George Weigel is IMO one of the most insightful Christians out there, and yet, after clarifying analyses, he always seems to draw the wrong conclusion. I am still on the David Hart bunny trail (off and on — the book is hard going), but here’s the latest. Creation groans (or here), by Weigel, correctly recognizes Hart’s contribution. Weigel goes on to consider what exactly in the fallen world - the environment or the cities - is fallen. There is a round criticism (mostly deserved) of environmentalism’s Romanticism, and then… the wrong conclusion: that because the environmentalists are wrong in their fantasies about an overly-gentle nature, they must also be wrong in their assessment of the evils of the city and civilization.

The right answer is that all of creation is fallen, the non-human part (“nature”) and the human part (“civilization” and “cities”). The environmentalists do have a few things right. Sure, Revelation calls us to the heavenly Jerusalem, but Paradise was a Garden, and it is dwelling in peace with God in the Promised Land that is the vision of the Old Testament, a vision fulfilled in Christ. In heaven, not only humans and cities will be renewed, but all creation. Why do some Christians always seem to want to exclude every creature but the human?

Another question bugs me about Catholic moral theology. If the standard is “natural law”, but “nature” is fallen in this drastic way, what’s the implication for morality? Maybe Hume had it right after all. Is and ought don’t coincide.