Month: August 2010

I always welcome the emergence of new contributions on Orthodoxy and culture by thoughtful commentators. Orthodox Christianity has much to give this country, indeed all of the Christian West, but our thinking has been underdeveloped and our contributions sparse. Much of this is due of course to historical circumstance; Orthodox Christianity is only now finding its voice in the public square. We’ve seen the contributions primarily in the new media, blogs mostly, but also in journals and elsewhere. We see it on all levels too, from the academy to cultural gatekeepers to those of us who, as Hayek says, are “merchants of ideas.”

Fr. Michael Butler

Advising the Poor to Do Less With Less

By John Couretas

Source: Acton Power Blog

John Couretas

On his recently launched Ambiguorum Blogis site, Fr. Michael Butler is reviewing Elizabeth Theokritoff’s Living in God’s Creation: Orthodox Perspectives on Ecology (St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2009). Fr. Michael, who joined us for Acton University 2010, examines the author’s exhausted earth meme, beginning with this quote from the book:

It is hard to escape the conclusion that with an ever-growing human population, it is not enough for humanity as a whole to do more with less; individually, we must also learn to do less with less (Theokritoff, p. 21).

Fr. Michael comments:

This statement is astonishing. It is a call to reduce our quality of life, and I find it hard to square with her concern for the poor and the weak, for whom learning “to do less with less” is a recipe for catastrophe. She says, on p. 19, “most environmental problems take their toll on the poor and weak long before they affect those who can afford to live far from the landfills, upwind of the factories or power plants, and well above sea level”. If the poor and the weak suffer in our current economy, their suffering in a reduced economy will be unspeakable. A vibrant economy helps everyone; poverty in the United States, for example, is incomparable with poverty found elsewhere in the world. The poor and weak will not be helped by making everyone else poorer and weaker.

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