These are the very views of St Francis of Assisi. At 800 years since his death, care for creation still is and will always be a core value of the Franciscan Order and those of us Catholics that celebrate what Francis stands for.
I grant that we live in a throwaway culture of sorts. But I actually think you have this backward and that care for creation in many cases justifies abortion in many contexts. And I agree that the moral logic rhymes with that of the environment, but specifically about the role of human consciousness in relation to creation.
Specifically, this: "The two commitments rise and fall together. A culture that learns to welcome a child, with all the inconvenience and upheaval that entails, is practicing the same fundamental act as the farmer who plants trees whose shade he will never sit under, or the conservationist who restores a river she will never fish. Both are refusing the throwaway logic that would reduce the world to what it can do for me, right now."
The farmer "plants," and the women "restore," but the childbearing woman does nothing, is not allowed to act with regard for the future because there is a principle, mistaken as doctrine, operating now to say that she cannot. Her capacity for reason ("I cannot afford this right now") in her specific context is suspended because of some notion of the good operating now, which disallows her from making inferences about the future, which is what separates us, according to Aquinas, from animals.
Which is to say, the equivalent moral situation to "a culture that learns to welcome a child, with all the...upheavals that entails," is not the farmer or riparian restoration specialist who are agents acting now with reference to the future (i.e., exerting their God-given capacity for reason) but instead—especially if acting primarily based on church doctrine—is instead more equivalent to the wilderness activist who believes that to "clean up the river" is to unjustly intrude on some separate domain that should be left to pursue its own pure sacred telos. This same wilderness activist then councils their audience that they must just bear the burden of the pollution.
Whether it's a child or a river, one cannot reasonably say, at the same time, our sexual and family culture—that is, the culture that leads to unwanted conception in the first place—or our river is in an unhealthy, polluted state and then deny the reasonable attempts of everyday humans to address the consequences (i.e., children who cannot be cared for and rivers that are filled with arsenic).
Abortion and especially the American abortion debate aside, what does your Catholic doctrine teach about the role of reason and human consciousness in the world, both in regard to intraspecies affairs and interspecies affairs? Why are we allowed to manipulate trees and rivers with projections of the future in mind but cannot exert that same agency when it comes to our kin?
I also find that when you have small children, being kind to your chickens and being kind to siblings go hand and hand with each other. Thank You so much!
These are the very views of St Francis of Assisi. At 800 years since his death, care for creation still is and will always be a core value of the Franciscan Order and those of us Catholics that celebrate what Francis stands for.
I grant that we live in a throwaway culture of sorts. But I actually think you have this backward and that care for creation in many cases justifies abortion in many contexts. And I agree that the moral logic rhymes with that of the environment, but specifically about the role of human consciousness in relation to creation.
Specifically, this: "The two commitments rise and fall together. A culture that learns to welcome a child, with all the inconvenience and upheaval that entails, is practicing the same fundamental act as the farmer who plants trees whose shade he will never sit under, or the conservationist who restores a river she will never fish. Both are refusing the throwaway logic that would reduce the world to what it can do for me, right now."
The farmer "plants," and the women "restore," but the childbearing woman does nothing, is not allowed to act with regard for the future because there is a principle, mistaken as doctrine, operating now to say that she cannot. Her capacity for reason ("I cannot afford this right now") in her specific context is suspended because of some notion of the good operating now, which disallows her from making inferences about the future, which is what separates us, according to Aquinas, from animals.
Which is to say, the equivalent moral situation to "a culture that learns to welcome a child, with all the...upheavals that entails," is not the farmer or riparian restoration specialist who are agents acting now with reference to the future (i.e., exerting their God-given capacity for reason) but instead—especially if acting primarily based on church doctrine—is instead more equivalent to the wilderness activist who believes that to "clean up the river" is to unjustly intrude on some separate domain that should be left to pursue its own pure sacred telos. This same wilderness activist then councils their audience that they must just bear the burden of the pollution.
Whether it's a child or a river, one cannot reasonably say, at the same time, our sexual and family culture—that is, the culture that leads to unwanted conception in the first place—or our river is in an unhealthy, polluted state and then deny the reasonable attempts of everyday humans to address the consequences (i.e., children who cannot be cared for and rivers that are filled with arsenic).
Abortion and especially the American abortion debate aside, what does your Catholic doctrine teach about the role of reason and human consciousness in the world, both in regard to intraspecies affairs and interspecies affairs? Why are we allowed to manipulate trees and rivers with projections of the future in mind but cannot exert that same agency when it comes to our kin?
I also find that when you have small children, being kind to your chickens and being kind to siblings go hand and hand with each other. Thank You so much!
Fantastic post today, and I couldn't agree more with what was said. God Bless you all, and thank you for what you do.