CATHOLIC SOCIAL TEACHING THEME 7 - CARE FOR GOD’S CREATION

 

“We show our respect for the Creator by our stewardship of creation. Care 25:1-7) the earth is not just an Earth Day slogan, it is a requirement of our faith. We are called to protect people and the planet, living our faith in relationship with all of God’s creation. This environment challenge has fundamental moral and ethical dimensions that cannot be ignore.” (USCCB) 

“The land itself must be given a rest and not abused” (Lev. 25:1-7) 

In today’s political and economic discourse, we often see a divide between care for the earth and economic growth. Care for the environment, especially the reduction of our dependence on fossil fuels, is seen as harmful to our economy. Regulations aimed at cleaning the waters, air, and land are deemed harmful to industries and an unnecessary intrusion on commerce. As Christians, we are called to care for the earth that God has created for us. God has given us dominion over the earth but that dominion must be seen as stewardship, not exploitation. Often, it’s the rich nations that exploit the developing nations’ natural resources for their own gain, thus moving exploitation of the earth into abuse of our poorer brothers and sisters. “A true ecological approach always becomes a social approach; it must integrate questions of justice in debates on the environment, so as to hear both the cry of the earth and the cry of the poor. . . . Everything is connected. Concern for the environment thus needs to be joined to a sincere love for our fellow human beings and an unwavering commitment to resolving the problems of society.” (Pope Francis, On Care for Our Common Home [Laudato Si']). 

As steward’s of God’s creation, we are responsible for leaving our future generations a livable environment. The dangers of that not happening grow with each passing year that we do little to curb climate change. The dependence on fossil fuels and the destruction of air cleaning rain forests threatens not only our way of life but also our very existence. This is a clear violation of our call to “care for God’s creation.”  In addition to not fully addressing climate change, our neglect of our drinking water and the air we breathe further erodes the health of the world we will leave our grandchildren. Our need for economic growth and consumption of more and more material goods must not allow us to abandon duty to preserve the gift of God’s creation. 

“Equally worrying is the  ecological question which accompanies the problem of consumerism and which  is closely connected to it. In his desire to have and to enjoy rather than to  be and to grow, man consumes the resources of the earth and his own life in an  excessive and disordered way. . . . Man, who discovers his capacity to  transform and in a certain sense create the world through his own work, forgets  that this is always based on God's prior and original gift of the things that  are. Man thinks that he can make arbitrary use of the earth, subjecting it  without restraint to his will, as though it did not have its own requisites and  a prior God-given purpose, which man can indeed develop but must not betray.  Instead of carrying out his role as a co-operator with God in the work of  creation, man sets himself up in place of God and thus ends up provoking a  rebellion on the part of nature, which is more tyrannized than governed by him.” (St. John Paul II,  Centesimus Annus)