Dear Holy Father, Pope Francis,
In your recent encyclical, Laudato Si, you appeal to all the people in the world:
In this Encyclical, I would like to enter into dialogue with all people about our common home.
And later:
I urgently appeal, then, for a new dialogue about how we are shaping the future of our planet. We need a conversation which includes everyone, since the environmental challenge we are undergoing, and its human roots, concern and affect us all.
Since this is your intention, your initiative, and your invitation, I would like to respond as a son of the Church and as an obedient son, my spiritual father. I pray for humility, above all, that my response may be one of filial devotion, ordered to the truth. I choose this blog as the medium of my dialogue with you and all people because of the wide availability of the internet and the open forum which a blog provides.
Sin and Nature
In my perspective, it seems the root cause of the deterioration of the natural order is specifically sin. You pointed this out stating:
The creation accounts in the book of Genesis contain, in their own symbolic and narrative language, profound teachings about human existence and its historical reality. They suggest that human life is grounded in three fundamental and closely intertwined relationships: with God, with our neighbour and with the earth itself. According to the Bible, these three vital relationships have been broken, both outwardly and within us. This rupture is sin. The harmony between the Creator, humanity and creation as a whole was disrupted by our presuming to take the place of God and refusing to acknowledge our creaturely limitations. This in turn distorted our mandate to “have dominion” over the earth (cf. Gen 1:28), to “till it and keep it” (Gen 2:15)
It appears to me that the deterioration of the natural order is a reflection and consequence of the deterioration of the human soul through sin. If the earth and environment travail more in our generation than in the past, it would seem this distress is the result of the pervasive environment of sin and perversion that we encounter daily, at least this is my personal perception in these United States.
In the beginning, the world was a garden of paradise, and all was properly ordered to the praise and glory of God. The original sin of our first parents disrupted that order and had grave consequences for their souls and for the souls of all men and women throughout all generations. These grave spiritual consequences were not without their parallel in the natural order. As mortal sin took root in humanity to kill the souls of our first parents spiritually, natural death also took root. As our first parents were stripped of their preternatural gifts, so too, natural poverty, and contentions over resources arose. In what ways our common home was altered, we do not entirely know.
We read in holy scripture that sin became so pervasive and men so evil that God repented of having created man. As a result, God destroyed the entire face of the earth by flood, taking a great swath of creation together with humanity, save eight souls who were preserved in the ark.
I wonder if our time is not similar to Noah’s. I speculate it is not a coincidence that we are simultaneously observing the rise of a movement towards unnatural sexual vice and great worry over our environment, our common home, given the following rabbinical tradition:
Rabbi Huna said in the name of Rabbi Joseph, “The generation of the Flood was not wiped out until they wrote marriage documents for the union of a man to a male or to an animal.”
Alas, despite the overwhelming democratic rejection of that movement to legitimize homosexual “marriage” in our states, even to the extent that many states have amended their constitutions to reject homosexual “marriage”, the nine members of our Supreme Court appear ready to impose such an agenda on us without our consent. With great sadness we observe the treachery of Ireland’s betrayal of the Faith in its democratic acceptance of the same.
If the sin of equating the destructive, perverse homosexual association with the procreative and sacred relationship of husband and wife and enshrining that principle in law prompted such destruction to our planet in Noah’s day, I shudder to contemplate what may be the consequences in our own day. For we, unlike the men of Noah’s time, have not merely the natural law but also the order of grace through Our Lord Jesus Christ. It has been said wisely, “To whom more is given, more is expected.”
In like vein, I think it is not a coincidence that the promulgation of Laudato Si has occurred so close in time to the synod on the family.
A Climate of Temptation
In describing the current environmental situation, you point out the following:
The earth, our home, is beginning to look more and more like an immense pile of filth. In many parts of the planet, the elderly lament that once beautiful landscapes are now covered with rubbish.
In concurring, I wish to draw a parallel to the spiritual situation, which I think precedes the environmental situation. All around, we see an immense ocean of spiritual filth and temptation: pornography, base enticements in media and advertising, and the everyday immodesty of women. We are exposed to these things even in grocery stores where we obtain the simple necessities of life. Our elderly lament that these temptations did not pollute the everyday experience in days gone by. It used to be that my father could take a bus or run his paper route by himself as a boy, but violence in our country has exploded such that a boy doing this today is unthinkable. One cannot even drive down the road without seeing billboards containing filthy advertising.
Seeking a Solution
Repeatedly during your pontificate, Holy Father, you have voiced the need to turn to the periphery of the Church for solutions. Indeed, though the African nations are among the poorest naturally speaking, they do not appear to suffer from the the spiritual bankruptcy that pervades the West. The African bishops are speaking the truth about marriage. May God be praised.
There is also another periphery, a periphery dedicated to giving God the best adoration we can give by offering the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass with reverence, awe, and devotion in a way that aids the faithful in transcending this temporal home and focusing our minds towards our true, common home. This periphery consists of those priestly societies that are in full union with you and offer the infinite atoning sacrifice of Jesus Christ in the Extraordinary Form. Though their numbers are small, though they do not come from the mainstream, they are ready to renew the earth by renewing the liturgy.
As Pope Benedict stated, and as you quoted in Laudato Si:
The misuse of creation begins when we no longer recognize any higher instance than ourselves, when we see nothing else but ourselves.
All to often, I feel we who occupy the pews of the Church do not “recognize any higher instance than ourselves” in the liturgy. The reason for this, I feel, is that “we see nothing else but ourselves”. At least, this is my perception in my corner of the world. For example, the priest, facing the people, largely addresses the people, even as he is addressing God. There is an emphasis placed on us and our communion with one another, while, in practice, there is less emphasis placed in the liturgy on our unity with God.
Out of the periphery of the Extraordinary Form, there is a focus on God, the Supreme Being, on the Trinity, and on the love of Jesus Christ. There is a focus on union with God, which is holiness. From this periphery, the priests place demands on us to be holy laymen. From the mainstream, I perceive this much less frequently.
If sin is the root cause of natural evils, and further if natural evils pale in comparison with spiritual ones, then the best we can do for our common home is to become saints who proclaim to the world that sin is the problem and Catholicism has the solution, Jesus Christ.
Weak Responses
The environment of sin which has taken hold even among some priests (may God forgive them) has largely continued unchecked. We laymen cry out that all too often our spiritual leaders appear to turn a deaf ear to our pleading that the truth about sin be preached from the pulpit. The quality of education in the Faith in the West is, generally speaking, appalling. Consequently, in America, the percentages of broken homes, divorces, and contraceptive use roughly match the pagan population at large.
This response is not the same, however, in the Extraordinary Form periphery. Only last Sunday, the Sunday within the Octave of the Sacred Heart, the homilist at my parish addressed specifically the crisis of fatherhood (the lack thereof) in our country and even among priests and bishops. The homilist pointed out that the father determines whether the family will follow the Holy Spirit or the spirit of the world. The crisis in our time is largely the fault of detached individuals who father children (or who are in fatherly positions of authority) who will take no responsibility.
Our filthy environment of temptation, and our subsequent moral poverty (and sometimes material poverty as well) is largely due to the abandonment of children (natural and spiritual) by their fathers.
In Laudato Si, you point out the necessity of understanding our dominion over the earth, as in this excerpt:
The biblical texts are to be read in their context, with an appropriate hermeneutic, recognizing that they tell us to “till and keep” the garden of the world (cf. Gen 2:15). “Tilling” refers to cultivating, ploughing or working, while “keeping” means caring, protecting, overseeing and preserving.
How great is the dominion of a father over his children! He is to “cultivate”, “protect”, “oversee” and “preserve”. If he is not there, what shall become of them? The answer is, I think, precisely the environment of sin we see today.
What Should Be Done?
In certain matters of the climate and our environment, you observed that the Church does not take a definitive position:
On many concrete questions, the Church has no reason to offer a definitive opinion; she knows that honest debate must be encouraged among experts, while respecting divergent views. But we need only take a frank look at the facts to see that our common home is falling into serious disrepair.
However, in matters of faith and morals, the spiritual environment, as it were, the Church and you, exercising your authority as the Pope, most certainly take definitive positions, as you are bound to do. I need not point out that the spiritual environment is being devastated by fatherlessness, selfishness, sexual deviance, and disregard for innocence.
Please, Holy Father, be a father to the bishops, that they may be fathers to the priests, that they may be fathers to us and to our children. Please, with the love and charity of Jesus Christ, admonish the sinners! Sit as our father, judging the sins with clarity but extending mercy to the sinners. Please promote a renewal of focus on God within the liturgy. Insist that we become holy!
I, for my part, will do my best to be the father my children need me to be. When I fail, I will avail myself of confession. I will get holy or die trying.
Send forth Thy Spirit and they shall be created. And Thou shalt renew the face of the earth.