Transpositional Theology: On Promotion of a Theocentric Ecological Consciousness: Environmental Activism as a Facilitation of Divine Worship

On Promotion of a Theocentric Ecological Consciousness

Environmental Activism as a Facilitation of Divine Worship

Introduction

The Interface of Sacred Ritual: Primordial Sacraments Two and Three

The Three Primordial sacraments and Ecology
Bodies and Space/Time: Sacramental Receptors and Sacramental Matrix
Postlapsarian Crutch: Confluential and Auxiliary Sacral Matter

The Current Condition of Sacramental Matter: Necessity, Accessibility, and Threat

A Balanced or Evolving system (cosmogenesis)?
The Environmental Threat and Our Narrative Appropriation
Theocentric Ecological Consciousness: Teleology and Technology

Protection of The Environment as Protection of Sacramental Matter

The Scope of a Theocentric Ecological Consciousness
A Prioritizing of Society by What is Fundamentally Necessary

Conclusion

Introduction

At one point an article was posted online concerning Pope Francis’ concern for the environment. As usual, the comment feed is where one can get a measure on the popular and infamous opinion on any new article. There immediately appeared a regular anti-Francis troll who simply stated, “Remember folks, using your air conditioning is now a mortal sin” followed by a string of laugh emojis. This is not a comment worth responding to, but I did sit with it for a few minutes. My critique would run thusly, why shouldn’t we use our air conditioner? It’s our property, it makes us feel good, it doesn’t hurt anyone. It seems like the pope just wants people to be miserable and not enjoy life. Now, take that critique, replace “air conditioning” with “sex” and replace “property” with “body” and one begins to see how easy it is to be infected by secular morality. The reasoning is exactly the same. To realize this is to realize how hard it would be for someone who held these views of sex to listen to the magisterial authority. They are so invested in a worldview that it becomes extremely hard to listen to so sound evidence. But when the Pope speaks, as he did in his encyclical Laudato Si, it is worth listening at least.

The purpose of this treatise is to formulate an approach to the environment that is centered on a sacramental cosmology in order to eschew the opinion that ecological concern is somehow a secular corruption of Catholic teaching. The end result should demonstrate a need to care for and regard our environment in exactly the ways that Pope Francis calls for in Laudato Si concerning our current ecological crisis.

In the first section, we will lay the groundwork for the importance of a theocentric ecological consciousness. We will remind the reader of the sacramental nature of the cosmos by illustrating the three primordial sacraments; Christ, the cosmos, and marriage and a review of sacral matter. We will proceed to discuss sacred spaces or “temples”, delineating four types ending with the cosmic temple (creation). Lastly, we will discuss sacral matter under three varieties, receptive, confluential, and auxiliary. We will relate the importance of the preservation and availability of sacramental material in order to properly worship God.

In the second section we will relate our current environmental problem and garner a general vision of how to proceed by analyzing our understanding of how we approach our environment as evolving and vulnerable. We will link this vulnerability to the vulnerability of our fellow humans especially noting the relationship between urban and rural humanity aiming at a synthesis of these two lifestyles. We will close this section with a meditation on how Israel views technology and from that derived our general guideline for environmental engagement concerning technology.

In the last section, we will seek to create general guidelines for applying a theocentric ecological consciousness to society. We will note that our problem was a concupiscent disordering of our value in society by prioritizing efficiency and a deified market above the sacral matter of creation. We will note that with a theocentric ecological consciousness the gift of personal property will intuitively come with the responsibility to use it appropriately. The lens through which society should operate is preservation, availability, and engagement of sacral matter. Such sacral material includes receptive sacral matter (people) as well as confluential and auxiliary sacral matter, (everything else).

The Interface of Sacred Ritual and the Second Primordial Sacrament

In this first section, we will lay the groundwork for the importance of a theocentric ecological consciousness. In the second section, we will relate our current environmental problem and garner a general vision of how to proceed by analyzing our understanding of how we approach our environment as evolving and vulnerable. In the last section, we will seek to create general guidelines for applying a theocentric ecological consciousness to society.

The Three Primordial sacraments and Ecology

The more “traditionally minded” Catholic often has discomfort with Francis’ issuing of the Encyclical Laudato Si. The feeling is that it is an unprecedented innovation in doctrine that has no previous grounding and therefore smacks of “new revelation” asserted by fiat from the chair of Peter, which is impossible. There is a further feeling that this teaching on environment is coming from the secular world and “infecting” Catholic doctrine and that it is unconnected with anything fundamental to the Church. This feeds a narrative of a church corrupted by “modernism” and “secularism”.

Technically an environmental agenda would appear to be “secular” in that it focuses on this world. But if that is the angle, then a sacramental cosmology is also a “secular” cosmology. Concerning “new teaching” the development of a teaching that addresses a new concern is not a new “teaching” it is a new application of old teaching, such as one may need for use of nuclear weapons or industries of abortion and artificial birth control. New circumstances call for new application and the global environmental situation is new at least in that it is now recordable, whereas before it was not. It is also new in that our technologies and their global impact seem to have created a new situation. But the teaching itself is not new, it is developed out of the deeply held and foundational convictions of ancient Christianity. The issue of care for the environment is so foundational to salvation history that it reaches back through Israel and all the way to the Garden of Eden, where it is seen as the primary job of Adam.

Thus, we begin our discussion of theocentric ecological consciousness with contemplation of Paradise and the prelapsarian condition. First, we can take a look at Paradise before the fall and understand it as a sacramental relationship where there is no mediation by ritual or revelation of God’s self communion and communion with humans because the physical world is perfectly understood as the revelation itself. In that environment development of skills for the three tiered integration of the self were unnecessary because the integration was intuitively and naturally present. There was a communion between God and humanity, between the individual humans and between the humans and their environment. In the prelapsarian context, there is a complete intuitive understanding of how the physical world is a matrix for the spiritual world as an effective sign of the invisible. So much so that any present distinction between visible and invisible we make may be indicative of the alienation of postlapsarian reality. Such a distinction would not sense when sacramental cosmology is integral to one’s being.

The treatise, Sacramental Cosmology, discussed how creation itself is the second of three primordial sacraments and human marriage is the third.

Which leads to primordial sacrament number two, creation is the primordial sacrament. Again creation is the communication system set up to convey a good relationship within itself and extend love between God and humans. Therefore the creation itself is an outward sign, instituted by Christ (being made by the Word of God) to convey grace. The whole process of creation is an outpouring of God’s love that is to also a means by which to be drawn into God’s love. The absoluteness of these statements cannot be over exaggerated. One must approach the world with a multivalent epistemology and a coherence model of truth as primary to a correspondence understanding. . . Every facet of creation is able to be a communication between ourselves and God.

One of our purposes in this treatise is to explore how this worldview should shape our disposition and action concerning our current ecological situation. In Sacramental Cosmology, we also spoke of human relationships as well, summed up in the relationship of marriage.

The Humans created in this communication system are made as the part of that creation that receives, processes and cooperates with that grace in order to be drawn into the loving relationships. This leads to primordial sacrament number three. The idea of marriage as the primordial sacrament harkens back to the first story of creation where God explicitly states that he will create human beings in his image and likeness and then creates the man and woman at the same time (the first marriage). It is often noted that the image and likeness of God is borne by every individual. Yet, our creation as man and woman together in the first creation story, with the explicit purpose of creating them in his image and likeness has something important to say about the image and likeness of God. It speaks of the trinitarian abidance of love and how human love is a reflection of that. Effective married life is a living icon of the trinity when sacramentally charged. The two bodies are the outward sign, they are the matter. The loving relationship, caught up in divine love, is the conveyance of grace, it is the form.

Paradise sets a near impossible standard for perfection given our current situation.

Pope Francis reminds us in Laudato Si “the harmony between the Creator, humanity, and creation as a whole was disrupted by our presuming to take the place of God and refusing to acknowledge our creaturely limitations. This, in turn, distorted our mandate to “have dominion” over the earth (cf. Gen 1:28), to “till it and keep it” (Gen 2:15). As a result, the originally harmonious relationship between human beings and nature became conflictual (cf. Gen 3:17-19).” As Pope Francis indicates, with The Fall the tilling of the soil became work in the most odious sense and the dominion became perceived to be an exploitative relationship instead of one of service according to a true Christian power dynamic. As sin continued Cain was further banished from the land as a wanderer. Most of the contemplation of how to “fix” postlapsarian problems revolve around fixing the relationship with God and relationship with our neighbor. Very rarely does the focus end up with how we relate to the physical world, especially concerning how we interact with our environment to its detriment. But in the first creation story, humans are only given two commands, procreate, and care for the earth. It is so fundamental that it is the original and only purpose of Adam in the second creation as “original man” (as Pope Saint John Paul II calls him). It is not until the story develops further that he would need to procreate.

Once humanity enters postlapsarian reality there is a need to reorient to the land. The first way we are reminded that we do have responsibilities to the land is God’s levitical reminder that the land belongs to God. “The land shall not be sold irrevocably; for the land is mine, and you are but resident aliens and under my authority.” This law along with a host of similar declarations by God recognizes the threefold alienation of the Fall and is a stark reminder that God must re-assert both his mastery of creation and our proper place in it thanks to our postlapsarian alienation. But God’s dominion is neither harsh, exploitive, nor even absentee, thus neither should our relationship to the land be.

God’s bridge of the alienation is to become one with his creation by the very unique methodology of the incarnation. The treatise Sacramental Cosmology, discussed how the Son of God is the first primordial sacrament because it is through him that all things are made in the beginning, but also by the incarnation, where all invisible mysteries available for humanity are made visible through the person of Jesus. In John’s prologue, it says the word dwells among us, or literally, “Pitched his tent among us”. This more literal translation gives his life a more natural feel, it resonates with Cain’s situation as a more nomadic existence, yet at the same time a mode that is more connected to nature than one who dwelled as an urbanite. Jesus’ public ministry across Palestine attested to that nomadic nature. But the tent also reminds us that of the booths of Sukkot, a harvest festival that is meant to reconnect the practitioner to the natural environment.

As one prays, or even lives, in the Sukkot the aerated walls and roof keep one in a constant state of awareness regarding the elements and the state of nature. In Jewish tradition, this is contrasted with walls and a ceiling. These structures give one a sense that one is separate or hidden from nature and even God. The incarnation is a total investment in created reality, there is no sheltering. The result of God’s plan is an affirmation of the necessity of regard for our environment.

This regard is further highlighted by the nature of the parables of Jesus. Far more often than not they revolve around rural and agricultural imagery. This imagery has everything to do with the very basic methodology of yielding food. Jesus’ parables center on the basic rhythmic peace of yielding food rather than the technology involved. The parables are far more concerned with abundance from God’s end than efficiency from ours. Christ’s use of the natural world in the parables is a constant reminder that like himself (the first primordial sacrament) the world (the second primordial sacrament) sustains our lives and deserves respect.

Our close connection to our environment should be a matter of intuition. But the negative effects of a world that require conscious exercise of the three tiered integration of self is only exacerbated by the exponential urbanization, mechanization, and subsequent alienation of our lives from natural engagement with the environment. When most of the world farms, then most of the world is in tune with the necessity of care for creation. When the population shifts to urban existence, waste is exported, not utilized, and food is “earned”, not cared for and accepted as a gift from God. Add to this that farms are more and more mechanized and seen as a mechanism of production, as opposed to “homes” that sustain life, and the alienation we have from our environment and its life giving nature is intensified all the more. Our ability to work good land to maximum production and expediently ship that product to a world population should mitigate greed, hunger, and global strife. The Catechism of the Catholic Church reminds us,

The development of economic activity and growth in production are meant to provide for the needs of human beings. Economic life is not meant solely to multiply goods produced and increase profit or power; it is ordered first of all to the service of persons, of the whole man, and of the entire human community. Economic activity, conducted according to its own proper methods, is to be exercised within the limits of the moral order, in keeping with social justice so as to correspond to God's plan for man. Human work proceeds directly from persons created in the image of God and called to prolong the work of creation by subduing the earth, both with and for one another.

But alas, the effects of original sin have kept at bay the promises of secular progress. Instead, we have been effected by a deeper alienation. Typically the deeper an alienated relationship, the more difficult it is to see that there is alienation at all. The alienating relationship between man and his ecological condition is so profound that many have a hard time admitting it is there or recognizing the consequences of this evil.

This phenomenon of indiscriminate and unreflective evil is pervasive in the human condition. Our best bet is to use our lives to approach morality to the best of our ability. This includes prayer, reason, use of the will etc. These avenues are easily recognizable as skills that relate to the issue of alienation from our fellow humans or from God. But they are not often framed as religious avenues of care when regarding ecology. The treatise The Three Tiered Integration of Self noted that according to Christian ontology and spiritual phenomenology; self, body, and environment are collapsible. And again, The treatise Inversal Unity and The Divine Triple Descent pointed out that if one cannot accept that, then acceptance of the true presence of Christ in the Eucharist is going to be almost meaningless “dogmatism”. Without this ability to collapse all fields of existence, the belief in the Eucharist becomes belief in the impossible for the sake of believing the impossible as opposed to a meaningful encounter with the risen savior. That Jesus deigned to make the second descent taking on the accidents of bread and wine indicates us the redemptive nature of our environment.

As with interpersonal morality and prayer, it is our task to regard the environment in a theocentric way. The Catechism of the Catholic Church states

The seventh commandment enjoins respect for the integrity of creation. Animals, like plants and inanimate beings, are by nature destined for the common good of past, present, and future humanity. Use of the mineral, vegetable, and animal resources of the universe cannot be divorced from respect for moral imperatives. Man's dominion over inanimate and other living beings granted by the Creator is not absolute; it is limited by concern for the quality of life of his neighbor, including generations to come; it requires a religious respect for the integrity of creation.

We must take what should be intuitive and, to the best of our ability, reason out and act in such a way as to impose upon the relationship the effect of our participation in divine life. This means using our reason and will to illuminate and tame our corrupt intuition. This process also comes with all the dangers of biblical interpretation and natural theology as applied to any other sphere of morality. These methods are easily abused because often they start with conclusions and seek to prove them by interpretation or observation. When those conclusions are divine revelation the methodology is good. Otherwise, it is as likely we are seeking to prove our own personal or cultural opinion. With that caution, we will proceed only in the broadest of terms in order to keep maximally applicable.

Bodies and Space-Time: Sacramental Receptors and Sacramental Matrix

For a moment we must make a few categorical distinctions in order to begin to invest in ecological responsibility. The treatise The Three Tiered Integration of Self delineated a three tiered field of experience. We defined these fields as follows

To have a sense of “self” gives humanity the ability to understand aspects of himself as intangible to himself and other people. This experience of self sets up the three tiered experiential field. The first tier is the sense of the “interior self”, the psyche. The interior self does not seem to exist as part of the physical world. The second tier is the sense of the self as bodily, this is one’s “self” as it abides in the physical world. The third tier of experience is the sense of the “external world” that is the physical world beyond the body.

That treatise, sought to show a spiritual technique that integrated these fields into one phenomenological experience. That same treatise, developed that integration into spiritual practices which reimaged the body as a self of prayer that bridges between the inner self and the exterior world. We further sought to demonstrate how a practitioner can use their senses and ingestion to fully integrate sacramental materials as a means of experiencing this integration at their deepest self.

In this treatise, we need to draw a distinction between three sacral materials, the body, the material, and the matrix. The first two materials create fundamental sacral matter the third represents both a transcendent and fundamental integration. In a sacramental cosmology baptized bodies are receptors in the system of sacramental rituals. They receive grace for the inner self and if appropriate they receive other sacramental materials into their being. The other four elements of fundamental sacral form the category of confluential sacral material. Confluential sacral material consists of flour, wine, oil, water. These are the materials that receptive sacral material (human bodies) need to engage in sacramental ritual propper. This is distinguishable from auxiliary sacral material, which would include other food-stuff, items categorized as “sacramentals” ect. The last distinction is the sacramental matrix, the field in which the sacraments take place. This includes time and space as opposed to “material”. For the remainder of this section, we will be discussing sacral matter as receptive sacral material, the sacramental matrix, as well as confluential and auxiliary sacral material before we finally begin to apply these terms to create a theocentric ecological view in the next section.

The former treatise The Three Tiered Integration of Self referred to the body as the auxiliary self in order to point out its unique role as both self and other and as the bridge between the inner self and the exterior world. In this treatise, we will zero in on the body as receptive sacral material in order to focus on the sacramental nature of the human body. The two vocational sacraments channel the conformed body, made through baptism and actualized in confirmation, into a sacramental sign of a particular variety. For married life, the two bodies of the couple and their bonding nuptial love are signs of the loving communion of the triune God. With the Fall and the subsequent alienation between God and creation there is a need for a new kind of corporeal sacral matter, “the mediator”. The summation of that matter is the Body of Christ, but the incarnation is prefigured by priesthood in general, Hebrew temple priesthood in particular and continued by the priesthood of Christianity.

The treatise Sacramental Cosmology noted how sacrifice has been a necessary pan human ritual from the outset of postlapsarian.

After the fall we get our first glimpse of an attempt to show respect to God in some way in postlapsarian reality. That way retains a sacral cosmology and utilizes calculated ritual in the form of sacrifice. These are the sacrifices offered to God in the form of plant and animal by Cain and Abel. This is the beginning of an entire narrative that flows through the scope of both the Old and New Testament involving how one relates to God. God created everything good, but in postlapsarian reality, we turn our worship to these good things. After the fall, we get our first instance of sacrifice with Cain and Abel. Both vegetation and animals allow one to continue life through consumption, thus they are extremely powerful and important. They are easily valued over God if one is obsessed with self preservation, as opposed to divine sustenance.

The necessity of a priesthood to offer these sacrifices develops over time and prefigures the perfect divine mediation of Christ who heals the rift between God and man and by his sacrifice is able to perfectly offer sacrifice and thereby perfectly give glory to God. With the institution of the sacraments, the rituals not only communicate to God but with him, because the bodies involved in the calculated ritual receive efficacious grace from them.

The institution of both priestly and married vocations are the significant presentation of all deep human relationships in sacramental form. They show the deep mysteries of inter human relationships at the most profound level in marriage and the true communion of God and man at the priestly level. It is human bodies as baptized and confirmed that make the church the sacrament and mystical body of Christ. As we shall see sustenance of these bodies through both confluential and auxiliary sacral matter is the fulcrum that raises the necessity of theocentric ecological consciousness. To put it bluntly, the reason to engage in effective environmental activism is the Eucharist. The liturgy demands human bodies and the ready availability of pure water, wheat for flour, grapes for wine, and oil for bread and chrism. Reorganizing care of our earth reprioritizing society such that these are able to be sustained and are readily available to the entire Mystical Body of Christ is the goal of a theocentric ecological consciousness.

The treatise The Three Tiered Integration of Self noted that the third descent of the Son of God, from bread to the sinner, transforms human bodies into temples of the Holy Spirit and facilitates the use of our corporeal existence as an instrument of prayer. But to fully understand this, we must move on to consider the sacramental matrix.

The sacral matrix is simply the matrix of all reality, for all reality is sacramental. That matrix, as was discussed in the treatise Mythic History and Contemplative Prediction, is space and time. The materials or matter in the matrix give evidence to both space and time as mediums for existence. The treatise Intuitive Ritual Investment and Conscious Ritual Investment noted the importance of sacred space and sacred time for ritual purposes. But what happens in those spaces and times are actually meant to draw one’s consciousness to an awareness of the sacredness of the greater sacral matrix, reality itself. We noted,

When distinguishing between sacred and profane time and space, one should remember that in many ways this is a false dichotomy. For a religious believer the goal is to be able to view all space and time as spiritually and existentially somehow invested with the fullness of meaning. But given the nature of theodicy, one must draw a phenomenological distinction between sacred and profane space and time. Profane points to when one is distracted in one way or another from the deep meaning or purpose of one’s life. A sacred situation is a situation set aside from these distractions to allow for deep investment.

Any understanding of a ritual sacred spaces or sacred time is meant to draw whatever rites happen in that space and time outward toward all of reality as the fundamental space and the time. It is also meant to draw the worshiper “upward” because space and time as sacramental are signs of the eternal, given the meta-paradox and humanity’s ability to self transcend. This is indicated in Hebrews when the author says, “They worship in a copy and shadow of the heavenly sanctuary, as Moses was warned when he was about to erect the tabernacle. For he says, “See that you make everything according to the pattern shown you on the mountain.”

The first space of human worship created was the primordial sacrament, the Earth itself. The first sacred time was the entire duration of Paradise in Eden. Liturgy was present in the rhythm of nature and life. The sacred space was the enclosure of the vault. With the fall we were alienated from this situation and there developed the necessity for calculated ritual, sacred space and sacred time. Sacred space and time are an attempt to carve out a matrix that reaches back toward the deep memory of Eden and seeks refuge from the still long struggle toward the Eschaton.

The first creation story systematically lays out the fundamentals of the first “temple” creation itself. God creates light which is the illuminator of space and time. Then God creates the dome of the sky creating a habitable space. After creating land and vegetation, God makes the heavenly lights, the Sun, the Moon and the Stars, who by their motion through space mark the passage of time. These lights give the rhythm of time to paradise, just as advent candles, the paschal candle, and menorahs give an indication to the waxing and waning of celestial light through the year. The entirety of the vault is filled with material directly and indirectly necessary for human sustenance and intuitively generate in the first parents both gratitude and glory to God for his sustenance. When all is prepared a creature of divine communion is created, a creature that is made to receive and give the highest of the three fundamental relationships, the interpersonal relationship of love. As Pope Francis asserts in Laudato Si,

The universe unfolds in God, who fills it completely. Hence, there is a mystical meaning to be found in a leaf, in a mountain trail, in a dewdrop, in a poor person’s face. The ideal is not only to pass from the exterior to the interior to discover the action of God in the soul, but also to discover God in all things. . .

For Christians, believing in one God who is trinitarian communion suggests that the Trinity has left its mark on all creation. Saint Bonaventure went so far as to say that human beings, before sin, were able to see how each creature “testifies that God is three”. The reflection of the Trinity was there to be recognized in nature “when that book was open to man and our eyes had not yet become darkened”. The Franciscan saint teaches us that each creature bears in itself a specifically Trinitarian structure, so real that it could be readily contemplated if only the human gaze were not so partial, dark and fragile. In this way, he points out to us the challenge of trying to read reality in a Trinitarian key.

The divine Persons are subsistent relations, and the world, created according to the divine model, is a web of relationships. Creatures tend towards God, and in turn, it is proper to every living being to tend towards other things so that throughout the universe we can find any number of constant and secretly interwoven relationships. This leads us not only to marvel at the manifold connections existing among creatures but also to discover a key to our own fulfillment. The human person grows more, matures more and is sanctified more to the extent that he or she enters into relationships, going out from themselves to live in communion with God, with others and with all creatures. In this way, they make their own that trinitarian dynamism which God imprinted in them when they were created. Everything is interconnected, and this invites us to develop a spirituality of that global solidarity which flows from the mystery of the Trinity.

The auxiliary self, the human body, as the bridge between the inner, unseen, self and the exterior world, is present as receptive sacral matter to nature and even to other human bodies. These are the relationships Francis speaks of. Thus we have a four-fold temple system. First, there is the eternal temple, where Christ offers sacrifice for all of reality. There is the sacral matrix, which we could call the “cosmic temple”. This was the effective temple of paradise in Eden and will be the temple again in the Eschaton. The primordial sacrament of creation is especially epitomized in the human psyche by the vault of the sky, the grandeur of mountains and the expanse of the sea. In both Eden and the Eschaton, the body is also a corporeal temple of the holy spirit, reconfirmed as such even in this postlapsarian reality. Lastly, there are terrestrial temples. These are the constructed places used as sacred spaces in order to reconnect the other three temples made by the direct creative power of God. Terrestrial temples “churches” in Roman Catholicism are the place where the other three types of temples converges by means of calculated ritual. When standing inside of one, engaged in calculated ritual, one is standing in a microcosm of the cosmos as a whole. One’s corporeal presence ends a four-fold collapse from eternal, to cosmic through fabricated cosmic (the terrestrial temple), to corporeal prescenceing of the divine. Sacred spaces only became necessary in postlapsarian reality where they are constructed as a stop gap for our bodies (as temples) experiencing alienation from direct intuitive worship (connection to the eternal temple) in the cosmic temple They will become irrelevant upon the Eschaton as the book of Revelations states,

I saw no temple in the city, for its temple is the Lord God almighty and the Lamb. The city had no need of sun or moon to shine on it, for the glory of God gave it light, and its lamp was the Lamb. The nations will walk by its light, and to it the kings of the earth will bring their treasure. During the day its gates will never be shut, and there will be no night there.

In terrestrial temples, both receptive and confluential sacral matter are manipulated in an attempt to refocus the practitioner's consciousness, through grace, to experience the full effect of the sacral matrix and develop creative ways to effectively engage sacral material in the worship of and communion with God. It is this system that a theocentric ecological consciousness is trying to preserve and bolster

A Postlapsarian Crutch: Confluential and Auxiliary Sacral Matter

At this point, the reader may wonder as to whether this treatise involves ecology at all. We have sought to set the cosmological groundwork for engagement with three varieties of sacral matter. Once we have come to a grasp of the importance of sacral matter, receptive, confluential, and auxiliary, then we can begin to see the importance of a theocentric ecological consciousness and how it bears on our current crisis.

With the Fall, humanity is no longer able to intuitively engage is with the primordial sacrament as such. With the enlightenment, the advent of secularism, and the industrial revolution, any semblance of the sacredness of matter is jettisoned for a more mechanistic view of the physical world. The transcendent assumptions of deism completly subsume the imminent assumptions of a sacramental cosmology. Thus we are more prone to objectify the physical world and exploit it to the detriment of the planet and ourselves. But “subduance” of the earth has never been interpreted in Catholic tradition as an exploitation. The normative clarifying word in Catholic social teaching is “stewardship”. Even in an atheist secular humanist model, this stewardship is common sense for the survival of humanity. What we are beginning to see here is that this stewardship of the earth is also caring for the cosmic temple and its sacred vessels, sacral matter.

With the fall and the development of calculated ritual by Cain and Abel, we see a situation where specific matter, foodstuff, is seen as privileged in terms of its ability to relate one to God. Each of the four confluential sacral materials (water, flour, oil, wine) originates from foodstuff. The treatise Sacramental Cosmology commented on sacrifice as a panhuman ritual archetype,

This quote starts us on our way to understanding the importance of confluential sacral matter. The treatise Toward Appropriate Thanatosian Piety also briefly commented on how this developed according to Levitical law,

There are many ways that the power of The Law and the power of Holy Death work together in the levitical system in an attempt to reconcile humans to God. There are peace offerings as well as scapegoats, that in different ways seek to allow humans to offer of themselves, by means of Holy Death, some sense of reconciliation or penitence to God. As was noted earlier, the synergy between death and the law as cooperators with the relationship between God and humanity has been present from the very beginning of creation, even in paradise.

Here is one common pattern throughout scriptures that illustrates how Holy Death allows for a window into divine fidelity. Holy Death is used as a power by which someone can give up something precious to them. The entire sacrificial system of giving up lambs and bulls to God is meant to convey an offering of something precious. In an agrarian society these animals are extremely valuable, and to destroy one is to trust that God is the arbiter of life and will grant one more through the fecund powers of divinity. In a mercantile system, to pay for one in a temple and dispose of one’s money is the same sentiment.

These rituals are fulfilled in Christ through the sacraments of the Church. Pope Francis notes how connected these sacraments are to the natural material world in Laudato Si when he states,

The Sacraments are a privileged way in which nature is taken up by God to become a means of mediating supernatural life. Through our worship of God, we are invited to embrace the world on a different plane. Water, oil, fire and colours are taken up in all their symbolic power and incorporated in our act of praise. The hand that blesses is an instrument of God’s love and a reflection of the closeness of Jesus Christ, who came to accompany us on the journey of life. Water poured over the body of a child in Baptism is a sign of new life. Encountering God does not mean fleeing from this world or turning our back on nature.

The elements of Catholic sacramental life are basic elements of human life and subsistence. In this quote, Pope Francis mentions the water of baptism. Water is a given of our existence. It is where we came from according to Genesis as well as the theory of evolution. As basic, unaltered, material of life, it cleanses, refreshes and sustains. It is a natural element tantamount to free grace because one does nothing to pure water but drink it to garner its effect. Oil, wine and flour are indicative of our labor. These are processed elements that are further processed into the chrism, the bread of Eucharist ect. In these forms, they bring to mind the labor inflicted in Eden at the punishment, “fruit of the earth/vine and work of human hands”. This labor and our engagement with this creation in a sacral way will be our sustenance and healing.

As this labor forms the bread for Eucharist we are drawn the first indication of the importance of a theocentric ecological consciousness. It takes care of the earth to grow and produce bread and wine. The treatise Inversal Unity and The Divine Triple Descent, discussed how the humbling of the Logos demonstrated Christian power dynamics. By the second descent from human to bread, the logos demonstrates the inversal unity of Christian power dynamics. That treatise stated,

The Christian power dynamics is driven home by the fact that in the second creation story, “The Lord God planted a garden in Eden, in the east, and placed there the man whom he had formed.” This is the role of a servant, to plant a garden for someone else. The man is then placed in a position of service as well, “The Lord God then took the man and settled him in the Garden of Eden, to cultivate and care for it.” This is interesting because the animated being, Adam, is caring for is the “lower life forms”, the plants, and those plants sustain him. . .

The concept of a power dynamic that runs by inversal unity seeks to apply that ontology to power structures in order to demonstrate proper Christian power dynamics. All positions of power are geared toward the same end, expression of love, all exercises of power are one, yet there are many varieties. The most obvious way this is true is to take the highest and invert it, make it (at the same time as it is the highest) the lowest. This treatise will be an exploration of how the Son of God demonstrates the perfection of inversal unity as a lesson on Christian power dynamics, with a particular focus on eucharistic phenomenon.

You can see in the Levitical laws how God reinstills a mandate to care for the Earth by a host of harvest and agricultural laws and festivals that ensure respect for the land itself, sustainability of its procude, and the distribution of its bounty. Growth of food is divinely regulated in order to be a conduit to divine life by its labor and the care for creation it entails. Growth of foodstuff is Adam’s example of inversal unity and this is codified in Levitical Law. The “greater” humans are subject to serve the land and its produce, and the greater humans who own and work the land are subject to serving the poor who do not. Pope Francis goes on to testify to the centrality of the Eucharist in our striving for a theocentric ecological consciousness in Laudato Si when he when he states,

It is in the Eucharist that all that has been created finds its greatest exaltation. Grace, which tends to manifest itself tangibly, found unsurpassable expression when God himself became man and gave himself as food for his creatures. The Lord, in the culmination of the mystery of the Incarnation, chose to reach our intimate depths through a fragment of matter. He comes not from above, but from within, he comes that we might find him in this world of ours. In the Eucharist, fullness is already achieved; it is the living centre of the universe, the overflowing core of love and of inexhaustible life. Joined to the incarnate Son, present in the Eucharist, the whole cosmos gives thanks to God. Indeed the Eucharist is itself an act of cosmic love: “Yes, cosmic! Because even when it is celebrated on the humble altar of a country church, the Eucharist is always in some way celebrated on the altar of the world”. The Eucharist joins heaven and earth; it embraces and penetrates all creation. The world which came forth from God’s hands returns to him in blessed and undivided adoration: in the bread of the Eucharist, “creation is projected towards divinization, towards the holy wedding feast, towards unification with the Creator himself”. Thus, the Eucharist is also a source of light and motivation for our concerns for the environment, directing us to be stewards of all creation

It is the prerogative of the magisterium to set the guidelines on what we are calling confluential sacral matter. Those guidelines entail, which matter is used in the liturgical and sacramental life of the church, and how it is used in the official calculated ritual of the church. As Pope Francis stated in the previous quote the seven sacraments are privileged. By confluential, we mean that they physically interact with the body in all of the ways discussed in the treatise The Three Tiered Integration of Self. But once affected by the calculated ritual of the church they also become an effective confluence between the spiritual world (as a means of grace) and the physical world. The sacramental view is that the physical world is a means of sanctification and physical matter conveys grace. So protection of production and availability of this most precious material is at the center of a theocentric ecological consciousness, as well as a social justice concern for the universal destination of goods as described in the Catechism. But this concern is not simply limited to fundamental sacral matter.

The entire thesis of the treatise Sacramental Cosmology is that all of reality is constructed as divine communication of love to the receiver, humans. All physical reality is sacramental. The conclusion of that treatise stated,

Each of these offering narratives [concerning fundamental sacral matter] sets the Christian myth in such a way as to make the items essential to our sacrificial system as we develop them into the public and promulgated liturgy of the church. From there the ritual life of the church spreads to the paraliturgical ritual of the community or the ritual life of any given domestic church. All of this together forms a temple of living stones that is dedicated to offering all actions, pragmatic and ritual, to the glory of God. This outpouring of love for God and neighbor is the foundation of the Christian religion.

The means of popular piety and paraliturgical practice defies auxiliary sacral material. The employment of paraliturgical practices reminds us that all of reality is sacral. Popular piety does not take away from the liturgy and the official seven sacraments, it is empowered by them. The significance and reality of the seven supplies and spread into the significance and effect of popular piety, which is fluid and symbiotically adaptive. It is this way that each culture, nation and family develops and applies the gospel to its own lived experience, i.e. ritual life. As Pope Saint John Paul II states in his apostolic exhortation Familiaris Consortio

In conformity with her constant tradition, the Church receives from the various cultures everything that is able to express better the unsearchable riches of Christ. Only with the help of all the cultures will it be possible for these riches to be manifested ever more clearly, and for the Church to progress towards a daily more complete and profound awareness of the truth, which has already been given to her in its entirety by the Lord. . .

It is by means of "inculturation" that one proceeds towards the full restoration of the covenant with the Wisdom of God, which is Christ Himself. The whole Church will be enriched also by the cultures which, though lacking technology, abound in human wisdom and are enlivened by profound moral values.

This means that not only the foodstuff of water, wheat, grapes, and olives that need to be protected and made available. All foodstuff needs special protection. But beyond that, culture includes more than just sustenance of life, it includes the beauty and richness of communication in that culture by means of all human senses. Thus liturgy itself is impacted by culture, but popular piety is itself inculturation of the gospel. Think of any foodstuff particular to a culture, it seems appropriate that that seafood, or cattle, or a variety of grain or fruit would be utilized in ritual activity under paraliturgical practices so that the given culture can more easily experience intuitive ritual investment. If done appropriately, such activity allows the populace intuitive ritual investment in the official liturgy, because of the symbiosis between the two. This is particularly important for a culture that uses a different grain or base for their oil for example. In The Directory on Popular Piety and the Liturgy: Principles and Guidelines the assumption of such symbiosis is clear,

In light of the nature and of the characteristics proper to Christian worship, pious exercises, clearly must conform to the doctrine, legal discipline and norms of the Church. Moreover, they should be in harmony with the Sacred Liturgy, take into account the seasons of the liturgical calendar, in so far as possible, and encourage "conscious active participation in the prayer of the Church".

In fact, The Directory on Popular Piety and the Liturgy: Principles and Guidelines not only sees popular piety and paraliturgy as important for investing the populace in the liturgy, it even extols auxiliary ritual for its inculturation of the gospel itself,

That harmonious fusion or the Gospel message with a particular culture, which is often found in popular piety, is a further reason for the Magisterium's esteem of popular piety. In genuine forms of popular piety, the Gospel message assimilates expressive forms particular to a given culture while also permeating the consciousness of that culture with the content of the Gospel, and its idea of life and death, and of man's freedom, mission and destiny.

The transmission of this cultural heritage from father to son, from generation to generation, also implies the transmission of Christian principles. In some cases, this fusion goes so deep that elements proper to the Christian faith become integral elements of the cultural identity of particular nations

Though food is privileged, any cultural material that is significant, such as clothing, symbolic items such as technology, historical artifacts, sacred places, etc. are in need of protection. This protection is for the benefit of cultures from a national to a nuclear familial scale. The ability to worship God according to ways that are culturally effective and that sync with the liturgy demand that the resources of the earth are protected and appropriately available for use by all people. The focus on worship is what changes conservation and social justice from a purely secular endeavor of efficiency and ease of suffering to a sanctified action, as we call it, a theocentric ecological consciousness.

In this first section, we laid the groundwork for the importance of a theocentric ecological consciousness. We began by reminding the reader of the sacramental nature of the cosmos. This was illustrated by a contemplation of the three primordial sacraments; Christ, the cosmos, and marriage. We then reviewed sacral matter beginning with human bodies as the human medium between the sacred nature of the seen and unseen. We proceeded to discuss sacred spaces or “temples”, delineating four, the eternal temple, the cosmic temple the corporeal temple, and terrestrial temples as the nexus of each of these in the postlapsarian world. Lastly, we discussed sacral matter under three varieties, receptive, confluential, and auxiliary. These would be matter used to channel the grace of God through the seven sacraments as well as all paraliturgy and popular piety. Lastly, we related the importance of the preservation and availability of sacramental material in order to properly worship God. Understanding this is the difference between secular environmentalism and social justice and a theocentric ecological consciousness.

In the next section we will relate our current environmental problem and garner a general vision of how to proceed by analyzing our understanding of how we approach our environment as evolving and vulnerable. Before going on in the last seciton to seek to create general guidelines for applying a theocentric ecological consciousness to society. We will note that our problem was a concupiscent disordering of our value in society by prioritizing efficiency and a deified market above the sacral matter of creation. We will note that with a theocentric ecological consciousness the gift of personal property will intuitively come with the responsibility to use it appropriately.

The Current Condition of Sacramental Matter: Necessity, Accessibility, and Threat

In the first section, we laid the groundwork for the importance of a theocentric ecological consciousness. In this second section, we will relate our current environmental problem and garner a general vision of how to proceed by analyzing our understanding of how we approach our environment as evolving and vulnerable. We will link this vulnerability to the vulnerability of our fellow humans especially noting the relationship between urban and rural humanity aiming at a synthesis of these two lifestyles. We will close this section with a meditation on how Israel views technology and from that derived our general guideline for environmental engagement concerning technology. In the last section, we will seek to create general guidelines for applying a theocentric ecological consciousness to society.

A Balanced or Evolving System?

We have constructed a world that microcosmically seems ecologically stable. But this view is for the privileged who have their trash taken out, fresh water pumped in and food delivered to their city. Once in a catastrophic situation, I was in a major metropolitan area that was abandoned by the greater network of society and in only a few days the micro-ecology had completely broken down. This illusion of stability lets many feel like the earth itself is a stable environment. In fact, it seems like God assured us of this in Genesis chapter 8 when the promise was made, “All the days of the earth, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, Summer and winter, and day and night shall not cease.” But the ecosystems of the earth are not necessarily a stable environment. Christianity combines both a cyclical and linear view of time. The seasons queue one into the cyclical nature of time. The book of revelations hints at the seasonal (read cyclically) nature of time in when it states in Chapter 22 “On either side of the river grew the tree of life that produces fruit twelve times a year, once each month”. We have previously noted how the rhythm of the eschaton, and presumably Paradise, is off set by the cosmological paradox. At one extreme is a communion of two persons who form the basic unit of humanity, the First Parents, splintering into multiple billions of self regarding sentient beings that must first self-regard (alienation) then turn from that splintered selfishness back to a relationship of oneness, which is the other extreme, the Eschaton. It is a motion from dyadinal mutual appropriation to seeming infinite self-regard to maximal mutual appropriation at every level. One element of cosmic disparity between the static perfections at the extremes and the perfection of postlapsarain reality (perfect striving) is the introduction of a linear flow of development instead of a static one. Even in our cyclical liturgical year, the cycle is an investment of the linear narrative flow of salvation history.

Regarding current environmental science, one can see how the two views come to bear on a popular level. One view sees an evolution of a fragile environment that progresses, either for the better or for the worse. One view sees the environment as a stasis as if the stability of Eden or the Eschaton was applicable to this time of transition. In such a view there is no reason to act with intention because the environment will take care of itself. But the only consistent command given between the two creation stories in Genesis is our duty to care of the earth.

In fact, the two creation stories divide between an idea of stasis and development. The first creation story is a unit in and of itself, while the second develops into the greater narrative of Genesis. The first creation story gives the impression of stasis. All things are made in an orderly fashion and set in place. Then the humans are created and set in an environment suited to their needs At the end, the humans are told, “be fruitful and multiply, fill the earth and subdue it.” This story is one that portrays a certain finality to the order of creation. Yet the second creation story is much more interactive and even reactive. In this story God creates the human first then seems to begin a developmental process of accounting for the human’s needs. First God sets an environment, which is a garden and gives the man his task, to care for the garden. Then when the man is lonely, God creates creatures for his companionship, ending with the most perfect companion, woman. Then the development continues with the fall and any semblance of stability is gone forever.

The linear progression of the second creation story invests the first parents with moral choices, even in Eden where it “makes no sense”. Postlapsarian reality is equivalent to abidance in a sea of moral choice. In Paradise care of the garden would have been one’s job as a joy, and not seen as a moral endeavor, the same as procreative acts. In postlapsarian reality, every situation is morally weighted. Any “job” we may have as individual humans is a moral choice, not to mention how we go about that job. And, yes, our job as humans, to care for this plant, is now a moral choice. This moral choice has positive and negative consequences both ecologically and spiritually. But these choices are a navigation and a learning process between Eden and the New Jerusalem. It is our goal to apply this navagation to recent human developments that have shaped our relationship to the environment and given it a global effect.

The age of exploration unveiled what seemed like an endless supply or resources to be exploited. But as travel and communication became more rapid, our ability to impact across the globe became more acute. At this point in human history, we have reached a situation where our choices impact not just our local environment but our global one. An awareness of humanity’s global impact probably first came to the for the front with the arms race of the cold war. With the advent of the cold war, we reached a critical mass of impact. It was now evident that we could not only destroy our community (and thus become refugees), we could destroy our planet. Certainly, every generation had the fear that the world was coming to an end. But humanity in the mid twentieth century, for the first time, had the means to self annihilate. Many assume a new age of exploration in space would solve this problem. Instead of moving to the next river valley system, we could move to the next planet. But this is indicative of a state of sin that permits us to ignore our underlying problem. By destroying an environment and moving on we are breaking God’s law and seeking to escape the consequences.

It may have been our consciousness of nuclear global mutually assured destruction that turned humanity’s eyes toward the dangers of our global impact in other ways. By the mid to late twentieth century, there was a growing awareness of our overall environmental impact. Humanity began to developed in the industrial revolution from a rural population to an urban one. According to recent data,

Urban living is a very recent development. For most of our history, humans lived in low-density, rural settings. Prior to 1600, it's estimated that the share of the world population living in urban settings did not reach 5 percent. By 1800, this share reached 7 percent; and by 1900 had increased to 16 percent. It was not until the 20th century that urbanization across the world began to increase rapidly.

That data also states, “More than half of the world's population now live in urban areas — increasingly in highly-dense cities.” Our ability to organize ourselves through technology has reached “Tower of Babel” proportions. We are not suggesting that we are therefore doomed. Actually, return to an agrarian humanity is not the biblical narrative. Remember the cosmological paradox spans from agrarian to urban, from Eden to the New Jerusalem. So our new question is how does one maintain and develop a new paradigm for engaging the cosmos? The development from rural to urban ran concurrently with the industrial revolution, which has lead to an alienation from the natural environment, as opposed to developing a new way to engage the environment as urbanites in synchronicity with the agriculturally based portions of humanity. Since the postlapsarian progress of lifestyles run rural to urban, one could consider such development an eschatologically driven theocentric ecological consciousness. This seems almost counter intuitive since the overarching image of the new creation is God creating all things new. But if that image discounts environmental morality, then it discounts all others as well. Why strive at all if grace is exclusively abundant?

On the road from a rural to urban existence, humanity has become alienated from his environment and lost any sense of theocentric ecological consciousness. The secular approach to environmentalism is completely pragmatic and terrestrial. The previous section laid the foundation for our alternate approach, which will be sacramental and teleological.

We can now return to confluential sacral matter, which is the extra-corporeal matter defined by the church as necessary for the carrying out of the sacraments as calculated rituals. They are indicative of the sustenance of life in that they each generate from foodstuff. Since many no longer live in an agrarian (nor, thank God, subsistence) society, the intuitive impact of foodstuff as the stuff of life is lost. As we are alienated from our terrestrial investment in the cultivation of food, the temple under the vault, filled with the vessels of worship, becomes a mechanism of self sustenance that mocks God’s creative ability. Though rural people may see themselves as more in tune with the environment and therefore immune to this effect, they have also felt the impact of the mechanization of our first human vocation, care of the Earth. As farms are mechanized and therefore consolidated in the same way trades were in earlier in the industrial revolution, the connection to the land any “small farmer” may have had is also vanishing.

All of this leads to a massive taking of food for granted. Hence current Catholic culture is obsessed with sexual morality as a life issue but is absolutely disinvested in the issue of gluttony, which is perfectly applicable to a theocentric ecological consciousness. The alienation extends beyond confluential sacral matter to auxiliary sacral matter. In as much as any sacral matter is seen as “consumables” by the world population because of how we construct our economies and societies, we are alienated from utilizing them to their full effect.

One possible aid to coming to a theocentric ecological consciousness is shifting the urban-rural dynamic, which is packaged as two groups, one ecologically minded and one disinvested. But as we have pointed out, even this is not the case. Our blindness to our original vocation has allowed even the rural dwellers to see the earth as an object of exploitation. These two groups are sometimes seen as in an exploitive relationship, the urban feeding off the rural. In a better world, they could be seen as symbiotic. If Christian ontology is true, symbiosis is not enough. Humanity is a unit, one with many parts. Therefore urban and rural dwellers are a unity even in their diversity. What this means is that the two are in a true way one. With an understanding of that unity, we can begin to work toward an equivocation. That is, a way in which urbanites are as invested in the land as rural dwellers are perceived to be. Our problem now is that the mechanized, technology-focused, objectifying, and alienating worldview of the post-industrial urbanite has infected the rural dweller.

In order to reclaim our connection to the earth, and then to an intuitive investment in sacral cosmology we must catalyze the opposite effect. We must have a rural mindset of connection that is investing in the urban sphere. In effect, we must learn to have green cities that are not just green technologically, but green in their actual being, cities that work according to nature. This is most certainly the vision of Revelations chapter 22. The new Jerusalem is a unity of an urban city which is walled and ornamented, but also rural in that is has a river and crops that sustain it within its walls. This unity is what allows for the deep connection between receptive sacral matter and confluential/auxiliary sacral matter and destroys the alienation from the environment that was present in postlapsarian reality. Like any morality, striving for this now is what allows cooperation with the grace to accept God’s remaking of creation in the Eschaton.

The Environmental Threat and Our Narrative Appropriation

Shifting the entire consciousness is the endeavor of Laudato Si. The encyclical relates three major environmental problems that need to be specifically addressed, pollution, water conservation, and loss of biodiversity.

When beginning his discussion on pollution and climate change Pope Francis notes,

Plants synthesize nutrients which feed herbivores; these in turn become food for carnivores, which produce significant quantities of organic waste which give rise to new generations of plants. But our industrial system, at the end of its cycle of production and consumption, has not developed the capacity to absorb and reuse waste and by-products. We have not yet managed to adopt a circular model of production capable of preserving resources for present and future generations, while limiting as much as possible the use of non-renewable resources, moderating their consumption, maximizing their efficient use, reusing and recycling them.

Here Pope Francis points out the exact problem we have been pondering. How does one move from a rural to an urban society, yet maintain appropriate respect for the cosmological temple? The pope seems to imply a striving for systematic organization around a methodology for integrating societal structures in a way that facilitates consciousness and respect for the environment. This passage recognizes that humans have a certain mastery over nature and are able to use social structures and engagements to mimic natural eco cycles in our consumption. This patterning is key to working with and in nature as the steward, as opposed to lording our authority over nature and objectifying what belongs to God.

The next issue Pope Francis discusses is concerns water conservation. The Pope states,

Fresh drinking water is an issue of primary importance, since it is indispensable for human life and for supporting terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems. Sources of fresh water are necessary for health care, agriculture and industry. . . One particularly serious problem is the quality of water available to the poor. Every day, unsafe water results in many deaths and the spread of water-related diseases, including those caused by microorganisms and chemical substances.

The pope is completely pragmatic in his assessment of the need to protect water. His concern revolves around physical health and equal access. We would add to that the importance of water as confluential sacral matter, the unique kind that takes no labor. Water is the free gift of life as well as the gift of grace and purity. Its free availability is a primary environmental concern.

The last concern is biodiversity. Pope Francis states,

The earth’s resources are also being plundered because of short-sighted approaches to the economy, commerce and production. The loss of forests and woodlands entails the loss of species which may constitute extremely important resources in the future, not only for food but also for curing disease and other uses. Different species contain genes which could be key resources in years ahead for meeting human needs and regulating environmental problems.

It is not enough, however, to think of different species merely as potential “resources” to be exploited, while overlooking the fact that they have value in themselves. Each year sees the disappearance of thousands of plant and animal species which we will never know, which our children will never see, because they have been lost for ever. The great majority become extinct for reasons related to human activity. Because of us, thousands of species will no longer give glory to God by their very existence, nor convey their message to us. We have no such right.

Here the pope begins with a pragmatic analysis of the use or possible use of having a variety of species available. However in the second paragraph of the quote his assessment hits closer to our mark. All of reality is available as a communication of God’s love to us as the receptors of that love. But that communication is not one way, or even two way, the communication itself is sacramentally significant, as a sacramental sign, it is what it conveys, the communication is the love. We, therefore, react to the communication by returning love and the medium for that return is the same, the sacral matrix and sacral material. We are invested in care for a love of the cosmic temple and all its sacred vessels. According to the first creation story God named them into being. According to the second, God brought them into being as companions and partners and we named them, giving us investment in their reality.

These three issues and the way the Pope relates to them show us our progress thus far. We must have respect for sacral matter, both confluential and auxiliary, as the medium of grace. This is the foundation of a theocentric ecological consciousness. Then we must apply that consciousness to view nature and steer humanity’s progress with intention from Eden to the new Jerusalem in such a way that abides in and reflects God’s Good nature. But we have been waylaid by evil and sin and are now in a situation of peril. Thus it is time to invest in a narrative that will give impetus to our cause, that narrative is the summation of the barren matriarch typology.

The barren matriarch typology was discussed in the treatise Intuitive Ritual Investment and Conscious Ritual Investment,

As one enters a season of renewal, the earth speaks to the human need for yearns for calculated ritual concerning renewal and life out of barren stagnation. The primary symbol chosen for our ritual is the virgin mother and God bearer. The former title hints at Mary as the fulfillment of another typology, the barren matriarch. Throughout the Old Testament important matriarchal figures have found themselves unable to bear children. This runs the gambit from Sarah, Rebekah, and Rachel, all the way to Hannah. The baron matriarch ultimately conceives a child through natural sexual intercourse in God’s due time. The child is formally announced by God in some way and the child plays some pivotal role in salvation history. This typology reminds us that creative power is not our own, but God’s and we must yield to his plan. Such yielding is resonant with the fundamental message of the Cross of Christ.

The Virgin Mary, is the culmination of this typology because she symbolizes the absolute power of God. She is not a matriarch, but an unwed virgin, the most powerless position possible. The fact of her virginity puts the creative aspect of the child completely outside of human manipulation. God shapes the first first man, Adam, out of the earth. God shapes the last first man out of Mary’s body. In that she takes on the mythic image of a “new creation”.

Even here you can see some of the groundwork is laid for our present endeavor regarding renewal of the earth. In this particular passage, the renewal is spring, but our renewal regards repair of post-industrial devastation of the environment. Intuitive Ritual Investment and Conscious Ritual Investment asserted that Mary is the fulfillment of the barren matriarch typology. All Mariology leads to Christ, so since she gave birth to him, the nature of her fecundity is the catalyst for the primordial sacrament of the incarnation. But still, the birthing is mostly an act of Mary and speaks primarily through her of our ability to bring Christ into the world. This is an admirable application of the narrative but it could be that the typology continues to develop into fulfillment beyond Jesus’s birth.

To better understand how the barren matriarch typology moves beyond Mary we must revisit a theme we discussed in previous treaties such as Intuitive Ritual Investment and Conscious Ritual Investment or Cosmic Evangelization that the female body and the land (the Earth) are intimately tied together in Judeo-Christian imagery, in pan-human myth, and therefore, probably in the collective unconscious. Not so subtle examples from scriptures are the reference to women who are “fruitful” just as land is fruitful, the reference to sperm as seed, just as seed is put into the land to create and grow fruit. These connections are not accidental, nor is the awareness that the cycles of fertility and barrenness of the land through seasons macrocosmically images the microcosm of the female body’s cycle of fertility and infertility.

But how can Jesus, who is a man, through his life and specifically through the pascal mystery, give birth as a barren or virginal corporeal reality? One answer is given in Intuitive Ritual Investment and Conscious Ritual Investment, he births the church out of his side, just as Adam birth’s humanity out of his side in Genesis 2. This narrative is useful in many ways, but not suited to our purpose. Instead, we will venture into a less charted direction, the burial of Christ.

There seems to be, as we noted, synchronicity between the land and the female body in terms of barrenness and fertility. There is definitely a mythic connection, especially in baptismal theology, between birth and death. This can lead to the empty tomb as the fulfillment of the barren matriarch typology creating a narrative investment toward a theocentric ecological consciousness. In each of the synoptic gospels [Matthew 27 Mark 15 Luke 23] the tomb Jesus is laid in is specifically described as “hewn out of rock” This gives us our classic image of the cavernous empty tomb on Easter Sunday. But John’s description, as usual, is different. In John 19 the texts says, “Now in the place where he had been crucified there was a garden and in the garden a new tomb, in which no one had yet been buried.” This definitely speaks to the imagery in John 12, “unless a grain of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains just a grain of wheat; but if it dies, it produces much fruit.” Jesus is placed in a garden as seed to spring to new life, but why does it have to be a tomb that had never been used? I was once told my one of my beloved grade school teachers, a sister of mercy, that is was so Jesus wouldn’t have to deal with the stench and presence of death when he resurrected; how thoughtful.

But if the connection between land and the female body is legitimate, then there may be a more profound meaning. The Synoptics speaks to the barren matriarch, the rocky soil that does not produce. To quote H.I. McDunnough from Raising Arizona, “the doc went on to explain that this woman, who looked as fertile as the Tennessee Valley, could bear no young. Her insides were a rocky place where my seed could find no purchase.” Humanity’s recent alienation from the land and our patriarchal terror of all things menstrual have buried these profound connections which spoke so clearly to those who were in ancient times connected to both. This connection creates a vaginal imagery for the rocky tomb, which leads John’s obsession with the “unused” tomb. Instead of drawing on the barren, John employs the virginal, unused place of incubation his garden harkens back to the new and unspoiled land of Eden, before the punishments made working the land a form of suffering. Christ is born out of this tomb, the way Adam is born out of the earth and is mistaken for a gardener (Adam’s profession) by Mary Magdelene.

If the connection between Mother Mary to Mother Earth and the jettisoning of the Jesus from the vagina at the nativity (pardon) to the jettisoning of Jesus from the tomb at the resurrection seems to far fetched remember the connection to birth, death and rebirth in both Johanine and Pauline baptismal theology. They each harken back to the waters of creation as a birth connected to the uterine fluid. They each harken to waters that bring death and rebirth such as in the case of Noah or the Exodus. They each deeply connect the rebirth of baptism to a dying and rising with Christ. One can find this connection between birth and death, the womb and the tomb throughout church writings. One stark example is just after the writing of the scriptures themselves. Pope Saint Clement I states in his Letter to the Corinthians, “Let us consider, then, brethren, of what matter we were made. Let us consider how we came into this world, as it were out of a sepulcher, and from utter darkness.” The images employed as a devotion is the doorway to the empty tomb, a vaginal imagery of new birth from rocky barren, and presumably unused land.

This connects to our present endeavor because the seasonal dying and rising of the land not only connects to feminine menstruation but also gave birth to a host of myths were god’s die and rise. These myths allowed the Gentiles to recognize the manner of Christ’s salvation.

Now we are transitioning from a situation of agrarian culture, where life from the land is a focus to an urban culture where the land his a human construction of efficiency and organization, but not organically alive. All of these symbols can be tied together to create a spirituality of resurrection of this dead urban landscape. The reader will remember that the end goal is the new Jerusalem, which is urban but has a living landscape. Our meditation is an attempt to utilize the imagery of a dead land that springs to new and resurrected life. Jesus’ emergence from the rock hewed tomb, which recalls Jesus being born from Mary’s body, which recalls Agam being pulled from the soil of the garden all speak to the possibility of the concrete and steel urban landscapes springing into new life. But not in a post apocalyptic way where there is a return to the wilderness surrounding decaying structures. Rather, in a way that acknowledges human fulfillment, stewardship, and compatibility of civilization and the cosmic temple as constructed by God. The synchronicity of nature and civilization, especially when it comes to tools, and technology, is something that may take an unpacking of moral teaching in order to get a view that is geared toward a theocentric ecological consciousness.

Theocentric Ecological Consciousness: Teleology and Technology

One of our post industrial revolution problems is our secular fascination with efficiency. Much of the damage we do to the environment has everything to do with how we utilize technology and how we organize civilization. Our tools are geared toward single use efficiency at the personal and social level as opposed to working toward adopting a circular model of production capable of preserving resources for present and future generations, as Pope Francis suggested. This priority of efficiency has led to our civilization becoming global, because of the exponentially increasing efficiency of technology surrounding communication and transportation. But simple efficiency and availability is not enough. As Pope Saint Paul VI stated, “the most extraordinary scientific advances, the most amazing technical abilities, the most astonishing economic growth, unless they are accompanied by authentic social and moral progress, will definitively turn against man.” So now we might turn to sacred scripture and take a brief analysis of how technology seems to function, before turning to a modern example of morality and technology, especially as it impacts the environment.

The second half of Genesis Chapter 4 is the first place where readers witness a human relationship with technology and it is not painted in a very positive light. The first technology mentioned is created by God and given to humans as a stop gap for their shame. All human technological development from that point to the flood takes place in the line of Cain. We first see the founding of the first city, then we see a progression from tents to musical instruments, to iron and bronze tools. But the scriptures are not anti-technology. The next major technological construction is the arc, which saves humanity. Interestingly God gives the design to Noah, which seems to indicate that technology, such as clothes or an instrument of salvation, can have a divine imprimatur. But what Noah took on the arc was all the things that were of the natural order, family, animals and food. The things that were left were all the things of Cain's line, manipulative technology.

Despite the anthro-refresh of Genesis chapter 7, there was another fall concerning Noah and human’s again used organization and technology to their own ends and against God. With the Tower of Babel, we see a social organization around an ediface which seems to symbolize everything that can go wrong with society. In the case of the arc and the tower, tar is used to seal, but in one case it saves a life, and in the other, it combats God and oppressed humans.

Such ends the pan-human mythic beginning of humanity before the introduction of Abraham. Much of the rest of the narrative grapples with how to have a civilized and organized people who follow God’s way, amidst a people who grasp for power, often through technology. This becomes very evident when one analyzes war Israelite stories through the lens of technological innovation. From Pharaoh’s charioteers to Sisera, to Goliath, warlike technology, especially the working of iron and use of chariots, has been seen as a negative thing, and becomes the undoing of those who trust God. Working iron can ruin water supplies and cause environmental devastation when done on a large scale. As an example, it may help to hone in on Sisera as a detailed example.

In Judges chapter 4 you get a parallel civil structure of leader and general, one patriarchal and monarchial, the other matriarchal and theocratic. The image of each structure gives merit to our understanding of harmony with nature. Deborah is the wasp, the queen bee, who sits under a palm tree, a natural edifice of shelter. The bee is a creature with a natural affinity for organization and one that harmonizes with the natural order so well, that the way it sustains itself is not by the destruction of other living beings, but by helping them create life. This is a perfect exemplification of a circular model of production. Her general is Barak, a name meaning lightening, indicative of God’s own ability to strike from the sky. They have taken residence on the Mount Tabor, a natural defense against the technology of Sisera and are utilizing the land as it is in order to maintain a stalemate.

Contrast Deborah and Barak with Jabin and Sisera. Jabin is King in Hazor, yet his general is in Harosheth-ha-goiim. Their social structure relies on a hierarchy much like our own that pits rural against militarized urban. The relationship is distant, alienated and colonial. Harosheth-ha-goiim means, “smiths of the Gentiles”, which gives one the image of a fiery hot loud and disruptive place, invested in a military industrial complex that warps nature to the unnatural end of the greatest social sin, war. There is little doubt the city, urbanized as it was, was not friendly to natural processes, and the zeal for smithing 900 iron chariots certainly had negative environmental impacts, necessitating the need to further oppress the rural areas for sustenance. When one reads how the Gentiles polluted the land in Leviticus 18 or Ezekiel 36 it is fairly obvious that there is spiritual idolatrous pollution at work. But if one looks onto Ezekiel chapter 36, the “blood poured out to idols” is likened to menstruation blood. This is about ritual sexual purity, but it is just as much about the land, which has been rendered dormant, ready to spring to new life at the command of the Lord. The rendering dormant could easily be because of unsustainable actions like those of the community Sisera has forged. To get a biblical view of just what the Israelite culture, and presumably God himself, thought of kings, simply review Samuel’swarning to the Israelites in 1 Samuel chapter 12. The speech delivered by Samuel paints a war hungry monarch who takes the production of the land for granted as he oppresses and subjects his people to war.

When the battle comes it is hardly a battle. Sisera maneuvers his 900 iron Chariots through a dry riverbed (an image of desolation and war). But an unseasonal rain shower high on the mountain flashfloods the river and destroys his chariots rendering his forces vulnerable. Deborah calls the attack and the forces of Sisera are soundly defeated. Deborah and her forces use the land to their advantage, where the whole narrative sets Sisera up as being at odds with the land. He symbolizes the exact opposite of Isaiah’s call “they shall beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks.”

Isaiah’s passage reminds us that the scriptures do not take a Luddite position. Technology that cooperates with nature and works according to it. Technology should be minimally intrusive to nature and work within nature as a system, not against nature as a manipulation. A perfect example of this idea is the Law concerning altar stones, “if you make an altar of stone for me, do not build it of cut stone, for by putting a chisel to it you profane it.” Altars are technology for communing with the Lord via the sacrificial system. But they are to be made with reverence for the natural state of the stones. Our part in the system is minimal, figuring out how things go together and facilitating it.

It must be remembered that creation is a communication from God, the more we manipulate and work against it, the more vague and distant that communication becomes. The theocentric ecological consciousness will seek to preserve the natural order of human abidance in order to have a healthy and clearly communicative cosmic temple.

This type of thinking is actually very favorable to the conservative (by recent standards) theologian. It encapsulates te entire foundation for the moral arguments against artificial birth control and in-vitro fertilization. When approached as personal morality issues, these choices are reasoned out by natural law. The argument is teleological, but that teleology plays into a cosmology that assumes nature has a way of working that one cooperates with, not against. Similarly, when the extreme liturgist assumes the organ is the only proper instrument for liturgy, the argument is sometimes made that it “most naturally syncs” with the human voice. I would add that rhythmic clapping is also natural, which leads to the danger of cosmological natural law arguments for morality. They can often be applied haphazardly and/or selectively.

If such cosmological natural law argument apply to sexual morality, regulating human bodies, then why not the land, which is related to the female body? We have already established that care of the cosmic temple as a place of worship is paramount. We are now indicating the most general guideline for this practice, cooperation with as opposed to manipulation of nature. This is the type of technology that will facilitate a circular means of production, which is sustainable. This is the kind of technology that can participate as a foreshadowing of the new Jerusalem while awaiting the resurrection of the earth at the final judgment.

The call to “reduce, reuse, recycle” is not a modern environmental movement. It is the same call the Hebrew Scriptures enjoin. It is the same call that put gluttony onto the list of deadly sins. For those who would decry an “environmentalism” in Church teaching as a new innovation, the chastisement of the gluttonous is a chastisement of those who waste and take for granted this planet we live on.

If one wishes to have an example of a noncircular technology, one need only think of the overwhelming plastic problem we face and how it relates to efficiency in our culture to see just how necessary and applicable this guideline is. Plastic is obviously a manipulation of our chemical environment. It is cut stone so to speak, over manipulated to the point of being considered “man made”. It serves us greatly in the short term, but it has now come to light that its long term effects are grossly detrimental to the cosmological temple. I doubt we would need to label plastic “sinful” or “evil”, just contrary to nature and to be used sparingly. Much better would be ways to achieve the same ends, but in ways that synced with the rhythms of nature, the same calculations that work for fertility issues.

This is applying a divine purpose to how we construct our civilization and create our technology. All ends must be for communion with God and each other. Structures that create oppression and alienate us by making us our own authority are to be shunned. We must begin with any lingering symbiosis between rural and urban life, much like Deborah and Barak symbolize in Judges. Then we must move forward to construct a civilization that blends the two, in a way that respects God’s order of nature, in order to work toward the image of the New Jerusalem where the cosmic temple does its job in an intuitive way. This intuition includes an understanding of matter as sacral, and civilization as a divine order geared toward worship through participation in creation.

In the first section, we laid the groundwork for the importance of a theocentric ecological consciousness. We began by reminding the reader of the sacramental nature of the cosmos. This was illustrated by a contemplation of the three primordial sacraments; Christ, the cosmos, and marriage. We then reviewed sacral matter beginning with human bodies as the human medium between the sacred nature of the seen and unseen. We proceeded to discuss sacred spaces or “temples”, delineating four, the eternal temple, the cosmic temple the corporeal temple, and terrestrial temples as the nexus of each of these in the postlapsarian world. Lastly, we discussed sacral matter under three varieties, receptive, confluential, and auxiliary.

In this section, we have attempted to relate our current environmental problem and garner a general vision of how to proceed. We analyzed our understanding of how we approach our environment as evolving and vulnerable. We went on to note that this vulnerability is linked to the vulnerability of our fellow humans. We commented on the tenuous relationship between urban and rural humanity and began a discussion on the need to transition toward a synthesis of those two lifestyles, especially as it concerns participation with the natural order and development of a circular model of production capable of preserving resources for present and future generations. In the next and last section, we will seek to create general guidelines for applying a theocentric ecological consciousness to society.

Protection of The Environment as Protection of Sacramental Matter

In this first section, we laid the groundwork for the importance of a theocentric ecological consciousness. In the second section attempted to relate our current environmental problem and garner a general vision of how to proceed. In this last section, we will seek to create general guidelines for applying a theocentric ecological consciousness to society.

The Scope of a Theocentric Ecological Consciousness

It is not our agenda to set out a civil program for environmental reform or a list of environmentally cooperative and damaging technologies. Our goal is to point out a general shifting of priorities that need to take place in order to understand the spiritual significance of a theocentric ecological consciousness and then derive the most basic guidelines for implementing a society that is better geared toward utilization of the cosmic temple as such. The more we can come to see terrestrial temples as windows into the greater cosmic structure, the more we can invest in a theocentric ecological consciousness. This will take some reclaiming awareness of many of the basic uses of the cosmic temple which were more intuitive in times past.

The Lord himself reminds us the “love of money is the root of all evil.” Modern capitalism has promised peace and prosperity on the axiom of enlightened self-interest and trust in market forces. But these two working together have neglected the wider impact and ignored the global impact we now have as a species. The promise of our current structure has been “peace and prosperity”. But the realization of that dream has only been prosperity for some and exploitation of the majority. The peace we are given is only peace when the vulnerable submit to their lot in life and surrender their resources as “capital”. The alternate model offered is communism, which equally objectifies the cosmic temple as a mechanism of survival and an object of exploitation.

Rather than calculating by markets or efficiency, a theocentric ecological consciousness puts a value on the material itself and how it is used to glorify God. The first material is our bodies, and our being as human beings, the creatures made in the image and likeness of God. Such creatures reserve a privileged place as the special servants of the rest of the cosmic temple. Our job is to manipulate the sacred vessels of the cosmic temple, consisting of confluential and auxiliary sacral matter, to the glory of God and to the effect of communion with Him and our fellow humans.

The mind of the theocentic ecological consciousness is not geared toward the protection of environmental recourses because of economic calculation. Economic calculation judges, “we must preserve them in order to preserve our economic order.” A theocentric ecological consciousness does not calculate based on purely secular concerns. Such concerns judge, “we must manipulate planetary resources in order to preserve our species.” A theocentric ecological consciousness calculates based on the principal of a sacralized reality, a human telos, and divine and interhuman communion. This reordering may make those overly invested in capitalism and the personal disposal of private property suspicious. A brief internet search will quickly turn up some who even claim the pope is “communist”. But mutual protection of life and resources in order to glorify God is nothing like the atheistic dialectic materialism of communism.

A theocentic ecological consciousness is not incompatible with the idea of private property. Indeed the Catholic Church has always been a proponent of private property used in moral and edifying ways. But the qualification of “edifying ways” is important. The Catechism states,

In the beginning God entrusted the earth and its resources to the common stewardship of mankind to take care of them, master them by labor, and enjoy their fruits. The goods of creation are destined for the whole human race. However, the earth is divided up among men to assure the security of their lives, endangered by poverty and threatened by violence. The appropriation of property is legitimate for guaranteeing the freedom and dignity of persons and for helping each of them to meet his basic needs and the needs of those in his charge. It should allow for a natural solidarity to develop between men.

This is not communism but it is certainly not laissez faire capitalism either. It isn’t even the variety of minimally restricted capitalism we have in place in the United States today. Nor will it ever be, because the capitalism of America takes the economy and it’s “power” as the foundation for both exchanges and for how to interact with one's environment. Capitalism is as alienating and reductionist as communism.

The Catechism reminds us that there is an original purpose to property, and it is more that efficient sustenance, and it is certainly not exploitation for greater profit. The Catechism goes on to explain the proper use of the property by a committed Christian,

The right to private property, acquired or received in a just way, does not do away with the original gift of the earth to the whole of mankind. The universal destination of goods remains primordial, even if the promotion of the common good requires respect for the right to private property and its exercise.

"In his use of things man should regard the external goods he legitimately owns not merely as exclusive to himself but common to others also, in the sense that they can benefit others as well as himself.” The ownership of any property makes its holder a steward of Providence, with the task of making it fruitful and communicating its benefits to others, first of all his family.

Goods of production - material or immaterial - such as land, factories, practical or artistic skills, oblige their possessors to employ them in ways that will benefit the greatest number. Those who hold goods for use and consumption should use them with moderation, reserving the better part for guests, for the sick and the poor.

Our ecological reordering is not one based on economic prosperity, it is one based on respect for God’s plan. Our aim is a change in cosmological view and an application of teleology, not a path of economic prosperity. The term “universal destination goods” implies a greater purpose for material reality than any single person’s use. It could even imply a sacramental cosmology that demonstrates fellowship between God and neighbor.

So, for example, we should seek to garner a civilization that is in sync with a natural circular model of production and that seeks the basic care of all humans in a sustainable way even if it is not the most economically efficient. Many would point out that this is reckless and could lead to grave economic suffering, at least in the short term. We would point out that such concerns are as justified here as when they are applied to the family who wants to use artificial birth control instead of a less effective method of natural family planning. Suffering should be mitigated in each case, but it doesn’t change the immorality of living in modes contrary to proper cosmology and teleology.

The resources we have here must be protected and utilized according to the natural order such that an intuitive worship through the primordial sacraments can be resorted as much as possible, then enjoyed in the New Jerusalem. As Pope Francis says in Laudato Si,

Even now we are journeying towards the sabbath of eternity, the new Jerusalem, towards our common home in heaven. Jesus says: “I make all things new” (Rev 21:5). Eternal life will be a shared experience of awe, in which each creature, resplendently transfigured, will take its rightful place and have something to give those poor men and women who will have been liberated once and for all.

In the meantime, we come together to take charge of this home which has been entrusted to us, knowing that all the good which exists here will be taken up into the heavenly feast. In union with all creatures, we journey through this land seeking God.

A Prioritizing of Society by What is Fundamentally Necessary

This last part of this last section is aimed at some simple calculations that are far from any specifics that would be needed. This treatise will not lay out a particular political, social, technological, economical etc. agenda for approaching the environment, because we are promoting a consciousness that implies a cosmology invested with a telos. Our assessment will simply be the types of things a society should accept or reject when imagining how, we approach our environment.

First, any approach that limits the ready availability of sacral matter to individuals is to be anathema. This foundationally means people need access to their own lives as receptive sacral matter. Society must supply the sustenance of human life in any way possible for that society. This is standard Catholic social teaching. The church teaches that “society has a moral obligation, including governmental action where necessary, to assure opportunity, meet basic human needs.” Maslow's hierarchy of needs is a point of interest when it comes to receptive sacral matter. What needs to be supplied such that receptive sacral matter can be receptive as it is intended? How can these needs be supplied for in a way that respects a circular model of production.

The sacral matter to be made available is certainly confluential, but even auxiliary need to be accounted for. Any way that humanity seeks to properly engage God should be preserved, made available and exercisable. If certain people use corn, or an insect, or a plant material in para-liturgical life, it is part of their communication with God and must be preserved and available. To rob them of this for any reason is to rob them of communion with God in a way appropriate to them.

The ways that such material could be rendered unavailable aren’t just extinction. People lose access by economic means, by social restrictions, by productive restrictions etc. There are many ways the people are alienated from both their own lives and the material they need to meaningfully worship God in a way that respects and utilizes the cosmological temple. Methodologies and social structures that limit access and availability of sacral matter are to be discouraged to the point of being rendered nonexistent to the extent that is possible. For example, if a resource is used for paraliturgical practices by a people, but it is rare and has an extreme economic or say technological, value, the technological and economic value is to be regulated to the service of the spiritual value. We see reflected in these teachings of the church the legacy of very unpopular levitical laws such as Leviticus 25:37, “Do not give your money at interest or your food at a profit.” Yet, anyone who would disagree has priorities beyond communion with God, which is telling. As Pope Saint John Paul II stated in Centesimus Annus,

Man, who discovers his capacity to transform and in a certain sense create the world through his own work, forgets that this is always based on God's prior and original gift of the things that are. 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, which man can indeed develop but must not betray. 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, which is more tyrannized than governed by him.

Again, this is not some “new fangled” teaching. Leviticus has a host of laws that are suited to this exact end. The laws concerning gleaning that plays so prominently in the book of Ruth are aimed at maintaining receptive sacral matter. The laws concerning how to acquire a lamb for the Passover remind one that binding as communities to share in sacral matter in order to worship is obligatory.

A great example of this is the law concerning the sabbatical year in Leviticus 25. The law states,

But during the seventh year the land shall have a sabbath of complete rest, a sabbath for the Lord, when you may neither sow your field nor prune your vineyard.The aftergrowth of your harvest you shall not reap, nor shall you pick the grapes of your untrimmed vines. It shall be a year of rest for the land. While the land has its sabbath, all its produce will be food to eat for you yourself and for your male and female slave, for your laborer and the tenant who live with you, and likewise for your livestock and for the wild animals on your land.

In this law one sees how both environment and care of the land work together implement justice and show glory to God. As the land lays fallow it is rejuvenated as part of a cycle that Pope Francis calls a circular model of production. At the same time, it does yield its produce and this reminds us that God brings the crops, not our labor. When those crops do come they are distributed equally between all people and animals for their use. Any that is left over is left alone, so as not to grasp beyond need, harkening back to another Levitical law, “you shall not pick your vineyard bare, nor gather up the grapes that have fallen. These things you shall leave for the poor and the alien. I, the Lord, am your God.”

The thrust of technology and the organization of civilization should serve all people according to the pro-life and pro-environmet agenda of the Church and do so in a way that is compatible with the cosmological and teleological demands of good theology. Again, the best image one can get for this from scriptures is the beating of swords into plowshares. Here a technology met for slaying humans, an action against the order of Eden, is turned to a purpose of agriculture, the purpose of Adam in the garden. Technologies that by their creation use and dissolution maintain or enrich the ecological standing of the cosmic temple.

These are the two general guidelines that are the center of a theocentric ecological consciousness, protection of receptive sacral matter and protection of the vessels of the cosmic temple, confluential and auxiliary sacral matter. Again, care of the Earth is our original vocation. A theocentric ecological consciousness differs from a “theocracy” in a theocracy the rules of religion influence or even become the rules of the state. With a theocentric ecological consciousness, the investment in worship becomes an investment in the physical world. This involves a clever application of natural law, teleology, and cosmology that applies the Christian worldview universally, and not just haphazardly. It is seeking to be perfect as our heavenly father is perfect, not just in personal moral choices, not just in how we organize society for people, but in how we relate to God’s creatin s an instrument of revelation and communion with God.

In this section, we sought to create general guidelines for applying a theocentric ecological consciousness to society. We understood that our problem was a concupiscent disordering of our value in society. We prioritize efficiency and a deified market above the sacral matter of creation. We noted that with a theocentric ecological consciousness the gift of personal property intuitively comes with the responsibility to use it appropriately. We went on to note that the lens through which society should operate is preservation, availability, and engagement of sacral matter. Such sacral material includes receptive sacral matter (people) as well as confluential and auxiliary sacral matter, (everything else).

Conclusion

In this first section, we laid the groundwork for the importance of a theocentric ecological consciousness. We began by reminding the reader of the sacramental nature of the cosmos. This was illustrated by a contemplation of the three primordial sacraments; Christ, the cosmos, and marriage. We then reviewed sacral matter beginning with human bodies as the human medium between the sacred nature of the seen and unseen. We proceeded to discuss sacred spaces or “temples”, delineating four, the eternal temple, the cosmic temple the corporeal temple, and terrestrial temples as the nexus of each of these in the postlapsarian world. Lastly, we discussed sacral matter under three varieties, receptive, confluential and auxiliary. These would be matter used to channel the grace of God through the seven sacraments as well as all paraliturgy and popular piety. Lastly, we related the importance of the preservation and availability of sacramental material in order to properly worship God. Understanding this is the difference between secular environmentalism and social justice and a theocentric ecological consciousness.

In the second section attempted to relate our current environmental problem and garner a general vision of how to proceed. We analyzed our understanding of how we approach our environment as evolving and vulnerable. We went on to note that this vulnerability is linked to the vulnerability of our fellow humans. We commented on the tenuous relationship between urban and rural humanity and began a discussion on the need to transition toward a synthesis of those two lifestyles, especially as it concerns participation with the natural order and development of a circular model of production capable of preserving resources for present and future generations. We chose as our narrative for inspiration the baron matriarch and the empty tomb. We closed this section out with a meditation on how Israel views technology and from that derived our general guideline for environmental engagement concerning technology. Using natural law we came to the conclusion that technology that facilitates a circular means of production should be cooperative and not manipulative with nature.

In the third section, we sought to create general guidelines for applying a theocentric ecological consciousness to society. We understood that our problem was a concupiscent disordering of our value in society. We prioritize efficiency and a deified market above the sacral matter of creation. We noted that with a theocentric ecological consciousness the gift of personal property intuitively comes with the responsibility to use it appropriately. We went on to note that the lens through which society should operate is preservation, availability, and engagement of sacral matter. Such sacral material includes receptive sacral matter (people) as well as confluential and auxiliary sacral matter, (everything else).

The purpose of this treatise was to formulate an approach to the environment that is centered on a sacramental cosmology in order to eschew the opinion that ecological concern is somehow a secular corruption of Catholic teaching. It is hoped that the end result demonstrates a need to care for and regard our environment in a way that gears the participant toward better relationship with God and neighbor.

Transpositional Theology

Thursday, December 16, 2021

On Promotion of a Theocentric Ecological Consciousness: Environmental Activism as a Facilitation of Divine Worship

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