Environmentalism and intrinsic evil

What should we say about someone who, faced with the option of voting for a Nazi candidate, urges careful consideration of the pros and cons? “We should avoid violent anti-Semitism and such. But we also need to promote effective strategies for national stability and security through economic recovery. We face very difficult choices.” Hopefully we would not be impressed. Why? Because such a person fails to recognize that you cannot promote or cooperate with something that is intrinsically evil (violent anti-Semitism) in order to gain something that is good (economic recovery).

What should we say about someone who, faced with the option of voting for a Nazi candidate, urges careful consideration only of the pros? “The Nazis have an effective plan for restoring our ruined economy. It is very important that we get out and vote.” Such a person appears not to even care about the intrinsic evil being promoted by the Nazis. In this case, even more than in the first, anyone who has a well-formed conscience should be disgusted and angry in the face of such rhetoric.

The first case here is analogous to that of the CCCB’s shameful and useless “Election Guide” (http://www.cccb.ca/site/eng/).

The second is analogous to the agenda promoted by Development and Peace (https://www.devp.org/en).

The second also corresponds to the recent urging of our parish D&P rep to "get out and vote because we need change" (the clear implication for us being, for anyone with even the slightest mastery of logic: get rid of our incumbent pro-life Conservative candidate!). And the change that we need is what? The only issue she mentioned was what? Saving planet earth! To think that that is compatible with the gospel of Christ is gravely erroneous and surely betrays a malformed conscience.

Of course, I am aware of Pope Francis’s Laudato si, wherein he points out that the earth is our common home and that we must care for it and exercise responsible stewardship. These general points are true and indeed obvious, although it is not at all obvious, and certainly not within the authoritative competency of the pope as such, how best to go about actually exercising responsible stewardship (to insinuate otherwise is either grossly naïve or simply disingenuous). But to think that Laudato si constitutes an excuse for those who would completely ignore basic issues regarding intrinsically evil acts (abortion, contraception, euthanasia, violation of conscience, etc.), in order to promote highly debatable and tendentious prudential recommendations directed towards exercising responsible stewardship of the earth? Surely no one could seriously believe this!

It is not always possible or obligatory to do good (ponder well the words of St Paul: “created nature has been condemned to frustration”); but it is always possible and obligatory to refuse to do evil. In the words of Pope Saint John Paul II (Veritatis splendor, §52): “It is always possible that man, as the result of coercion or other circumstances, can be hindered from doing certain good actions; but he can never be hindered from not doing certain actions, especially if he is prepared to die rather than to do evil.”* And for those who want to ignore this, who want to promote good by ignoring and cooperating with intrinsic evil, consider directly the gospel of Christ: “What sorrow awaits the world, because it tempts people to sin. Temptations are inevitable, but what sorrow awaits the person who does the tempting.” Or another translation: “Woe to the world, for the hurt done to consciences! It must needs be that such hurt should come, but woe to the man through whom it comes!” (Matthew 18, 7)

*[This idea is powerfully evoked by Dostoevski in The Brothers Karamazov:  “Tell me yourself, I challenge your answer. Imagine that you are creating a fabric of human destiny with the object of making men happy in the end, giving them peace and rest at last [perhaps even saving Mother Earth!], but that it was essential and inevitable to torture to death only one tiny creature – that little child beating its breast with its fist, for instance – and to found that edifice on its unavenged tears, would you consent to be the architect on those conditions? Tell me, and tell the truth.”]

So go ahead and consider Laudato si; or, if you like, consider this synod intervention of Archbishop Gomez of Los Angeles: “I believe that the church must present a new evangelical catechesis on creation, as an essential element of the new evangelization. We must proclaim the beauty of God's plan of love for creation, for the human person, and for the human family. Our new evangelization must proclaim an integral human ecology that reveals the nature, vocation and theology of the human person as created by God.” Would such statements in any way suggest that we may now ignore and cooperate with intrinsic evil, in order to promote this ‘integral human ecology’? Of course not! That would be an absurd suggestion. Any Catholic with a well-formed conscience must clearly understand that an integral, indeed the most fundamental, part of any authentic ‘integral human ecology’ must be the recognition of the intrinsic dignity and inviolability of all innocent human life, from conception until natural death. To promote more recycling and energy-efficient practices at the expense of ignoring this fundamental imperative is unconscionable. It is utterly incompatible with both the natural law and with the gospel of Christ, the revelation handed down through the apostles, the deposit of faith.

Any Catholic who thinks to appeal to Pope Francis to justify some other view should ponder this: “The Holy Spirit was not promised to the successors of Peter in order that, by his revelation, they might disclose new teachings, but so that, by His assistance, they might devoutly guard the revelation handed down from the apostles, the deposit of faith, and might faithfully set it forth” (from the Decrees of the First Vatican Council). In the words of St Paul: “Friends, though it were we ourselves [the apostle Paul himself!], though it were an angel from heaven that should preach to you a gospel other than the gospel we preached to you, a curse upon him! I repeat now the warning we gave you before it happened, if anyone preaches to you what is contrary to the tradition you received, a curse upon him!” These are strong words, but the Church and the world urgently need clarity here: in promoting some project that we think is good, we are not permitted to promote, cooperate in, or ignore intrinsic evil.