Rocks vs. People

Welcome back to Rick!  His trip sounds (and looks) like it was a wonderful experience.  From a visual standpoint, it looks especially enticing to those of us here in the flatlands of the Middle West which, when it comes to vistas like the one he posted on MOJ is, shall we say, “topographically challenged.”

 

 

While the picture of the Tetons is, as Rick says, sublime, he goes on to opine that “it’s closer [to Catholic legal theory] than the White Sox.”

 

 

Well, I suppose, from a certain neo-pagan point of view that’s true (a modern or rather post-modern heresy to which, I know, Rick does not subscribe), but Catholic legal theory, of course, looks to the human person – the pinnacle of God’s creation – “who is the only creature on earth which God willed for itself” who “fully find[s] himself . . . through a sincere gift of himself” (Gaudium et Spes, par. 24).  That is, as has often been said on MOJ, Christian anthropology is at the very heart of Catholic legal theory.  At the same time, this focus on humanity does not deny or lead us away from God since “[t]he truth is that only in the mystery of the incarnate Word does the mystery of man take on light” (Gaudium et Spes, par. 22).

 

 

What is more, this marveling in the beauty of God’s handiwork in each human being and all the human family is something we share with our Jewish brothers and sisters.  In seeing Rick’s stunning photograph and contemplating its meaning for Catholic legal theory, I could not help but think of the Eighth Psalm:

 

 

“When I see your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars that you set in place – What are humans that you are mindful of them, mere mortals that you care for them?  Yet you have made them little less than a god, crowned them with glory and honor.  You have given them rule over the work of your hands, put all things at their feet”