Interesting: "Green Thomism"?

A fascinating discussion of a possible Thomistic contribution to the environmental movement--a "theology of embodiment".  Excerpts follow:

“Ah! If we could and would only listen to the lesson of the bees…how much better the world would be! Working like bees with order and peace we would learn to enjoy and have others enjoy the fruit of our labors, the honey and the wax, the sweetness and the light of this life here below.”

Henry David Thoreau, you suspect? Peter, Paul and Mary? A poster at the local organic co-op lamenting the impact of some colony collapse disorder? Not quite.

These words come from a 1947 papal address that Pope Pius XII gave to a gathering of Italian apiarists. He exhorted them to continue in their work of raising bees, which “by its nature and significance has a psychological, moral, social and even religious interest of no small value.” After all, he continued, “what lessons do not bees give to men who are, or should be, guided by reason, the living reflection of the divine intellect!” In this simple address to a gathering of Italian bee-keepers, I am struck by the confidence and tenderness with which the Holy Father exhorts them in their labor, recognizing that in their working so closely with nature and natural creatures, they are being offered something of a tutorial in the Christian life.

Those of us with a more modern attitude toward the created order might find in his address a romantic, even quaint, zeal for the simpler life that more sophisticated Catholics ought to politely (and politically) dismiss. Such rhetoric, we might suggest these days, is best left for the “tree huggers,” the “granola types,” as well as their “lefty” friends. After all, don’t thoughtful Catholics know better than to embrace the fads of such environmental sentiments?

But such a dismissal of all things “green” would be a mistake, and ultimately inconsistent with some of our most fundamental Catholic convictions. Indeed, among all of the Christian communities, and among all religions ever, Catholicism is best equipped to enter into the conversations about environmental stewardship; to hold at arm’s length what appears to be a “liberal thing” would betray a fundamental ignorance of our own tradition, and may perhaps lead to tragically missing opportunities for evangelization...

This is not the first time the Church has been called upon to correct a widely held but alien vision of material creation and our place within it. The Albigensian heresy of the twelfth century (itself an ancestor of a still earlier heresy—Manichaeism, which St. Augustine espoused for nine years) was, among other things, an environmental philosophy that endorsed a vision of material creation as utterly corrupted and the human person as an abomination in a disordered creation. The Order of Preachers, which came to be through the vision of St. Dominic, was inspired to combat such a faulty theology of creation. Among others, Thomas Aquinas answered the call to serve. His unparalleled genius and personal holiness was enough to inspire others in their search. But perhaps more importantly for today’s purposes, he proposed a vision of the created order that can supply us with the necessary tools to address the meaning of the environment and our place within it. Of course, even as an ardent Thomist, I know it is not enough simply to repeat the insights of the thirteenth-century mendicant. But we would be very well served if we would renew our efforts to consider how Thomism can address some of the fundamental questions surrounding environmental stewardship...