Prioritizing Our Priorities

The headline in the November 14, 2019 National Catholic Reporter flashed the latest news: Abortion preeminent issue, global warming not urgent, say bishops.

Despite so very much to choose from, the declaration that climate change is not urgent and that abortion must take priority particularly fired my outrage. I have to say what young environmental activist, Greta Thunberg, said to the adults assembled at the United Nations as she spoke of our leaving it to young people to resolve the climate crisis:

“How Dare You.”

This is not the format, nor my interest, to get into the abortion debate. I want, instead, to get into the “priority” debate. This is the world at stake; every life at stake and, as if the term urgency weren’t critical enough, the issue of climate change (“Global warming” is a passe, too limited term; bishops…keep up) is critically urgent.

If we are going to do “The Great Work” as past and present scientists and Jesuit priests, Teilhard de Chardin and Thomas Berry, call for, let the truly greatest and the highest of priorities be: the salvation and preservation of all life on the planet. In fact, in this, according to Berry, we really have no choice:

The Great Work before us, the task of moving modern industrial civilization from its present devastating influence on Earth to a more benign mode of human presence, is not a role that we have chosen. We did not choose. We were chosen by some power beyond ourselves for this historical task. We do not choose the moment of our birth, who our parents will be, or our particular culture. We do not choose the status of spiritual insight or political or economic conditions that will be the context of our lives. We are, as it were, thrown into existence with a challenge and a role that is beyond any personal choice. The nobility of our lives, however, depends upon the manner in which we come to understand and fulfill our assigned role.

What if, bishops, we all worked together for mutual enhancement, not only for our sake but for the sake of all living things now and in the future. What if, bishops, we took on the truly great task before us. What if, bishops, we preserved, protected, and revered the revelations that continually happen in and though the earth. Again, Thomas Berry:

…If the dynamics of the universe from the beginning shaped the course of the heavens, lighted the sun, and formed the Earth; if this same dynamism brought forth the continents and seas and atmosphere; if it awakened life in the primordial cell and then brought into being the unnumbered variety of living beings and finally brought humans into being and guided us safely through the turbulent centuries, there is reason to believe this same guiding process is precisely what has awakened in us our present understanding of ourselves and our relationship to this stupendous process. Sensitized to this guidance we can have confidence in the future that awaits the human venture.

“Sensitized to this guidance,” bishops, are you listening? Are all of us listening?