Last week, Pope Leo celebrated a Holy Mass for the Care of Creation at the Laudato si’ Center at Castel Gandolfo; for those wishing to reflect upon the texts from the Mass, a Latin original from the Vatican website with comprehensive chapter-and-verse Scriptural references for the readings and antiphons (thank you, Crisis Magazine) combines well with the English translations of the Collect, the Prayer over the Offerings, and the Prayer after Communion posted on Facebook by Fr. James Martin (thank you, Father). Anyone wishing to examine the texts on their own merit should feel free to scroll to the bottom of this piece, where I have reproduced them in a single, convenient form.

Anyone proceeding along with me, however, should brace themselves for a welter of perspectives. Fr. Raymond de Souza at the National Catholic Register, while having little to say about the Mass for the Care of Creation or about care for creation itself, saw in it an occasion to define the word “formulary” and its application in Catholic liturgy at length and with great precision. Teresa Berger at PrayTellBlog and and Daniel Horan at the National Catholic Reporter express varying degrees of respectful disappointment at the limited scope of the texts, the omission of certain powerful Scriptural passages references to creation’s prayer to God (Berger cites, as examples. Psalm 148 and Daniel 3, 52-90), and especially at the tacit “anthropocentrism” of the texts over and against what Horan characterizes as the “more-than-human world” – by which he does not mean the preternatural or supernatural realm, but the natural order taken as something other than a human monopoly or hegemony. By setting humanity apart from creation, the texts, they find, present insufficient challenge to the paradigm of exploitation that has informed so much of human “dominion” over creation, brought about critical environmental crisis, and cries out for repentance and conversion.

In contrast, John Grondelski at Crisis Magazine represents the Mass for the Care of Creation as “balanced,” avoiding “two extremes: the Scylla of secular environmentalism and the Charybdis of disregard for the inherent good of the temporal world.” On one level, he seeks to justify his critique to secular environmentalism on the basis that humanity’s Biblical status of dominion over nature should not be contradicted by an impulse to treat “the ‘world’ and man [as] at least co-equal partners.”

However, he also directly characterizes “creation [as] a tool for human good” – and while he claims Biblical authority, for this latter statement, it has flawed metaphysical implications. While creation can serve “human good,” and indeed, presuming an appropriate understanding of the good of humanity, should do so, creation is not per se “a tool” for anything; it is an act of God, sharing His goodness and showing forth His glory. In that way, Berger’s citations of Psalm 148 and Daniel 3 are deeper and more apt expressions of the meaning of creation before its Creator.

Meanwhile, in defending “the inherent good of the temporal world,” Grondelski warns against a kind of supernaturalism that renders the natural order irrelevant, except as a sort of “Aberdeen Proving Ground” (his words) for eternity… which, as far as it goes, is all well and good; the type of supernaturalism that treated earthly life as a performative audition, designed to win Divine favor, has in past ages alienated Christians from the rest of humankind and fostered a suspicious, even adversarial, way of relating to God. Yet such Jansenistic notions are virtually extinct in our time; even raising this issue mainly serves, wittingly or unwittingly, as a cover for recasting the entire issue of the human role in creation quite differently from the original intent of the Mass texts or, for that matter, of Laudato si’ itself.[1]

It is also worth noting that, extrapolating from Grondelski’s other writings, his vision of the human engagement with the created order would seem to focus on reconfiguring civil society in accord with the practices of historic Christendom, especially as regards morality. For my part, given the past record of civic Christianity, the many crimes and atrocities committed in the name of and all too often by the agency of the Church (and, worse, in the name of Christ), I am inclined to circumspection as to the usefulness of worldly power toward the improvement of morals.

Another point: Grondelski rightly cites the term “co-creation” (Berger and Horan do not), but in doing so describes the original Divine creation as “an IKEA world – assembly required.”[2] Such a vision not only portrays the natural order as essentially unformed and incomplete, but also renders God himself as being at once micro-managerially dictatorial and maddeningly helpless – something like a Renaissance prince, providing raw materials and resources for artistry, which in turn must conform to his taste in every detail. A sounder analogy to co-creation would be a wise father who guides his offspring in assuming responsibility for a heritage which remains his own and has a distinct nature, character and identity of its own – in human terms, perhaps something like a farm or a business. Such a father would not micromanage the process; indeed, in a sense the whole point of what he is doing is that, through taking on this heritage, his children might learn and grow through the exercise of their freedom and creativity. He would, however, definitely expect them to honor and respect what he had placed in their hands, that it might thrive under their management and protection. What we in fact see in the world today, and have seen for many years, has a markedly different character. As Pope St. John Paul wrote in Centesimus Annus, 37:

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… 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.

Nature, which glorifies God by being and has neither will nor capacity to rebel against God, rises up against us when we violate the God-given order of being. I would suggest that the historical proximity of the Industrial Revolution to the Enlightenment should not be presumed to be coincidental.

It would have seemed, not only reasonable and biblically well-grounded, but even a certain arguable pushback against the apparent egalitarianism of Berger and Horan, for Grondelski to have characterized humankind as the “steward of creation.” Yet rather than doing so, he chose the unusual word “fiduciary” – as if the model for the human disposal over creation were the Parable of the Talents in Matthew 25:14-30, and God were expecting some type of value-added return on the universe. Here, Grondelski’s deity seems less Renaissance prince than venture capitalist, the angel investor above all the angels who bankrolls the human venture.

But that is clearly not how God sees himself, or us. No, once more God is a father, who does not give us the universe in the way he gives us life; God does not expect us to make a return on the universe, as we should and must on our own lives. Rather, we must be stewards – a better parallel would be the model of care and labor versus exploitation and abuse found in Luke 12:42-48 or Matthew 24:45-51.

For this is how humans are stewards of creation, set off from the rest of creation. We are – necessarily, by our gifts, by our nature, in a way that is evident even to the unbeliever – set off by our being, out of all material creation, uniquely capable of conscious, willed application of thought and action to the terrestrial ecosystem and to the cosmos as a whole, for good or for ill[3]. Far from being a license to exercise power or even a mandate to “improve” on God’s work, our stewardship is a responsibility – a relationship of care, ordered first to the universal destination of goods, but beyond that to the glory of the Father, to whom the Head of our race shall in the end present all things, so that God may be all in all.

And this is where the true Pole Star lies – in a Care for Creation that is neither anthropocentric, nor geocentric, nor cosmocentric, but theocentric. The call to repentance that Berger issues is more than legitimate – though it is related, rather than identical, to the ecological catastrophe that we face. Our sin is not in the fact that we have harmed creation, but rather that we are knowingly choosing and continuing to choose to harm creation in a way that is irreparable by our current capacities, in preference to exercising the self-control, self-denial, and spirit of Gospel simplicity that would befit servants who have been entrusted on loan with the treasure of a life-bearing world. Even natural reason and prudence would dictate that we rouse ourselves and reform our ways lest we be cut off (or worse), like the faithless slave in Matthew and Luke who, thinking the master far off, chooses a path of abuse and exploitation over the ways of care and service.

[1] And, indeed, papal pronouncements going back at least to St. Paul VI in Octogesima Adveniens, 21 – one year before the Club of Rome published The Limits to Growth.

[2] I found myself reminded of the last (published) words of the murdered satirist Charb (Stéphane Charbonnier, editor of Charlie Hebdo): “The problem is not the Koran or the Bible, which are soporific, inconsistent and poorly written novels. [The problem is with] the believers who read the Koran or the Bible as we read the instruction manual on how to assemble an Ikea shelf.” Charb’s take on the Bible (and the Koran) was inadequate, to say the least; however, it is truer to the material (and holier) to read sacred texts as literature, than as fundamentalistic instruction manuals – after all, the rise of fundamentalism across creeds amounted to little more than the application of an individualist, materialist, and literalist post-Enlightenment mindset to sacred texts.

[3] While there is a mystical sense in which all creatures, especially those capable of suffering, can participate in the drama of the groaning of creation proclaimed by St. Paul, the material and practical disposal of the natural order falls, of all creatures, on humankind alone.

Image: Vatican news

____________________________________________________________________________________________

Formulary for the Holy Mass for the Care of Creation:

INTROIT

Psalm 19, 2: The heavens declare the glory of God; the firmament proclaims the works of his hands.

COLLECT

Father, who in Christ, the firstborn of all creation, have called all things into existence, grant, we beseech you, that, docile to the breath of your Spirit of life, we may guard the works of your hands in charity. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, who lives and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God for ever and ever. Amen.

FIRST READING

Wisdom 13, 1-9

PSALM

Psalm 19, 2-3, 4-5        or         Psalm 104, 1-2a; 5-6; 10,12; 24, 35c

SECOND READING

Colossians 1, 15-20

GOSPEL ANTIPHON

Psalm 104, 24              or         1 Chronicles 29, 11d, 12b

GOSPEL

Matthew 6, 24-34        or         Matthew 8, 23-27

PRAYER OVER THE OFFERINGS

Receive, Father, these fruits of the earth and of our hands: perfect in them the work of your creation
so that, transformed by the Holy Spirit, they may become for us food and drink of eternal life. Through Christ our Lord.

COMMUNION ANTIPHON

Psalm 98, 3: All the ends of the earth have seen the victory of our God.

PRAYER AFTER COMMUNION

May the sacrament of unity we have received, O Father, increase communion with you and with our brothers and sisters, so that, while we await the new heavens and the new earth, we may learn to live in harmony with all creatures. We ask this through Christ our Lord.