Integral Ecology

The Winter 2015 issue of Communio is dedicated to the theme of “Integral Ecology.”

Realization of a true ecology demands . . . the genuine ‘presencing’ of beings to each other, even as this presencing demands recognition of a giftedness, hence generosity, inherent in beings—indeed, in all beings.

When we see technê , human work, as determined by reality precisely as true, good, and beautiful, the practice it entails brings man into contact with a whole universe of meaning that eventually involves man’s most determinative relationships.

Read in a trinitarian key, Laudato si’ is a song, a hymn to the Creator God.

The different levels of natural beings express different aspects of God’s goodness and make possible an ordered whole in which lower parts serve higher parts and each part serves the whole.

We cede too much ground—we lose too much that is necessarily human—when we pretend that we can study the economy solely as a way to allocate scarce means, without a discussion of ends.

Failure to grasp human creatureliness . . . will result inevitably in a reduced and instrumental understanding of nature and in the reduction of the world to a mere environment.

Seeking the truth calls for a contemplative stance attentive to the whole.

God speaks and it is.