Home
/
RELIGION & LIBERTY ONLINE
/
Is Catholicism green?
Is Catholicism green?
May 6, 2025 3:31 AM

Over at Planet Gore, I responded to Catholic layperson named Mary Colwell who seems to have her theological priorities out of whack:

plains that the Catholics are not consistently green, and hopes things will improve. She speaks as a Catholic, but I wonder where she’s getting her theology. She tells readers: “What is the true nature of our relationship with the earth? Get this right and everything else will begin to fall into place.” That’s the Green Gospel speaking. Jesus didn’t give the relationship between human beings and the Earth pride of place. He said that the first and mandment is to love God, and the second is to love our neighbor as ourself. Everything follows from that. Christians of all stripes should take seriously our stewardship of the Earth. But our relationship to the Earth is not the first principle from which everything else follows.

Comments
Welcome to mreligion comments! Please keep conversations courteous and on-topic. To fosterproductive and respectful conversations, you may see comments from our Community Managers.
Sign up to post
Sort by
Show More Comments
RELIGION & LIBERTY ONLINE
Black Friday and the Moral Goodness of the Market Economy
“The real question is not does morality inform the market,” says Rev. Gregory Jensen in the second entry of this week’s Acton Commentary, “but whose morality informs the market.” Consumer disapproval of Black Friday has caused a drop in demand. Consequently, retailers have curtailed their investment in these kinds of sale events. If economics is agnostic as to what motivates the change in demand, as a Christian I can’t be. Retailers are responding to the moral cues of shoppers and...
How a College Is Partnering with Churches to Boost Employment for the Disabled
Contrary to popularperceptions, people with disabilities are equipped with unique skills and creative capacity, giving them a powerful role to play in the world economy, whether as restauranteurs, goldsmiths, warehouse workers, marine biologists, car washers, or Costco employees. Unfortunately, those gifts are not always recognized by the marketplace. According to the U.S. Department of Labor, the unemployment rate for those with disabilities is more than doublethe average for thosewithout. Thankfully, that blind spot is slowly being revealed, whether by forward-thinking...
Should Faith-Based Refugee Resettlement Groups Be Debt Collectors?
Over the past few months there has been a lot of discussion about refugees and resettlement. But not much is said about the logistical problems the refugees have to e. For example, how exactly do they get to the United States? The answer is that they have to travel—and thatcosts money. For those who can’t afford to cover the cost themselves, the U.S. government issues interest-free loans through the U.S. Refugee Resettlement Program. The loan repayments are due every month,...
Why the ‘Proto-Communism’ of Early Christians Doesn’t Work for Modern Society
“There are solid grounds for believing that the first Christian believers practiced a form munism and usufruct [i.e., the right to enjoy the use and advantages of another’s property short of the destruction or waste of its substance],” wrote Peter Marshall in Demanding the Impossible: A History of Anarchism. As evidence Marshall cites the second chapter of the book of Acts: And all who believed were together and had all things mon. And they were selling their possessions and belongings...
5 Facts About Black Friday
Today is the unofficial first day of the holiday shopping season. Here are five facts you should know about “Black Friday.” 1. The term “Black Friday” was coined by the Philadelphia Police Department’s traffic squad in the 1950s. According to Philadelphia newspaper reporter Joseph P. Barrett, “It was the day that Santa Claus took his chair in the department stores and every kid in the city wanted to see him. It was the first day of the Christmas shopping season.”...
The Perversion of the Establishment Clause
“Nothing in the Constitution has been so judicially perverted from its original intent as the establishment clause,” says Zack Pruitt in the first entry of this week’s Acton Commentary. “The same clause went from protecting the people from a tyrannical state-run church to punishing those who dare to voluntarily pray on government property.” A football coach in Washington was recently suspended from his duties because he made a habit of praying at midfield following games. Players or students were never...
Nuns Pose as Prostitutes to Fight Sex Trafficking
It sounds like the plot of a Hollywood production: Nuns dressing up as prostitutes to infiltrate brothels and rescue woman and children from sexual abuse. But the organization of religious sisters called Talitha Kum, which translated from Aramaic means “arise child” (Mark 5:41), is real—and they’re expanding across the globe. Talitha Kum, also known as the International Network of Consecrated Life Against Trafficking in Persons, is a network within the International Union of Superiors General which originates from a project...
IRS Back-Door Enforcer of Shareholder Activists’ Agenda
I’m not entirely sure, but it seems a safe bet that Chicago bluesman Willie Dixon wasn’t referring to the Internal Revenue Service when he wrote his classic “Back Door Man.” But, as it turns out, the IRS is serving as a convenient back-door resource for the progressive movement to name and shame donors to causes and organizations opposed by leftist shareholder activists. The IRS is proposing rules that will grant nonprofit organizations the option of disclosing donors of $250 or...
Video: Marina Nemat on Finding Faith in an Iranian Prison
On November 19, the Acton Institute was pleased to e Marina Nemat to the Mark Murray Auditorium as part of the 2015 Acton Lecture Series. Marina was born in 1965 in Tehran, Iran, in what was at the time a relatively secular and free nation. (Granted, she lived under the dictatorship of Mohammad RezaPahlavi – the Shah of Iran – but as we were reminded a couple of weeks ago by Jay Nordlinger, when es to dictators you have to...
How We Tax the Poor
Imagine you’re a single mom with one child who receives $19,300 a year in government benefits. A local business offers to hire you full-time at an hourly rate of $15 an hour. At 2,000 hours a year (40 hours for 50 weeks) you would earn $30,000. Should you take the job or stay on the government dole? The additional $10,700 a year certainly sounds enticing. But because you would lose your benefits and have to pay taxes, your disposable e...
Related Classification
Copyright 2023-2025 - www.mreligion.com All Rights Reserved