Article 2: Can we be open to life, against death, and for the planet?
I read two great articles in Mother Jones (www.motherjones.com) today. One ,”Michael Pollan Fixes Dinner” , about transforming the way we eat food (which I largely agree with) and one, “Tiniest of Baby Booms- a Monster”, about stoning people for having too many kids(which because I have six kids, I do not agree with).
Okay, to be fair, the author, Julia Whitty, never proposes stoning as a strategy for dealing with people like me, but Whitty does articulate an argument you are hearing more and more about these days, that having more than 2 kids might just be….wrong.
Let me give you some personal background. I have ~90 first cousins (the census bereau has not yet given us an accurate count), and most of us live near Omaha, Nebraska…so I grew up around my share of large families. And now, my amazing wife Teresa and I have six children of our own. At the same time, I have worked in the renewable fuels energy working on climate change mitigation. I have worked with environmental organizations like the National Commission on Energy Policy and with the Environmental Defense Fund on developing policies that would encourage the development of transportation fuels that reduce the amount of carbon that is emitted into the atmosphere on a carbon to energy ratio. In this capacity I have argued passionately that climate change is real, that man made greenhouse gas emissions are part of that, and that we must as a nation do what we can to lead our way out of this mess.
My point in telling you all of this is the following. I am a Catholic, I love being a Catholic, and I am a Catholic before I am anything else. And as a Catholic, I believe in being open to the creation of new life, I believe in protecting innocent human life from the moment of conception through natural death, and….I believe in being good stewards of the Natural Resources that God has given to us…in other words, I believe in being good to the planet.
And not only do I not find these views to be contradictory I believe they are completely consistent and it is why I love being Catholic.
Yet I have met several people in the environmental movement who question the ethics of my having a big family. As the author of the Mother Jones article points out, they have criticized me for having the single biggest negative impact on Global Climate Change by having an unreasonable amount of children. I have been told that my wife and I are selfish for our actions.
On the other hand, I have been criticized by members of the American Conservative Political establishment for believing in and being an activist for the issue of climate change. Bunk science meant to destroy capitalism forever, I am told.
Well, hate to disappoint both groups of people, but I was not put on this earth to serve the cultural agenda of the environmental left or the economic agenda of the political right. I was put on this earth to serve God. Now, granted, on a daily basis, I do fail to serve God as I should, mostly because I am a selfish punk who normally thinks my way preferable to God’s way. However, on three critical issues I have at least managed my way to clear thought, if not always clear actions. The issues of being open to life, defending life, and protecting the planet.
Open to Life: The power that makes us humans, that seperates us most spectacularly from the Angels and that causes demons to be jealous of us, is our unique power to come togegther in love with another human and….create a new, uniqe life, that will last forever. No, we are not the ones who create the soul, but without our action to come together in sexual love, God would not join with us in uniting this newly created and unique soul to this new body, thus creating a human person. Thus, we humans share the power of creation with God. And no matter how smart the Angel Lucipher might have been, he knew that he would never have this power, and in some ways would never be as close to God as us…never be as much like God as us. And so Lucipher rejected God, his plan for humans, and humans…and has spent human history trying to get humans to abandon, distort, and destroy this amazing power. I firmly believe that we are not only most human, but most like God when we come together in love to share this Awesome power with God. And thus, anything that disrespects this awesome power, is so fundamentally against our nature as humans…that it is wrong. Though life is not necessarily a contest to see how many children you could raise, the fact is this. My wife and I are good parents, who sole concern is that our children be close to God and love and respect other people. Our six children will make the world a profoundly better place and we are honored by our participation in the creation and education of six eternal lives!
Defend Life from conception through natural death: practically every American I know believes that life does not end with the death of our natural body. And in that belief, Americans are acknowledging somethign very profound. That humans have a spirit or soul that is eternal, and that this spirit or soul is not dependent on a living body for existence. Based on their beliefs about the after life, Americans are thus freed to believe something about the moment of life. That at the moment of conception, a soul could exist. If a soul can exist independent of a living body, then it certainly could exist when the body was alive, but only a few cells big, as in the case of the newly created human embryo.
And Catholics do in fact believe that the soul is created at the moment of conception, and thus created, this person is guaranteed protection, both morally and, within the American system, constitutionally. Thus created, I obey the Catholic Church’s leadership, and agree that this human person should always be protected and it is a bad thing to kill a person (though in some occasions the killing of a person can be tolerated morally if a person were trying to cause you lethal harm) Thus, I am against medical abortions, the use of hormonal contraceptives that can cause abortions, the destruction of embryos, the creation of extra embryos, unjust war, euthanasia, and the use of the death penalty as it is currently practiced in developed countries like the US.
Protect the Planet: True that no power is as amazing as our ability to be co-creators of eternal lives. However, God wanted us to be fertile and multipy and to be good stewards of the creation that he gave to us. According to Whitty’s Mother Jones article, these two are in tension with the developing environmental mess. First, let me get this off my chest. I have met too many environmentalists who are way more concerned with non-human life than with human life and I have met too many economic conservatives who are way more concerned with the accumulation of money than with people. God and the Church calls us to be most concerned with people.
The reality is that very few people in the world want to have six children anymore and that some populations are having less children than necessary to replace themselves. As poor people continue to develop, they will have less kids and there will always be people who want to have hardly any kids. It does not appear that there will be a growing number of people who generation after generation want to have more kids. Thus, although me and my six children may cause weird looks at the store, the point is they will always cause weird looks because we are not the norm. No, we are just a simple family, with four children sleeping in one room, living in a modest home, and having a lot of fun loving each other. And, in addition to teaching them to love God I am also teaching them to love and take care of the beautiful world God gave to them. I am teaching them that the joy in life isn’t in the accumulation of things but in the accumulation of friends and in living within the rhythm of the world that God gave to us.
And contrary to the author of the Mother Jones article, I believe that every aspect of our world would be better, not worse if there were actually more families like mine :)
