Imagine that you and your neighbors lived along a beautiful little river that provided clean, sweet, fresh water to all of you. This river provided you with drinking water, bath water, and water to irrigate your gardens. You could even go fishing in the river. It was a beautiful river and you would often sit on its banks and simply watch the river flow by.
Then one day a neighbor up river got the idea of starting a pig farm. All your neighbors love to eat pork, so the idea of a pig farm was welcome. However, the new pig farmer wasn’t very careful. He always looked for short cuts, as well as the cheapest and the easiest way to get things done. Before long you notice that the river which you all depend on is polluted with pig waste. This compromises the quality of the water for drinking, bathing and laundry. You complain to the pig farmer neighbor who apologizes but does nothing to improve the situation. The fish that live in the river begin to die, as the river becomes more polluted. Eventually the river becomes little more than a stinking, open sewer thanks to the pig farmer who is always ready to apologize but never does anything to improve the situation.
The pig farmer may not think of himself as an evil person but just as a businessman who is trying to support his family and make some money in a legitimate manner. However, in thinking only of himself he is destroying a resource that doesn’t belong to him but is a resource that he must share with all his neighbors. His actions are evil because he is harming his neighbors. Essentially, he is a thief stealing from his neighbors the resource that they need to survive.
Maybe an example closer to home might make things clearer. Back in the early eighties I can remember the atuli run each spring. Thousands of fish would come into the Saipan lagoon and there would be an abundance of atuli for several weeks. By the early 90’s there was no more atuli run.
The Saipan lagoon was once home to all kinds of reef fish. Then some fishermen got lazy and used dynamite and bleach to stun fish, causing them to float to the surface where they could easily be scooped up. It was an easy way to catch a load of fish but in the process the reef was slowly destroyed by the dynamite and bleach. The result was fewer and fewer fish because their habitat was destroyed.
Were those fishermen evil? Probably not, as I doubt that their intentions were malicious. However, in their laziness and stupidity they destroyed a resource that didn’t belong to them but was shared with everyone else in the CNMI. Essentially, they were thieves not fishermen. Their actions had evil consequences that are still being felt decades later.
About a year and a half ago Pope Francis promulgated an encyclical letter on the environment, Lauditio Si. In that encyclical, he spoke about our moral responsibility to care for the environ- ment. Little has come of the encyclical, as people tended to pay attention to it along lines of political and self-interest. Yet, it is becoming more and more difficult to simply deny that the environment is a problem. The Antarctic is melting away. The average temperature throughout the world is inching upward degree by degree. Weather conditions are more erratic throughout much of the world. The sea level is rising inch by inch, which can be disastrous in places like the Marshall Islands where the highest point is only a few feet about sea level.
It is the consensus of scientists who have seriously studied the matter, that the current environmental problems are the result, at least in part, of human actions. Natural fluctuations in the environment may be a part of the equation but if there is anything that we can do as responsible citizens to lessen the impact on the environment of natural fluctuations in the climate as well as any contributions from human pollution of the environment we should be doing what we can.
Are the people who take a “head in the sand” attitude toward the environment evil? Again, I would guess that their intention is not malicious but that they are willing to ignore the scientific consensus and the evidence of their own senses to protect their self-interest. However, to ignore the current situation is wrong and has evil consequences for everyone. One of the points that the Pope tried to make in Ladatio Si was that morality isn’t just about with whom we have sex or whether we use contraceptives or not. Morality is about what ac- tions we choose to do and the consequence of those actions on others. Christian morality is about our efforts to protect the environment, as much as it is about the more traditional moral issues we spend so much time and energy arguing over.
A few years ago, the term “cafeteria Catholics’ was bandied about by Catholic commen- tators who were complaining that some Catholics treat the Faith like a cafeteria. Picking and choosing what they like and ignoring those part of the Church’s teachings that didn’t appeal to them. These commentators were complaining about Catholics who focused on the “social Gospel” and its call for justice in society but tended to ignore those teachings that dealt with personal morality (birth control, sexual behavior, etc.). However, it is obvious that the concept of “cafeteria Catholics” can be applied to those who would like to ignore the demands of the social Gospel, especially when it might make demands on them, as with concerns over the environment. While there are different levels of Church teaching, as I spoke of in previous ATW articles, and the different levels of teaching make different demands on us as Catholics, we cannot be cafeteria Catholics, picking and choosing teachings that we like and ignoring those that we find difficult.
