question of whether or not human life begins at conception. (Biden has acknowledged that it does.) Any public discussion of that issue can only help the pro-life cause, because the scientific facts are hard to deny.

Biden's presence on the ticket also ensures a fresh debate on whether or not pro-abortion Catholic politicians should receive Communion. On that issue, too, the discussion can only be helpful. Even if most American prelates shy away from the obligations of canon law, the bold few who recognize their duty will bear powerful witness.

The status quo in American today allows unrestricted abortion on demand. The Democratic standard-bearers will protect that status quo, and it's not at all clear that the GOP contenders will attack it. Still the issue will be discussed. And as long as the discussion continues, the pro-life movement can take hope. Over time, truth inevitably erodes the power of lies. 

Pope Benedict XVI is at his best when taking impromptu questions. Recently, in a meeting between Benedict and ecclesiastics of the Italian Diocese of Bolzano-Bressanone, Father Karl Golser asked the Pope how to increase the sense of responsibility for creation among Christian communities, and how to strengthen the link between creation and redemption. (Fr. Golser is the Director of the Institute for Justice, Peace and the Preservation of Creation.)

In his reply, Benedict noted that, "In recent decades the doctrine of creation had almost disappeared from theology,” causing tremendous damage because, “if we do not proclaim God in his full grandeur—as Creator and as Redeemer—we also diminish the value of the redemption." At the same time, he emphasized that Christ was able to enter history redemptively precisely because he is the Creator.

For Benedict, this demands a specifically Christian attitude toward created things: "As long as the earth was seen as God's creation,” he noted, “ the task of 'subduing' it was never intended as an order to enslave it, but rather as the task of being guardians of creation and developing its gifts; of actively collaborating in God's work ourselves, in the evolution that he ordered in the world so that the gifts of creation might be appreciated rather than trampled upon and destroyed."

Thus Christians ought to have a profound sense of responsibility for Creation:

The brutal consumption of creation begins where God is not, where matter is henceforth only material for us, where we ourselves are the ultimate demand, where the whole is merely our property and we consume it for ourselves alone…. And the wasting of creation begins when we no longer recognize any need superior to our own, but see only ourselves. It begins when there is no longer any concept of life beyond death, where in this life we must grab hold of everything and possess life as intensely as possible, where we must possess all that is possible to possess.

In conclusion, the Pope stressed that “true and effective initiatives to prevent the waste and destruction of creation can be implemented and developed, understood and lived, only where creation is considered as beginning with God.”

This is not merely another case of the profundity of Benedict’s impromptu responses. It also demonstrates the Pope’s remarkable understanding of the ultimate connectedness of all things. For everything, both historically and logically, begins and ends in Christ, who is at once alpha and omega, origin and fulfillment. Thus are creation and redemption linked. Our understanding of the worth of redemption can only increase with our appreciation of the wonder of creation, for is it not all of creation that has been redeemed? St. Paul explains in Romans:

For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God; for the creation was subjected to futility, not of its own will but by the will of him who subjected it in hope; because creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and obtain the glorious liberty of the children of God. We know that the whole creation has been groaning in travail together until now; and not only the creation, but we ourselves who have the first fruits of the Spirit groan inwardly as we wait for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies. For in this hope we were saved. (8:20-24)

When the leaders of the Democratic Party gather in Denver for their nominating convention, they'll hear from a number of prominent religious leaders. They'll hear from several prominent Catholics, too. But they won't hear from the Archbishop of Denver, points out Julia Duin of theWashington Times.

Archbishop Charles Chaput would be a very, very interesting convention speaker. He's intelligent, witty, modest, and thoughtful. He has taken a special interest in the relationship between religion and politics, as demonstrated by his new book, Render Unto Caesar.

But if you were a Democratic leader… if you were a supporter of Senator Obama… would you want to hand Archbishop Chaput the microphone? Nope. His message would not be congenial to the "pro-choice" crowd.

Ray Flynn, former Boston mayor and later US ambassador to the Vatican, tells the Washington Times that the failure to include Archbishop Chaput is "a serious oversight" on the part of Democratic Party leaders. Serious, yes. Oversight, no. 

 This headline is popping up in quite a few newspapers in and around Vermont:

 Former Vatican counsel castigates Vt. Church

 The story-- here's a representative sample-- involves testimony by Father Tom Doyle in a case involving clerical abuse. 

Father Doyle is a well known figure in these cases. Back in the 1980s he was among a handful of people who tried-- energetically but unsuccessfully-- to persuade the US bishops that they should confront the problem forthrightly. He was remained outspoken on the issue, and while his comments on Church authority raise concerns about his own theological beliefs, there's no question that he qualifies as an expert witness in a secular courtroom. 

But the headline doesn't describe Father Doyle as an expert witness; it calls him a "former Vatican counsel." That description suggests someone high up in the Roman Curia-- perhaps the equivalent of a White House counsel, who has regular access to the Oval Office. The headline conveys the impression that some ranking official in Rome has singled out the Burlington diocese for special criticism. That's not the case. Father Doyle once worked in the office of the apostolic nuncio in Washington. It's true that he handled canonical affairs; in that sense you could say that he was a "counsel" for an office of the Vatican. But by no stretch of the imagination was he an important policy-maker for the universal Church.

It's easy for secular journalists, who know little about the workings of the Vatican, to exaggerate the importance of Church functionaries. One regularly sees references to statements by  "important Vatican officials," who turn out to hold minor clerical posts in the Roman bureaucracy. 

The people who run the Vatican post office are "Vatican officials," and since mail service is important, you could describe them as "important" Vatican officials.  Keep that in mind, next time you see that phrase.  

The word liberalism is used in many different senses, at least one of which has been condemned by the Church (Pius IX, Quanta Cura, 1864). At its philosophical core, liberalism seeks emancipation from the supernatural, moral and Divine order, with a rejection of all authority that does not originate in the self. It is precisely this form of liberalism that lies at the heart of the contemporary culture wars, both within the United States and between various countries in the European Union.

A member Poland’s presidential cabinet, Ryszard Legutko, has given us a trenchant and fascinating analysis of this sort of liberalism at work in the world. Legutko’s analysis, taken from a speech he made in 2006, has been adapted as an article in the Winter 2008 issue of Modern Age. It is so good that I wish to summarize it here:

To begin, Legutko suggests the following formula for identifying a liberal:

A liberal is someone who takes a rather thin view of man, society, morality, religion, history, and philosophy, believing this to be the safest approach to organizing human cooperation. He does not deny that thicker, non-procedural principles and norms are possible, but believes these to be particular preferences which possess validity only within particular groups and communities. For this reason he refuses to attribute to such principles and norms any universal value and he protests whenever someone attempts to impose his profound beliefs, however true they may seem to him, on the entire social body. Liberals might have divergent opinions on economic freedoms and the role of government, but they are united in their conviction that thinness of anthropological, moral, and metaphysical assumptions is the prerequisite for freedom and peace.

Legutko then goes on to present five arguments against the assumptions at the heart of liberalism, five important points which reveal the bankruptcy of liberalism:

First, liberalism has an extremely modest position in the entire history of human experience: “To put it simply: liberalism as a theory is not interesting.” Legutko notes that it is extremely difficult to think of any outstanding thinker or writer who can be characterized solely as a liberal. Great minds have always attempted to achieve wisdom by taking strong positions on ultimate questions, but “the liberal ignores those questions because he considers them either irrelevant or…dangerous.”

Second, “liberals always place themselves in a higher position than their interlocutors, and from that position they have an irresistible urge to dominate.” While claiming to want a society in which people are free to make their own decisions, “they always usurp for themselves…the role of the architectonic organizer of society; thus they always want to dominate by performing the roles of the guardians of the whole of the social system and the judges of the procedural rules within the system.”

Third, liberals confuse two distinct claims about freedom: the claim that freedom of action should not be impeded by arbitrary will, and the claim that what free people want is a liberal order. “By identifying these two beliefs [as one and the same] liberals assume that whoever wants freedom must necessarily want liberalism, and whoever wants liberalism must necessarily want freedom. Armed with this assumption liberals assess the progress of freedom by the yardstick of acceptance of their own system.”

Fourth, while preaching the superiority of pluralism, liberals actually propagate an intensely dualistic vision of the world, dividing all persons into two camps: pluralists and monists. Pluralists are liberals. Monists are “ayatollahs, Adolf Hitlers, Christian fundamentalists, Catholic integrists, Islamists, conservatives and many more.” The result is not only ideologically convenient; it also degrades thought and leads to “sweeping judgments, positive or negative, about everything in the past, present, and future.”

Fifth, fearful of potential enslavement lurking everywhere, liberals embrace all “modern ideological mystifications, which are often created in bad faith and from evidently erroneous assumptions.” Ideologies such as Communism are a good example but liberals are routinely co-opted by all who adopt their “rhetoric of liberation”. In a liberal order, every group learns “to make a convincing case that it is a victim of a particularly sinister form of discrimination.” Liberals can only encourage more of this, leading to ever greater social chaos.

Legutko concludes that, practically speaking, liberalism breeds “ideological commissars who have acquired remarkable abilities to silence their critics. For whoever disagrees with them is a potential candidate to become a new Adolf Hitler.” Indeed, if you emancipate man from God, he inevitably becomes his own worst enemy. What’s wrong with liberalism? Riszard Legutko has it exactly right.

I have mentioned Cardinal Walter Kasper’s address to the Anglican bishops assembled at the Lambeth Conference several times, but I have only recently been able to study it myself in depth. It constitutes the Catholic Church’s formal statement to the Anglican Communion on the state of Catholic-Anglican relations in the wake of growing Anglican support for the ordination of women and homosexuality, including homosexual unions.
 
Cardinal Kasper is not only a sympathetic head for the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, but he has the reputation of being somewhat liberal. While I would not go so far as to place him at odds with Benedict XVI, I think it is fair to say that he sometimes used to find himself in marked disagreement with Cardinal Ratzinger before his election, and his public comments tend at times to suggest that undercurrents of disagreement continue.
 
But this provides all the more reason to note the welcome candor (for an ecumenical address) of Cardinal Kasper's remarks at Lambeth, which can easily be captured in a series of quotations. Taken in order, they conveniently summarize the talk:

• "From the very beginning we should...keep in mind what is at stake as we proceed to speak about faithfulness to the apostolic tradition and apostolic succession, when we speak about the threefold ministry, women’s ordination and moral commandments. What we are talking about is nothing other than our faithfulness to Christ himself, who is our unique and common master."
   
• "[The progress of past years] leaves me all the more saddened as I have now, in fidelity to what I believe Christ requires—and I want to add, in the frankness which friendship allows—to look to the problems within the Anglican Communion which have emerged and grown since the last Lambeth Conference and to the ecumenical repercussions of these internal tensions."
   
• "In our dialogue we have jointly affirmed that the decisions of a local or regional church must not only foster communion in the present context, but must also be in agreement with the church of the past, and in a particular way with the apostolic church as witnessed in the Scriptures, the early councils and the patristic tradition."
   
• "It also seems to us [the Catholic Church] that the Anglican commitment to being 'episcopally led and synodically governed' has not always functioned in such a way as to maintain the apostolicity of the faith and that synodical government misunderstood as a kind of parliamentary process has at times blocked the sort of episcopal leadership envisaged by Cyprian [St. Cyprian, cited earlier]…."
   
• "The Catholic Church’s teaching regarding human sexuality, especially homosexuality, is clear as set forth in the Catechism of the Catholic Church, Nos. 2357-59. We are convinced that this teaching is well founded in the Old and in the New Testament, and therefore that faithfulness to the Scriptures and to apostolic tradition is at stake."
   
• "He [Pope John Paul II in settling the question of the ordination of women] concluded, 'I declare that the church has no authority whatsoever to confer priestly ordination on women and that this judgment is to be definitively held by all the church’s faithful.' This formulation clearly shows that this is not only a disciplinary position but an expression of our faithfulness to Jesus Christ. The Catholic Church finds herself bound by the will of Jesus Christ and does not feel free to establish a new tradition alien to the tradition of the church of all ages."
   
• "[F]or us this decision to ordain women implies a turning away from the common position of all churches of the first millennium, that is, not only the Catholic Church but also the Oriental Orthodox and the Orthodox churches. We would see the Anglican Communion as moving a considerable distance closer to the side of the Protestant churches of the 16^th century, and to a position they adopted only during the second half of the 20^th century."
   
• "While our dialogue has led to significant agreement on the understanding of ministry, the ordination of women to the episcopate effectively and definitively blocks a possible recognition of Anglican orders by the Catholic Church."
   
• ”It now seems that full visible communion as the aim of our dialogue has receded further, and that our dialogue will have less ultimate goals and therefore will be altered in its character. While such a dialogue could still lead to good results, it would not be sustained by the dynamism which arises from the realistic possibility of the unity Christ asks of us or the shared partaking of the one Lord’s table for which we so earnestly long.”

 The Red Horse, by Eugenio Corti, is one of my all-time favorite novels. Based on historical events, and written on an epic scale, this book provides a fresh, penetrating insight into the Italian experience of World War II. Corti shows how a traditional Catholic culture was battered first by fascism, then by war, and finally by Eurocommunism. 

This is not a light read. It's a masterpiece. I don't think it's unfair to compare The Red Horse with The Gulag Archipelago or even War and Peace. 

It's comparable in length, too. The book runs about 1,000 pages. 

So I was jolted to see that my old friends at Ignatius Press, the American publisher, are offering The Red Horse on sale  for the ridiculously low price of just $5. At that price you can't afford not to buy it. 

Both before and during the decennial meeting of the Anglican bishops at Lambeth (July 16 – August 3), Vatican officials were muted, to say the least, in their public responses toward Anglicans exploring the possibility of reunion with Rome. The intensity of such explorations heightens every few years as the Anglican Communion gradually disintegrates over such questions as the ordination of women, the blessing of homosexual unions, and the ordination of homosexuals as bishops.

In response to what seems like a growing opportunity for Rome, the public lack of Catholic interest can be confusing. Thus Cardinal Walter Kasper, head of the Pontifical Council for Christian Unity, has been heard to discourage the idea of large numbers of Anglicans abandoning their Church for Rome, and even Benedict XVI has publicly confined himself to encouraging Anglican leaders to address their internal divisions in fidelity to the Gospel.

At the same time, however, various Anglican bishops have been in communication with Cardinal Kasper and other Vatican officials about the possibility of being brought into the Church all at once with their dioceses and parishes, under an expanded application of the Pastoral Provision. This Provision was made in 1980 by John Paul II to permit married U.S. Episcopalian priests and some parishes to return to Rome while maintaining a distinctive identity through an approved form of the liturgy called the Anglican Use. At least one Anglican bishop has called for a generous response on the part of Rome, on an even larger scale, to accommodate bishops and dioceses desiring union with Rome throughout the world. While public response has been muted, there is ample evidence of talks proceeding privately behind the scenes.

The difference between the public and the private, of course, is that the public is largely conditioned by diplomatic and ecumenical concerns. It would be both undiplomatic and unecumenical to make statements welcoming breakaway Anglicans at the expense of alienating a far larger number of their coreligionists who are not yet ready to seek reunion with Rome. And of course Benedict XVI would like the Anglicans to settle their internal divisions with fidelity to the Gospel; how could he not? Not only is this right in itself, but such fidelity is all it would take to bring the entire communion closer to Rome. In this light, it is interesting to note that even Cardinal Kasper, in his own address at the Lambeth Conference, stressed that the Anglicans had to decide whether they were going to be an apostolic Church or a Protestant one, a decision which has always haunted Anglicanism, which is the result of a compromise. That choice is critical to ecumenical success—or failure.

But what of the pastoral care of those who are beginning to understand that full truth and sacramental security can be found only in communion with Rome? Whatever the wisdom of public reticence (the result of a debatable prudential judgment), such pastoral care clearly demands a different sort of response, and that’s exactly what all the private talks are about. If the interest persists now that the politics of Lambeth is behind us, we can expect something very different to emerge. We can expect arrangements to be made for those Anglican bishops who really do wish—with their people—to come home.

In my commentary on the current scandal involving Catholic hospitals in Texas (see Open Secrets, Statistics and News, I indicated that the study of sterilizations and abortions performed at these hospitals did not distinguish between direct and indirect procedures, latter being moral in many cases.

Through timely correspondence from knowledgeable users, I am informed that while the nature of the abortions is murky, the study in question tells us enough about the sterilizations to know that many of them were direct tubal ligations, which can never be the unintended consequence of treatment of some other serious condition. Such sterilizations are always wrong.

I have updated the text of the original commentary accordingly.