The historical roots of our ecological crisis

"the text of Genesis (1, 26) which seems to legitimate the exploitation of nature was never interpreted in this sense by either Jews or Christians before the advent of the modern project[.] . . . [T]hat project is [therefore] more the cause than the consequence of the meaning erroneously ascribed to the biblical verses."

     Rémi Brague, citing the 1989 Cornell University Press monograph depicted, in Moderately modern, trans. Paul Seaton (South Bend, IN:  St. Augustine's Press, 2019), 123.  "Genesis" is italicized in the original, but not for emphasis.  "Not only would Christianity be responsible for the delay in the development of the sciences and technology, but it also would be responsible for the exact opposite, the excessive developments of the two, by handing the earth over to the disordered appetites of man, whom the Bible would consider as its master. . . .  In this way Christianity performs the feat, here with progress as in other ways, of being false in every respect.  It is guilty of everything, but also its contrary."

The life-giving Word of God

      "When the life-giving [(ζωοποιὸς)] Word of God dwelt in human flesh, he changed [(μετεσκεύασεν)] it into that good thing which is distinctively his, namely, life [(τὸ ἴδιον ἀγαθὸν, τουτέσι τὴν ζωὴν)]; and by being wholly united to the flesh in a way beyond our comprehension, he gave it the life-giving power [(ζωοποιὸν ἀπέδειξε)] which he has by his very nature.  Therefore, the body of Christ gives life [(ζωοποιεῖ)] to those who receive it.  Its presence in mortal men expels death and drives away corruption because it contains within itself in his entirety the Word who totally abolishes corruption."

     St. Cyril of Alexandria, Commentarii in Iohannem 4.2 at 354b-c (Jn 6:51), ed. Pusey (1872), vol. 1, p. 520, ll. 3 ff., as translated for the Office of Readings at Saturday, Third Week of Easter.

"the words by which secularization is designated are themselves secularized words."

la-croix.com

"the process of secularization was first of all semantic; the words by which secularization is designated are themselves secularized words."

"les mots par lesquels la sécularisation se désigne sont eux-mêmes des mots sécularisés."

     Rémi Brague, Moderately modern (South Bend, IN:  St. Augustine's Press, 2019), 87.  I have not consulted the original, Modérément moderne (Paris:  Flammarion, 2016).  I back-translated until I turned the quote up on the Web.

No mere braggart of anticlericalism

     "The consistent [(logique), true, or perfect] atheist can take no interest in life.  That is the true wisdom, but it is, in my opinion, too much [in the way of] wisdom.  It is the indifference of the fakir.  I am very glad, for my part, to have, besides my logical atheism, a moral conscience that derives from an accumulation of ancestral errors but [(et)] dictates my conduct to me in cases in which reason [alone] would [otherwise] compel me to drown [myself]. . . .
". . . the question of pain aside, the atheist has no fear of death; he is incessantly ready to die, having no need, in the face of the void, of putting his affairs in order.
     "But though an atheist, he is no less a man, and has [therefore] feelings of affection for other beings who are ordinarily not themselves atheists, and do not look upon death with the same indifference.  [So] here again the [unfounded] moral conscience prevents the atheist from acting in rigorous accord with his atheism.  He doesn’t need to put his affairs in order, but he may have to concern himself with the affairs of those of his neighbors to whom he is useful, and who might suffer from his death, [whether] in their feelings or in their interests."

     The biologist and philosopher of science Félix Alexandre Le Dantec (1869-1917), L’athéisme (Paris:  Flammarion, 1907), 101, 106, translation mine.  I was put onto this by Rémi Brague, Moderately modern, trans. Paul Seaton (South Bend, IN:  St. Augustine’s Press, 2019), 83, and have read no more than the sections inclusive of these excerpts.  Le Dantec is speaking not of (say) "those braggarts of anticlericalism [(ces fanfarons de l’anticléricalisme)]" who enjoy "astonishing their contemporaries with the spectacle of their bravery" (102), but only of the extremely rare "true" or "perfect atheist," for every one of which life must be necessarily an insufferable burden:

I must here affirm in all sincerity that I see no chain of reasoning capable of preventing the perfect atheist from committing suicide [(je vois aucun raisonnement capable d’arrêter l’athée parfait que le suicide tente)].  Only, there is no [truly] perfect atheist.  The [unfounded] moral conscience imposes on the most liberated of atheists obligations that he cannot avoid.  The atheist who is a son, a brother, a husband is held back, in the absence of [a] valid chain of reasoning, by a care for the grief he would cause, and for the need that those dear to him have of him.  An atheist capable of renouncing his obligations to the world, as monks do, would commit suicide without delay [(100-101)].

What has not been assumed can be shirked; what has been assumed is inescapable

"This figural identification—one of antitype to type, of Jesus' [filial] fear to our own [filial] fear—engaged the remarkable paradox by which Christ both takes on that aspect most embedded in the creature's character and in this divine assumption makes that creaturely aspect all the more impossible and irrational to escape."

     Ephraim Radner, A profound ignorance:  modern pneumatology and its anti-modern redemption (Waco, TX:  Baylor University Press, 2019), 298, underscoring and italics mine.
     This is Radner's anti-modern, anti-pneumatological redemption.  Cur Deus homo?  So that we might become (first?) nothing else.

"Scripture is not the property of the specialists"

"Scripture is not the property of the specialists.  It is a public garden in which all Christians have the right to wander. . . .  Why don't you, for your part, take a stroll, for example with one of your little daughters, to whom you could explain these marvellous images?"

"l'Écriture n'est pas la propriété des spécialistes.  C'est un jardin public où tous les chrétiens ont le droit de se promener. . . .  Pourquoi de ton côte n'y ferais-tu pas un tour, avec une de tes petites filles par exemple à qui tu expliquerais ces merveilleuses images?"

     Paul Claudel, Introduction à l'Apocalypse, Conférence lue à l'Institut catholique de Paris le 10 février 1946 (Paris:  Egloff, 1994), 9, as quoted by Philippe Cardinal Barbarin, in his "La liberté du théologien," Bulletin de littérature ecclésiastique 113 (2012), 370 (365-384), translation mine.  Barbarin adds that "Naturally, our freedom to comment [(la liberté de notre commentaire)] does not dispense us from [the obligation] to do all of the [exegetical] work of which we are capable."  But note that he is discussing here one of the most difficult books in the whole of Scripture!

A psychiatrist who did not experience the five stages of Death and dying

"The process of dying cannot be adequately understood by applying a rigid phenomenological framework that does not do justice to the resource of biblical faith and the contribution that faith makes to the acceptance of death."

     Orville S. Walters, "A psychiatrist's approach to death," Christian Medical Society journal 6 (Fall 1975):  4-6, which is, presumably, the source of the INPM version online.  Walters composed this little essay in the final throes of stomach cancer.  He died on 18 February 1975.

Kübler-Ross’s "Death and Dying takes little notice of the resources of Christian faith for the dying."  For this reason "It is difficult to imagine the writer of these words working through anxiety over approaching death in the troubled stages currently associated with dying."