"Rebellion on the part of nature": A Saint's view

[StudentMI]

Apologies if this is the wrong subforum.

While reading today I came across this interesting passage in Centesimus annus.

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. At the root of the senseless destruction of the natural environment lies an anthropological error, which unfortunately is widespread in our day. 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.

http://www.vatican.va/content/john-...s/hf_jp-ii_enc_01051991_centesimus-annus.html

I have to say this throws into a new light, for me at least, Pope Francis’ remarks on the coronavirus. It’s not as unprecedented as it seemed. Just goes to show how reporting on the Pope is skewed.

 

[0Scarlett_nidiyilii]

If you’re greedy and want to hoard stuff, you’re not going to care about the impact on the Earth

 

[Genesis315]

You can see similar passage from Leo XIII below, which I had posted in the one of the original threads on the Pope’s remarks:

Leo XIII, Arcanum Divinae

From the beginning of the world, indeed, it was divinely ordained that things instituted by God and by nature should be proved by us to be the more profitable and salutary the more they remain unchanged in their full integrity. For God, the Maker of all things, well knowing what was good for the institution and preservation of each of His creatures, so ordered them by His will and mind that each might adequately attain the end for which it was made. If the rashness or the wickedness of human agency venture to change or disturb that order of things which has been constituted with fullest foresight, then the designs of infinite wisdom and usefulness begin either to be hurtful or cease to be profitable, partly because through the change undergone they have lost their power of benefiting, and partly because God chooses to inflict punishment on the pride and audacity of man.

Man has dominion over the earth and that proper order and can use it for his sustenance and well-being, but, as JPII puts, he acts contrary to that order when he sets himself up as a tyrant. Disorder naturally leads to further disorder.

What we need to avoid is ascribing agency to nature to “punish” us. Rather it is God and man alone (when delegated by God) with said agency. I also don’t think there has been any evidence (yet) that this virus is related to any global eco-issues like pollution, etc. It would be superstitious to say something like nature generated this virus to punish us for our eco-sins.