A NEW SHADE OF GREEN? NATURE, FREEDOM, AND SEXUAL DIFFERENCE IN CARITAS IN VERITATE

Caritas in veritate collapses distinctions in Catholic moral theology between "social issues" and "life issues." This note examines Pope Benedict XVI's "pro-life environmentalism" and the underlying assumptions concerning the meaning of freedom, the contours of nature, and the significance of sexual differentiation on which the pope relies. While the encyclical powerfully critiques liberal Western preoccupation with rights as noninterference and expands the lens through which we view respect for the environment, the connections between "human ecology" and "physical ecology" are less than convincing. Moreover, the absence of a gender lens limits the encyclical's treatment of integral human development.