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Among the treasures of Augustine’s vast collection of sermons are thirteen sermons for Christmas Day. Each is short and punchy, intended to draw his congregation into the contemplation of the greatest of Christian mysteries: the Incarnation. God Almighty is born as a baby in Bethlehem. The infinite is dwindled down to finitude. The One beyond time has His first birthday. The boundless is wrapped in swaddling clothes. What is to us inconceivable was, in fact, conceived. The divine humility to which the Incarnation testifies is what most arrests Augustine about the mystery of Christmas.
Read MoreHumans have caused widespread loss of ecosystems and species. Many of us experience these impacts on a daily basis. There might be invasive insects in our garden, toxic algal blooms at our favorite lake, or plastics washing ashore on the beach. Damage to the beautiful places that we love can be painful. Some people are left feeling powerless and wondering what’s left of wild, undamaged nature.
A common argument is that the world is better off without us and that human use of ecosystems must be substantially reduced. Others are uncomfortable with a conclusion that diminishes humanity and limits access to its surrounding ecology, and have a sense that we are in some way special and bear explicit responsibility to look after the Earth. They consider whether caring for nature is something that we can do best by wise participation rather than retreat or exclusion.
Navigating this environmental dilemma is tough. Like other pressing social questions, the solution hinges on what a human being actually is, what the world is for, and even whether God has anything to do with it. In other words, environmental sustainability requires a correct model for the identity and role of the human person with regard to other elements of the natural world.
Society offers a range of options for this model. One spectrum that is often proposed emphasizes either an anthropocentric (human-focused) or ecocentric (ecology-focused) approach. The first option, taken to its furthest extreme, sets humans apart from the rest of nature as an ultimate authority without responsibility. The world becomes solely a pool of resources for humans, such that the components of nature can be freely exploited for our advantage. The opposing extreme absorbs humans into an ecosystem in which every living thing has equal significance, rights, and responsibilities. Plants and animals (including us) are reduced to nodes in the food web. Humans are no longer the reference point, any more than chipmunks or willow trees.
Dissatisfaction with these anthropological caricatures has led to the concept of ‘relationality’ in sustainability science. The turn to relationality introduces diverse (though sometimes ambiguous) social-ecological processes and interactions which allow for responsible human use of nature. Research on relationality often considers traditional practices such as farming and foraging that have long supported rural lifestyles in the United States. Of course, long before the U.S. became a nation, large areas of the apparently pristine wilderness first encountered by European colonists were already systematically used and managed by indigenous peoples.
Long-term sustainable use of nature can constitute environmental stewardship, in which people and their activities comprise integral parts of the ecosystem. Stewardship is realized through sustainable practices that are built around harvesting the goods of nature and oriented to ecological and human wellbeing. Such outdoor practices are characteristically ‘embodied.’ They involve theoretical learning but are expressed through muscle memory and labor—physical activity! It is this physical activity that enables us to ‘behold’ our environment, such that understanding of nature is indivisible from sensory engagement. This recognition implies what the British anthropologist, Tim Ingold, called “a world given in experience.”
The experiential notion of relationality is profoundly rendered in the overall idea of Catholic ‘integral ecology.’ Building on the groundwork laid by John Paul II in Centesimus annus, Pope Francis followed his saintly predecessor explaining that through an ‘integral ecology,’ Catholics cannot “claim that nature is a mere ‘setting’ in which we develop our lives and our projects.” Instead, “our body itself establishes us in a direct relationship with the environment and with other living beings,” such that “we are part of nature, included in it and thus in constant interaction with it.” The current Pope further emphasized that “this is not to put all living beings on the same level nor deprive human beings of their unique worth and the tremendous responsibility it entails.” In other words, humans are an integral part of nature, but also set apart to occupy a unique role in caring for the Earth.
This situated dynamic means that human activities are intrinsically linked to specific places and creatures. Ingold described this local connection in terms of ‘dwelling.’ He considered that our fields and forests can be interpreted as a ‘taskscape’ within which human practices repeated in place and time establish well-trodden pathways that exist in the land, but also in our memory and our culture. These enduring and meaningful patterns can be followed, interpreted, and structured through time. Think of an ancient village in Italy, where the food and the language, the architecture and the art seem to have grown organically from the surrounding hills and valleys.
Ingold explored the idea of dwelling using a 16th-century painting called The Harvesters. This image shows field hands at work, reaping and sheafing a luxuriant crop of wheat, while others pause to rest under a tree and eat a midday meal. We see the whole life cycle of bread, our most basic food, and its consumption ‘with companions’ (from the Latin cum (with) and panis (bread)). The Harvesters represents a moment in the taskscape, where the repeated human practices which follow the annual agricultural cycle peak in the fulfillment of gathering and eating nature’s bounty.
Ingold suggested that “rites, feasts, and ceremonies are themselves as integral to the taskscape as boundary markers such as walls and fences are to the landscape.” The idea is that complex outdoor practices like farming and fishing bring us into natural cycles. For example, the seasons tend to link themselves to our cultural practices such that times of sparsity (winter) are connected with fasting (Lent) and seasons of plenty (spring, fall) invoke times of feasting (Easter and Thanksgiving). Celebrations like Thanksgiving did not emerge as abstract ideas that were then imposed on nature. Rather, these feasts bubbled up out of a taskscape in which humans and their activities were inextricably tangled with fundamental aspects of how the world works.
God created the Earth, and He has written himself into it. Pope Francis highlighted that “the word ‘creation’ has a broader meaning than ‘nature,’ for it has to do with God’s loving plan in which every creature has its own value and significance.” When we care for the ecological processes in which we are embedded, we walk with our Creator through the highs and lows of the road to salvation.
The pro-life movement is at a crossroads. With the overturning of Roe, abortion policy is back in the hands of the people. As Americans approach their first presidential election with abortion shaping voter turnout, many are wondering what the future holds for the pro-life movement.
It could be tempting to be discouraged when you consider that seven states have already voted against pro-life measures. Eight more states feature abortion measures on their ballots, including Florida and Arizona. These may not go well either.
Yet there is reason to be hopeful amid a difficult political situation. Pro-life will not cease working to love and protect unborn children and their mothers. Its supporters are ardent in upholding the truth that all human life matters. In political defeat, the pro-life movement has opportunities to return to its fundamentals. If there are dark days, let’s embrace them as inviting fresh light.
Why does the pro-life movement care so much about the unborn? After all, an embryo doesn’t look like a person. It doesn’t have hopes and dreams. It might not even feel until several weeks into pregnancy. The unborn are radically dependent upon their mothers.
Pro-life intellectuals can logically explain why abortion is wrong from a secular perspective. They focus on the potential for the unborn to mature into rational, moral agents. If left to develop, the embryo will become a child, a teenager, an adult. But she remains the same unique individual from conception until death–a member of the human species. Since all agree it is wrong to intentionally take the life of an innocent person, it follows that it is wrong to take the life of the unborn.
This argument is much stronger than that offered by pro-abortion advocates. They are left arguing that not every human being is a person deserving of life. They attempt to find qualities or markers to distinguish humans worthy of life from those unworthy. Some argue for viability or birth, others for sensory perception or self-consciousness. No consensus exists because there is no objective basis besides conception for identifying the coming into existence of a new being.
For this reason, pro-abortion advocates now ignore this central issue altogether. They frame abortion in terms of healthcare access. They stonewall the question of when human life begins because no sound biological argument can be provided.
While pro-life arguments are stronger, they don’t move many hearts. Why? The reason is plain. For a woman, pregnancy, and her relationship with the child she carries, is experiential, not logical. While some pregnant women are moved by unfettered reason, most exercise their reason by the light of their hearts. In the case of an unplanned pregnancy, especially one that is further complicated by unsupportive partners, demanding work, or medical complications, the dominant emotion shaping her choices tends to be fear.
The pro-abortion movement capitalizes upon fear. A pregnant woman does not have much control over her body. Her future, and that of her child, are generally uncertain. She is frightened. The abortion option promises to alleviate this fear. She can control her biology. She need not be beholden to nature. She is an autonomous agent empowered to end this frightful situation.
What does the pro-life position offer as an antidote to fear? Something even more powerful: Divine love. This love strengthens and comforts us in our times of greatest need. It provides the grace to understand that, even in the face of the unknown, we do not walk alone. The pregnant woman and her child are, quite simply, loved. Pro-life champions love, not fear, and being, not having.
The wisdom of the Church provides many ways to share this profound message. Each newly created life offers an immediate way of entering a loving dialogue about the importance of life. Christians appreciate that all life is an act of divine creation. Moment to moment, our existence is possible because of God’s ongoing act of creation. Creation did not simply happen in the remote past; it is responsible for our immediate being. Life is profoundly dependent upon the Creator.
However much our culture celebrates autonomy, no one willed themselves into being. Through our parents, we all enter life pre-connected with others. We all live from conception until death within circumstances only partly of our choosing. The prevalent secular notion that we control our destiny is proven false daily with every frustration, every undeserved act of kindness, and ultimately, with our impending death. Our lack of volition in simply being suggests that life –existence—is pure gift, miraculously bestowed upon us.
What is its purpose? The abortion movement sells the idea that our purpose is whatever we wish it to be, playing upon the fantasy that we are the authors of our destiny. Most people know this isn’t how life works. At least, it is untrue of life’s most critical moments, which involve sickness, death, failure, loss…
Christians know we don’t invent life’s purposes. We discover them. Our primary purposes are inexorably connected to the reason why we were created in the first place, in the image and likeness of God. We were created in love to love. The call to love is deep within us, implanted there by our Creator. As revealed in the Gospel, we are called to love God and one another. Christ redeemed all of us because of unfathomable love.
Abortion rejects the gift of a human life created by God in love. It rejects the right of the unborn to simply be as they are. It reflects the profound inability, not only of a woman in fear, but of an entire people, to tap into reservoirs of love and trust. Abortion does not permit love. It does not recognize the great wisdom in trusting God’s providence in the face of the unknown.
How does the Christian vision map onto pragmatic public policy? Not easily. Laws are better suited to achieving justice than alleviating fear or instilling love.
Of course, abortion is a justice issue and, of course, pro-life rightly seeks legal measures to prevent the killing of the unborn. But most Christians properly want more than this. Their reasons for political engagement are deeper than seeking to advance justice. Most wish to love the mother and child as members of the human family, our sisters and brothers.
After this election cycle, the pro-life community will revisit its ends and reconsider its means. Before Dobbs, the movement simply wished to overturn the travesty of Roe hoping to return to pre-Roe policies. In a few states, this may still happen. Yet in the fifty years since Roe, American culture has changed more than the Court.
Dark days are nothing new for Christians; we will not despair. But pro-life has its work cut out. Our current challenge is to figure out how to share not just logic and justice, but divine light and love– with a culture that sorely needs it. Let’s do this with the love and faith we share in Christ.
Originally published in print October 2024 in The Wisdom Papers. The Wisdom Papers is a series of relevant reflections on contemporary conversations from the faculty of Ave Maria University.
Copyright © 2024 Ave Maria University. The opinions expressed herein are not necessarily the views of Ave Maria University. Permission to reprint in whole or in part is hereby granted provided the following attribution is included: “Reprinted from The Wisdom Papers, a publication of Ave Maria University.”
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