Creation as a Norm for Moral Action

I. Pope Francis on Creation¹

Pope Francis's encyclical letter Laudato Si' provides his hallmark teaching on "care for our common home." The encyclical, with an eye toward encouraging dialogue, addresses all peoples. One may already note its salutary effect on international agreements about the planet's environment and other examples of renewed emphasis on the respect that humans owe to the Lord's creation.

Of the nine times that the encyclical employs the word "moral," seven of them are found in citations from the pope's immediate predecessors. In one place, however, the pope speaks in his own voice about natural moral law. "Human ecology," he says, "also implies another profound reality [besides the practical steps that must be taken to safeguard it]: the relationship between human life and the moral law, which is inscribed in our nature and is necessary for the creation of a more dignified environment."² Of course, the whole encyclical may be seen as a moral exhortation to follow the "guidelines . . . found in the treasure of Christian spiritual experience" for the care of creation.³ To expose, however, the specific theme of creation as a norm for moral action, I will focus on recent papal teachings on natural law, "which," as Francis reminds us, "is inscribed in our nature." These teachings in fact receive a new expression and emphasis in Laudato Si'.

By way of preface to this exposition, one distinction from Francis merits special attention. The pope distinguishes between nature in the sense of an object of scientific investigation and what he refers to as creation in the Judaeo Christian tradition.⁴ Some years ago, Dominican theologian Benedict Ashley underscored the usefulness of this distinction. Ashley associated the late medieval rise of extrinsic voluntarism with what he called the "objectification of the material world," that is, nature as an object of measurement.⁵ For Francis, however, creation and creation's law reflect "God's art," an expression that the pope borrows from St. Thomas Aquinas.⁶ This text from Aquinas's Commentary on Aristotle's Physics runs as follows: "It is clear that nature is nothing but a certain kind of art, i.e., the divine art, impressed upon things, by which these things are moved to a determinate end."⁷ For Francis, creation exhibits then its own teleologies, which in the human creature establish moral norms. So he prefers that his readers contemplate nature rather than measure it. Otherwise put, Francis encourages us to regard nature more as a mirror than a puzzle.⁸

II. Pope Francis Faces Challenges

The theme of natural law has served recent popes on a number of different battle fronts. For example, during the first month of 2012, Pope Benedict XVI referred to natural law in two important speeches to those responsible for Church order. Addressing ecclesiastical lawyers, Benedict reminded them that canon law falls within the ambit of natural law.⁹ To the bishops of the United States, he cited natural law as an integral part of the struggle to preserve religious freedom. "The Church's defense of a moral reasoning based on the natural law," Benedict affirmed, "is grounded on her conviction that this law is not a threat to our freedom, but rather a 'language' which enables us to understand ourselves and the truth of our being, and so to shape a more just and humane world."¹⁰ Faith and reason. Grace and nature. Church and the political order. Natural law figures prominently in both the Church's magisterium and her efforts at evangelization. Today, in continuity with his predecessors, Pope Francis has placed natural law at the service of a Christian outlook on environmental protection. His vision extends to the macroscopic; the microscopic, he leaves to the specialists.¹¹

One may observe that the emphasis placed on natural law during this and recent pontificates reveals how the Holy Spirit guides the Church. As natural law did not garner much attention from theologians after the Second Vatican Council, discontinuity within the theological community manifested itself quickly. Of course, the council fathers did not address...