The Human Ecology Of Social Justice

Abstract

The first and fundamental structure for “human ecology” is the family, in which man receives his first formative ideas about truth and goodness, and learns what it means to love and to be loved, and thus what it actually means to be a person. --Centesimus Annus, 39, 1991No one denies that the moral climate of the place into which parents introduce their children may give an upward push -- or a downward push -- to their children’s ability to grow up with good habits, among good companions, in a culture that encourages the good and the beautiful. A sharp moral decline throughout the culture is deadly to children. President Obama says that global warming is the greatest threat facing our generation. But the moral ecology in which human beings live and move is more important for their well-being than the ecology of the biosphere.