Cardinal's Column, Calendar & Appointments

March 13, 2005

‘And God saw that it was good ...’

After each act of creation in the Book of Genesis, God is depicted as stopping and looking at what he had made. He then declares his handi-work good, until he comes to the creation of the first human begins. This act of creation is very good.

We’ll hear these creation stories from Genesis during the Vigil on Holy Saturday night. I thought of them when I read the reports of the murder of Sister Dorothy Stang of the Congregation of the Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur. These are the Sisters who sponsor Notre Dame High School, an exceptionally fine secondary school for girls on the Northwest Side of the city. Sister Dorothy had spent many years of her life in that part of Brazil defined by the Amazon river and its forests and delta. Because the preservation of the rain forest is important for the health of the planet, international attention has been focused on its destruction in recent years in the name of economic development. Standing in the way of those who would illegally destroy the forest have been the people, especially those native to the Amazon for centuries. Sister Dorothy, like other missionaries, was there more for the people than for the trees; but both were the object of her concern. She was shot in the chest and killed last month by those bent on destroying both the people and the forest. She stood courageously in their way and was eliminated.

What happened between God’s good actions in creating the earth and, with it, the human race to develop it justly and the killing last month of Sister Dorothy Stang, SND? The fall, the act of disobedience by our first parents, ratified in the personal sins of all but Jesus and Mary, has turned human hearts to evil and opened the earth itself to exploitation for evil ends. Sister Dorothy recognized evil, which resists being exposed. As we thank God for her life as a religious sister and pray that her witness and ministry may not be forgotten, we continue to examine our lives and actions during Lent to recognize our particular cooperation in evil.

Generally, when Catholics examine their conscience they think first of sins against God and then of sins against our neighbor. Recently, we have been invited to think also of sins against nature itself. Sister Dorothy’s being murdered jolted in my mind a few thoughts of how we, as people of faith, should relate to the rest of God’s creation. St. Gregory of Nazianzen, a fourth-century teacher, said: “God opens up the earth, the springs, the streams and the woods to all who live in the world. He gives the air to the birds, the water to the fish and the basic needs of life abundantly to all without restriction or limitation or preference. These basic goods are common to all, provided by God generously … that he may show how rich is his kindness.” St. Gregory then exhorts his listeners of 1,600 years ago to be “stewards of God’s gifts.”

Pope John Paul II has drawn a moral conclusion from this vision of creation given us for divine purposes: “the human person, endowed with the capability of choosing freely, has a grave responsibility to preserve (the natural order) for the wellbeing of future generations. … The commitment of believers to a healthy environment for everyone stems directly from their belief in God the Creator, from their recognition of the effects of original and personal sin, and from the certainty of having been redeemed by Christ.” In Christ, the Pope points out, God has entered into solidarity with the entire created universe and its historical destiny.

In recent years, the Pope has joined with the Orthodox Patriarch of Constantinople, Bartholomew I, and many Protestant pastors to speak of our obligation to care for creation in accord with God’s purposes. Human beings are not to be equated with cows in a field or lions in their den; nature is not absolute nor above the dignity of the human person. Because we are to use our gifts of reason and free will responsibly, however, we cannot allow nature to be manipulated and exploited in an unbalanced manner. Human creatures are organically linked with other living beings because nature is a biosphere in which all living things form a complex yet carefully organized network of life. Judgements about when the tipping point has been reached will vary, but air and water pollution, toxic industrial waste, destruction of delicate habitats like the rain forest are all moral issues which need to be addressed in terms beyond the economic. There is a “human ecology” which brings into question the use and distribution of natural resources for life around the globe.

The Church on these issues works as a witness, as did Sister Dorothy Stang in a heroic manner. The Church can also work as a catalyst to provide, as suggested by the Pope and Patriarch Bartholomew, “a peaceful approach to disagreement about how to live on this earth and about how to share it and use it, about what to change and what to leave unchanged.” Peaceful change means conversion of heart, which is what Lent is all about. Let’s add our relationship to nature to the examination of conscience. Let us pray that, through the grace of our conversion and the penance we undertake, God can look at nature and ourselves this Lent and again pronounce them good. God bless you.