Comments for Totalitarian Ecology at http://www.thecatholicthing.org , comment 1 to 12 out of 12 comments http://www.thecatholicthing.org Sat, 25 May 2013 05:27:16 +0100 FeedCreator 1.7.3 http://www.thecatholicthing.org/columns/2012/totalitarian-ecology.html#comment-10592 I read many environmental stories on liberal websites. Not one has promoted enslaving humans for Gaia. Not one. Rather, they speak of preserving and conserving the planet for future generations. Furthermore, the Church has been accused of saying throughout history that humanism must go. - Brian A. Cook Tue, 27 Mar 2012 07:14:02 +0100 http://www.thecatholicthing.org/columns/2012/totalitarian-ecology.html#comment-10546 I'm suddenly surprised - I don't really have any religion myself - but I am surprised by this feeling. Schall is saying, "Yes, the Earth is worth saving, but not if it means that we exchange the things that make us human." I can't get this through to any of my secular minded friends - I frankly don't want to save the world if it means that I am a servant to other men. I sound like a crank to them but I think it is true. - Leonard Sat, 24 Mar 2012 14:22:15 +0100 http://www.thecatholicthing.org/columns/2012/totalitarian-ecology.html#comment-10471 Hello calling all Catholics-Totalitarian Ecology is the result of you Judas "Catholics" tolerating/supporting environmental paganism. God gave us dominion over the fruits of the earth. OF COURSE, God's gift of common sense tells us that means responsible dominion[stewards if it makes you "feel" better] over the earth. The lock down of our American natural oil and gas reserves caused by the environmental pagans is bankrupting America and is a mortal sin. You Kennedy "Catholics" better sober up before we are locked up like our natural resources. Think logically where this is going. That treasonous catholic Joe Biden telling the Chinese he is not second guessing their mandatory abortion policy. This is our V.P. speaking. Can you believe this ? You get one more chance in Nov.2012 including you scribes and pharises aka the Conference of Catholic Bishops. Christi Fidelis. - TtT Engine Wed, 21 Mar 2012 21:05:26 +0100 http://www.thecatholicthing.org/columns/2012/totalitarian-ecology.html#comment-10465 I find the "Sustainability" movement not all that interesting. Yes, big farms were created, possibly due to concerns for the "population bomb". Yes, we have some excess, some of it is used to send to Africa and North Korea - even Russia during 1989-90 (Bush Chicken Legs). Ever been to H-Mart Korean/Asian grocery? There is lots of excess...There are a few billion Chinese. So now the trend is to scale down, smaller but more farms. I see some benefit to it...but I hope it can sustain the world's population and not just fancy, one-syllable, restaurants. - Stanley Wed, 21 Mar 2012 10:16:40 +0100 http://www.thecatholicthing.org/columns/2012/totalitarian-ecology.html#comment-10455 "The earth is reeling from the combined effects of nearly 8 billion" - no, the earth is reeling from the combined effects of totalitarians (plutocrats, communists, islamists). Who are misdirecting our gaze to population, all the while denying the obvious starvation and genocidal effects of their own ideologies. The rising tide of free markets, combined with a special safeguarding of the natural family, would lift all boats. The family is the unit of sustainability which needs to be valued. Not feminism, familism. Not collectivism, or individualism, but familism. An ideology we can support. And yes, farming on a smaller scale. Grow your own vegetables, grown your own kids. Work with them, together, in the garden so they'll learn and farm better than you as adults. Let Granny help there, too (she grew a victory garden!) Farm families, farm familism. Kin in der garden. Better than kindergarten. - Sue Tue, 20 Mar 2012 17:51:03 +0100 http://www.thecatholicthing.org/columns/2012/totalitarian-ecology.html#comment-10454 Hear, hear, Dr. Esolen. The Omnivore's Dilemma speaks to this point most forcefully: what is the justification for feeding livestock foodstuffs they weren't created to ingest, in feedlots that are just about concentration camps, stuffing them with antibiotics, growth hormones, and who knows what else to "turn them around to market" as quickly as possible? There is a second point to be made here, and that is that everything about sustainability isn't bad (though I have written that what I read chills me, and it does). Think back to the origins of feminism: women were right about male chauvinist pigs, but they had the wrong wrong wrong solution. A more diversified farm closer to where the food is consumed is a good start; and more respect for the animals is right. Man as lord of the earth is its steward, and the earth and its goods -- living and otherwise -- are not his chattel property. - Dave Tue, 20 Mar 2012 16:31:51 +0100 http://www.thecatholicthing.org/columns/2012/totalitarian-ecology.html#comment-10453 It is high time for the return of the virtues of modesty and continence, so as to allow other creatures to dwell with us in this world. We needn't treat animals as if they were human; but we should treat them with the respect they deserve as animals. That would imply a revolution in our farming and eating. - Tony Esolen Tue, 20 Mar 2012 12:35:39 +0100 http://www.thecatholicthing.org/columns/2012/totalitarian-ecology.html#comment-10452 I hear a lot about sustainability in my line of work, and whenever I research the topic I find myself chilled. Right now we have the HHS mandate, from which the Administration has no plans of backing down. Next step is restriction of medical care to the elderly, on the grounds of no reasonable expectation of quality of life and of costs savings obtained by eliminating care for the incurables (with euthanasia, even presumedly desired, not far after that). After that the trajectory points to limits in the number of children, through the removal of exemptions for children above a certain number, fines, mandated usage of birth control devices, poisons and technologies etc. The only political hope is, I think, a long-shot: control of the Legislature and the White House by elected officials who will stop the clock on Obamacare. I don't know what the likelihood of that scenario is and I think we all need to refrain from wishful thinking: such a change would come about only through a lot of prayer, hard work, sacrifice -- and good luck. Even were it to come about, the dictatorship of relativism would consider the loss a temporary set-back and begin rebuilding the coalitions to re-win the majorities and try it again. The dictatorship of relativism does not rest, and the younger generations seem ever firmer in its grips, it appears to me (I would welcome the news that this perception is wrong). And so I think this puts us back to Ratzinger's famous words of 1969, where he envisioned a much smaller Church. We may be driven underground. We may see two Churches, one that is aligned with secular realities and takes its cues from E. J. Dionne, tenured professors at erstwhile Catholic universities and their like, and one that is faithful to the Holy Father and to the bishops in communion with him. Benson's The Lord of the World, a sobering book if ever there was one, comes immediately to mind. How we need to rediscover beauty, goodness and truth! How we need to rediscover the present power of God to save us in the actual circumstances of our lives, to grant us newness of life and strength of hope for whatever comes our way. How we need reminders to expect the unexpected, and that as long as there is life, there is hope; and there is eternal hope where there is eternal life. God is looking for men and women who want to be saints. St. Josemaria Escriva, the Founder of Opus Dei, wrote that world crises are crises of saints -- and by that he meant, too few of them. So I think at the end of the day the best thing we can do for achieving the changes in the world that we seek and for preserving hope and the certain expectation of life everlasting is to double down on our commitments to live sanctity come what may: no truck with sin, no truck with compromise. A small band of twelve has led two millenia later to a Church with a billion members. A small band here in the United States may lead to the rebirth of a youthful, vigorous Church capable of transmitting life, holiness, salvation and peace. May we be equal to the tasks before us. - Dave Tue, 20 Mar 2012 12:11:33 +0100 http://www.thecatholicthing.org/columns/2012/totalitarian-ecology.html#comment-10451 Believe that a good case could be made for the fact that the more people we have on earth, the better the average is. - George Wunderlick OCDS Tue, 20 Mar 2012 11:45:17 +0100 http://www.thecatholicthing.org/columns/2012/totalitarian-ecology.html#comment-10448 Excellent article, Father, but please don't leave out the Catholic(?) contribution to this present situation. After all it was Fr. "Ted" Hesburgh, then president of Notre Dame Univ., who arranged for John D. Rockefeller to meet Paul VI to discuss changing the Church's teaching on contraception. It was also N.D. who invited Gov. Mario Cuomo to speak in 1984 on the subject of the "Catholic" position on abortion "I am personally opposed, but...". We are learning once again with the HHS brouhaha that the Church really, really, really does oppose contraception, a subject which quietly died decades ago. If the Lefebvrites didn't exist we would have to create them. Thank you, Father, for your scholarship. - Manfred Tue, 20 Mar 2012 10:13:10 +0100 http://www.thecatholicthing.org/columns/2012/totalitarian-ecology.html#comment-10441 Keats put it so succinctly: 'Beauty is truth, truth beauty,—that is all Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.' - Grump Tue, 20 Mar 2012 05:37:10 +0100 http://www.thecatholicthing.org/columns/2012/totalitarian-ecology.html#comment-10440 I agree with the article's appraisal of some of the most radical within the environmental movement. Yet on the whole, the modern (and, indeed, post-modern) recognition of man's complete dependency upon the environment, as well as a deepened respect and understanding for his impact upon the world, has moved many - Christians and others - to re-analyze the meaning of stewardship. The environment is not meant to be "for" us in a sense that denies, trumps, or overthrows the way it is also "for" all other living creatures. The very interdependency of all creatures on each others' health and well-being suggests a re-alignment of priorities and a genuine focus on harnessing the human intellect to minimize our impact on the environment - including voluntary means of reducing the growth of the population and voluntary self-denial and sacrifice in order to reduce the goods consumed by each member. One of the failures of earlier "doomsday" concerns regarding growing population is that it assumed a linear growth in resources and an exponential growth of population. We have shown that the intellect has a dazzling ability to discover and refine sources of energy; yet each of these methods represents an exploitation of the environment, a sapping of the whole that has global consequences that we are only now beginning to understand. While we may applaud our own genius, these activities have had a direct, global result: the Holocene extinction event is undoubtedly connected to the activities of mankind. We know that other animals can overpopulate regions; it is the same for humanity who, despite whatever religious epithets we attribute to him, is still an animal subject to the same laws and plights as the other animals. I believe only the most radical call for the clearly unethical approach of "killing off" some of the humans; for the rest, we have the far more sane approach of limiting the number of children we have in order to slow the population growth. The earth is reeling from the combined effects of nearly 8 billion; what will be its state when we reach 16 billion? 24 billion? - Scotty Ellis Tue, 20 Mar 2012 02:57:55 +0100