The Encyclical’s Gift to Scripture Teachers

In addition to inspiring discussions in parishes, homes and major media outlets, Pope Francis’ just published encyclical will also prove to be a gift to Scripture teachers, galvanizing as it has questions about the meaning of the early chapters of Genesis and its relationship to science and modern movements advocating environmental justice. When school resumes in a couple months, teachers will have many resources to call upon to engage students. Even The New York Times weighed in:

Among Christians and Jews, theological discussion sometimes centers on exactly what God meant in the first chapter of Genesis when he granted human beings “dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.”

 

Does this passage — in Christian theology, it is called the dominion mandate — mean that people can do no ecological wrong? Some conservative politicians do seem to interpret the verse, and related ones, as a promise that God would not let humans wreck their only home.