The problem with the early release of the Pope's messages for special occasions is that by the time the observance comes around, media usually 'forget' about the message previously given and do not revisit it on the occasion itself. So it was, for the most part, with the Pope's Message for the World Day of Peace yesterday.... which makes this commentary all the more welcome.
How Benedict XVI's ecological
message is generally misread
by Flavio Felice
Translated from
January 2, 2010
Felice is president of the Italian Tocqueville-Acton Study Center, an adjunct to the American Enterprise Institute.
"Safeguarding creation and the realization of peace are realities that are intimately connected... If you want to cultivate peace, take care of creation".
So much commentary on Benedict XVI's Message for the 43rd World Day for Peace observed yesterday has interpreted it as an 'ecological turning point' in Pontifical Magisterium.
Which is forcing an argument, though it is understandable because the present Pope has offered a social reflection in which ecological issues occupy a primary place.
But one aspect, among so many, must be underscored particularly - the nexus that Benedict XVI establishes between strictly ecological questions and what he calls 'human ecology':
"Duties to the environment derive from those towards the individual person considered in himself alone and in relation to others".
It follows that Benedict XVI urges education of the new generations about their specific ecological responsibility, but the Pope's ecological messages certainly do not echo the rhetoric of 'sustainable development' (in which denatalization - slowing down the birth rate - is the measure of sustainability).
On the contrary, the main objective of ecological education is to safeguard an authentic human ecology. Benedict XVI's ecological message refers back to the anthropological question - relating all events to their consequences on man - and not to a sociology of 'egalitarianism' among all living beings (plant, animal and human). No matter how noble the intention may be, it is inadequate, at the very least, from the Christian point of view.
With the nexus he makes, Benedict XVI renews the central message of the Church's Social Doctrine on "the inviolability of human life at every stage and in every condition", and reaffirms the "dignity of the person and the irreplaceable mission of the family to educate children about love for their neighbor and respect of nature".
The Pope's arguments are those traditionally found in the 'theology of Creation' which was already a specially distinctive mark in the social Magisterium of John Paul II, in relation to labor, capital, business and profit, as analyzed in the encyclicals
Laborem exercens (1981),
Sollicitudo rei socialis (1987), and
Centesimus annus (1991).
Benedict XVI emphasizes the authentically human face of development, reiterating what he spells out in
Caritas in veritate (2009).
It is a view of development that is closely related to the basic nature of man as a being created in the image and likeness of God, a beneficiary of the Creator's paternal love. This love makes all men God's children and therefore brothers on earth, and imposes the calling to love each other as God loves us. Such a reading obviously goes back to the mystery-'scandal' of the Cross, the measure of how much God loves us.
This anthropological, or man-centered, view is even more evident when the Pontiff affirms:
"If the Magisterium of the Church shows its perplexity at the idea of the environment inspired by ecocentrism and biocentrism, it does so because such a concept eliminates the ontological and axiologic difference between the human person and other living beings. Such a notion eliminates man's identity adn superior role in favor of an egalitarian view of the dignity of all living beings. This leads in turn to a new pantheism with neo-pagan accents which wees man's salvation in nature alone".
On the contrary, the Pope tells us, the Church calls for considering ecological questions 'in a balanced manner', respecting first of all "the grammar that the Creator has inscribed in his work".
This grammar entrusts to man the role of active custodian, not a foolish guardian who abdicates his role as co-creator - a role that comes from having been crated in the image and likeness of God.
Respect and caring concern for the material world make up only a minimal aspect of the space for activity that is open to man so that he may express his own creativity.
Creation is not merely
ex nihilo - out of nothing - but also
contra nihilum- against nothing, and against the inconsistency of things.
Benedict XVI tells us that ecological denial is not only an anti-aesthetic disfigurement of the beauty of creation, making the cosmos less smiling and attractive - it also takes away from man the possibility of a calm and communicative encounter with reality. It takes away from reality itself the possibility of a continual process of perfection.
Avvenire's editorialist, poet Davide Rondoni, writes for another newspaper to comment on the 2010 Peace message:
The Pope's New Year messages:
Man enrapt in the sacredness of Nature
by Davide Rondoni
Translated from
January 2, 2009
The center from which Benedict XVI's 'ecology' flows is Psalm 8. He cites a well-known passage to establish the premise for his demanding Mesesage for the first day of the year and the Church's World Day for Peace.
"When I see your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and stars that you set in place - What are humans that you are mindful of them, mere mortals that you care for them?" (Ps 8,4-5)
[I have been using the New American Bible to render all Biblical citations made by the Holy Father in English, but for this psalm, I much prefer the traditional translation, 'What is man that thou art mindful of him?" as much more idiomatic and poetic!]
The root of the 'human ecology' raised once more by Benedict XVI is to be found in that bewilderment, the wonder of God's creature that re-echoes in so many brilliant expressions through the ages - think of our [Giacomo] Leopardi
[1798-1837, philosopher, essayist and great lyric poet].
Thus, the Pope's invitation to 'cultivate the peace and take care of creation' - rather than a heavy-handed ethical imperative or an epochal need - is the attitude that flourishes in a spirit shaken by the disproportion that the human being sees between himself and the vastness of Creation.
It is the attitude of someone who sees in this bewilderment a kind of tremorous privilege: that there is no other point in all of creation that can equal man, his dignity and the grandeur of his consciousness.
This hinge of man's primordial wonder is also linked to the tenderness that the Pope referred to in his homily at the New Year's Day Mass - in the example of brotherhood that is evident among children of various races and origins when they are together, as a sign of that for which man was made, above and beyond all differences.
Respect for others is strong if it is born out of that wonder. It is the 'face of God', says the Pope, who can make 'an empty heart' sensitive and 'reveal' to it the faces of men, "even if at times, the human face marked by the hardness of life and by evil makes it difficult to appreciate and accept it as an epiphany of God".
"In order to recognize and respect each other as we truly are, namely, brothers... we must look to the face of our common Father, who loves us all despite our limitations and errors".
The Pope pegs his message and his homily to the words of the Psalm, which provide the current of energy that sustains the Pope's calm, firm and free reasoning when he talks of man's relationship to Creation.
Without that wonder at the vastness of Creation and the special position that man occupies in its 'grammar', Benedict XVI says, man cannot take on a true and proper responsibility for it.
Once more, the great challenge: the religious man, who lives 'as if God exists', can develop a more responsible attitude towards existence than one who believes that life occurs as a result of some obscure and unknown urge or casual fate.
In this sense, Benedict's message - even as it deals with issues that are part of the great public debate but often prey to stale and tiresome commonplaces - is once more distinguished by its radical difference that challenges thought and not just behavior.
In short, the Pope's Message is not the nth ecological appeal repeated this time by a Pope rather than by Greenpeace. No, it is a free and dispassionate plunge into the subject of correct knowledge that can allow better care of the world.
Having established this, the Pope's reasoning and and does proceed in great freedom and accuracy to get to the crux of the problem - and he calls on everyone, without half terms, to their individual responsibility - in the face of Nature tyrannized by self-interests and therefore taking its toll on mankind.
Ecological irresponsibility violates "inter-generational solidarity'. Technology, detached from its inner tension to favor development, becomes a factor for inequality and domination. Instead of the moderation and solidarity that we are called on to observe as principles of existence, what persist are attitudes of deception and indifference to consequences.
These consequences include the tragedy of 'environmental refugees' who are constraiend to flee unlivable conditions and multiply the ranks of those who are refugees from wars and violence.
The book of nature, the Pope insists, is one. There cannot be concern for nature without respect for the human being and acknowledgment of his supreme dignity - a true and proper ontological distinction from other living creatures.
And even as he praises the activities of many non-governmental entities who urge more equitable choices, he also warns against taking on a pantheistic vision - that in which a human being is not worth as much as a seal cub.
If one is truly committed to saving the latter, it would be inevitable to be concerned first about the right to life and dignified existence of the former.
The Pope's strong appeal on New Year's Day to anyone who belongs to any armed groups, to stop every offensive and violent action is part of his passion for a 'human ecology'.
The Pope is firm and solid in his analyses and in his appeals. But he also advocates seeing crisis as possibility. We have the opportunity, he said, that from every difficult situation there can come a call to everyone for a change in mentality. A call on each one to operate at the level that is possible to him, according to the principle of subdidiarity.
Benedict XVI is not a complaining type. He always calls on everyone to hope for what is possible, and underscores the religious root of responsibility. That is, the root of joy from which, alone, commitment to the great questions of life - often expressed in many small things - can arise and endure.
[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 02/01/2010 23:08]