by Joseph Stoutzenberger
A few years ago, a publisher approached me about writing a book about Francis of Assisi and nature. I knew Francis is associated with love of creation and is the patron saint of the environment. His statues with birds on his shoulder and other animals at his feet in gardens everywhere attest to his popularity as the one saint most in tune with nonhuman creatures. Did he deserve this reputation, or could other saints have just as easily been chosen for this honor? I decided to look into recent Catholic teaching about nature and Francis’s contribution to it.
Before the late nineteen-sixties, Catholic leaders and theologians said little about nature as we know it. “Nature” was not the wonderful world of birds and bees, oceans and trees. Nature was an abstraction, such as “human nature” or “the natural order.” Something changed in the late sixties. A catalyst for that change was a 1966 lecture delivered by a medieval historian at an academic conference, later published in an academic journal. Lynn White decried the disregard for and exploitation of nature that he saw around him. (This was four years after Rachel Carson published her groundbreaking Silent Spring and alerted the world about the dangers of pollution and our mistreatment of nature.) White declared that the Judeo-Christian tradition was largely to blame. Its anthropocentrism, centering on humanity, provided a justification for treating the rest of nature with no regard for any impact on water, air, soil, and species teetering on the verge of extinction. He pointed out that in the bible itself God gave humanity (Adam) a mandate to “have dominion over all creatures.” Christians typically interpreted that to mean that they were separate from and above the rest of creation; they were in charge. White suggested that Francis of Assisi stood out as someone who held a different perspective on nature.
Around this time, theologians of all traditions began to look into their teachings to see if there was anything in them that would counter the degradation of nature they were hearing about and seeing around them. Bible scholars looked at the Hebrew word used in Genesis for “dominion over.” They discovered that the same word is used in the next story told in the bible, about the two sons of Adam and Eve. Cain is jealous of his brother Abel and kills him. God seeks out Cain and asks him about the whereabouts of Abel. Cain replies, “How should I know? Am I my brother’s keeper?” The word for “keeper” here is the same as the word used for “dominion over.” Scholars realized that God was really telling Adam that he was responsible for the rest of creation; he was to be a caretaker of other creatures, just as Cain was indeed responsible for his brother’s welfare. This realization gave rise to the concept “stewardship” in Catholic teaching. Nature did not belong to human beings to do with as they wished. Instead, they were to be good stewards of what belonged to God. Care for creation was a biblical mandate.
What about Francis of Assisi? Two stories written about Francis early on paint a different picture of how he viewed the rest of nature. In one story, Francis is trying to preach to a crowd that had gathered. He can’t be heard because a flock of birds nearby is chirping away loudly. Francis says to the birds, “You have been praising God in your way. Would you be quiet for a bit so that I can also praise God in my way?” The birds become silent, and Francis sings God’s praises to the crowd just as the birds had been doing. In another story, Francis is staying at an abandoned monastery with some of his brothers. It’s time for night prayer, but Francis hears crickets outside his window. Instead of going to chapel for night prayer, he instead joins the crickets in singing the praises of God.
These two stories do not describe Francis as lording it over other creatures, not even to be a caretaker of them. Instead, he recognizes that he and they are fellow creatures under God. He and the sun, the moon, water, and fire are sisters and brothers. This democracy of nature, human and nonhuman together, is a radical vision of the relationship between humans and the rest of creation. All creation is one family.
When Jorge Bergoglio took the name Francis as pope, it signaled that he intended to serve in the spirit of Francis of Assisi. He demonstrated concern for people who were poor and struggling, such as immigrants to Europe from Africa. He soon showed that concern for those in need extended to nonhuman creatures as well. An early encyclical of his begins with the opening line of Francis of Assisi’s Canticle of the Creatures, Laudato Si. Pope Francis alerted the people of the world that we need to recognize we share one home with the rest of nature. As brothers and sisters, we live together in harmony or perish in isolation from insensitivity, a misguided vision of invulnerability, and misuse. He found inspiration for that message in the simple life story of his namesake, Francis of Assisi.
Joseph Stoutzenberger 