Ecology: Key to teaching young people about Christian morality

Published: 2007-07-26

VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- Pope Benedict XVI believes ecology could hold the key to teaching young people about Christian morality. The papal intuition is sparked by the fact that ecology is a widely accepted moral concern, but one that points much deeper: Nature itself teaches that some things are naturally right and some are naturally wrong. Appropriately, Pope Benedict had Alpine peaks and meadows as a backdrop when he added the environmental twist to his oft-repeated call for a moral education of the young based on a recognition of natural law. When a priest in northern Italy asked him July 24 for suggestions on how to educate the moral conscience of the young, the pope began with a rather philosophical explanation of conscience and natural law. In the Christian view, the natural moral code is not an arbitrary list of do's and don'ts thought up by religious leaders or resulting from a majority vote, but is part of human nature and the result of being created by God, the pope said. Humans are special creatures precisely because they have the ability "to listen to the voice of the Creator and, in this way, know what is good and what is bad."

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