The Supreme Court and Laudato Si’

By Christopher Zehnder

When I first learned of the Supreme Court’s decision striking down statutes forbidding same-sex marriage, I felt neither surprise nor dismay. No surprise, for it was just what I had expected. No dismay, for I did not expect anything other from our society, or its government.

I did feel annoyed, however – for, like a vamp coming late to a party, the Supreme Court has drawn all eyes from the one who had been the belle of the ball: Pope Francis and his encyclical, Laudato Si’.

Yet, it is fitting, in a way, that the Supreme Court’s decision should so closely follow the pope’s encyclical, for the former brings into focus the major theme of the latter. That theme is not the threat of climate change, whatever those who want either to dismiss the encyclical or coöpt it say. A major – if not the major – theme of Laudato Si’ is that, both in the moral order and the natural order, everything is connected. How we treat the “environment” is how we will treat ourselves, and how we treat ourselves is how we will treat the natural world outside ourselves.

This point may not seem immediately obvious. After all, an industrialist who pours sludge into a river is not going to mix it into his coffee. And people will take the most assiduous care of their pets even while they ruin their constitutions with unhealthy eating. Everyone probably knows someone who lives with such contradictions in their souls – but this is merely to point out that human beings tend to be self-divided in a profound inconsistency between ideals and actions – or, even, between one ideal and another ideal.

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The Imperfection of Christ: the Role of the Church in the Fulfillment of Man and God-Man

By Christopher Zehnder

“And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth… And from his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace.” (John 1:14, 16)

“…and he has put all things under his feet and has made him the head over all things for the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills all in all.” (Ephesians 1:22-23)

These verses confront us with mystery; or is it perhaps a contradiction? An absurdity? Paul says the Church is the fullness of him from whom John says we all receive grace. The Church is the fulfillment of him who is the fulfillment of all. How can this be?

We readily accept the idea of Christ as our fulfillment; Christ is the fullness from which we receive our fullness— our union through love and faith (and, one day, knowledge) with God. Yet, as Church teaching and Sacred Scripture attest, we we partake of the divine life through Christ, not as individuals but by incorporation, by baptism, into the Body of Christ, the Church (I Cor. 12:13). Jesus Christ, thus, is our fulfillment in and through the Church.

Nevertheless, how the Church serves as the instrument of human fulfillment in Christ is not, perhaps, readilly apparent. After all, is it not the individual intellect that perceives God through faith? Is it not the individual will that loves him? The Church may appear, then, as a temporary expedient, a mere instrument of the soul’s union with God, not a constituent aspect of it. Christ is our fulfillment; but how does the Church figure in this fulfillment?

And how is the Church, as Paul says, “the fullness of him who fills all in all”? The Church lives the divine life because she is joined to God through the instrumentality of Christ’s human nature. The Church receives her all from Christ; how, then, can Christ receive aught at all from the Church?

Thoughts Conceived During a Long Walk through a California Oak Savannah after Reading Too Much Teilhard de Chardin

By Christopher Zehnder

The following is not Teilhardian; I am not Teilhardian. Teilhard merely presented a challenge that stimulated a train of thoughts, and these took the form of the following propositions. I hope to develop them in more detail in the future. 

1. Genesis presents the creation of the cosmos as a process of unfolding, a moving from the less perfect to the more perfect, from the good to the very good.

2. The six days of creation suggest a temporal sequence, not an instantaneous creation.

3. The order in Genesis 1 reflects the natural order of priorty among creatures. Mere animals have all the perfections of vegetative life as well as sensistive life. Man has all the perfections of vegetative life and of sensitive life, but is endowed with reason. From Genesis (assuming a temporal sequence), we can say there was a time when the highest perfection of existent life was merely vegetative, then came a time when the perfection was sensitive, then followed the perfection of rationality. Even if the creation were instantaneous, vegetative life is still prior (as a prequesite) to the formation of animal life, and animal life prior to the formation of rational life.