BOOK LAUNCH FOR ABOUT BIOETHICS: FAITH, SCIENE AND THE ENVIRONMENT BY NICHOLAS TONTI-FILIPPINI

JOHN-PAUL II INSTITUTE, KNOX THEATRE MELBOURNE

Thank you for those kind words of introduction. Five years ago Nicholas Tonti-Filippini reviewed my book, Catholic Bioethics for a New Millennium, for which I was very grateful. It is a pleasure, therefore, to return the favour by launching his final work, the fifth in his About Bioethics series published by Connor Court, regrettably without Nick’s physical presence with us tonight.

Before I launch into a commentary on that latest volume let me say a little about the context of Tonti-Filippini’s broader contribution. Of his About Bioethics series I have previously written that “These excellent volumes bring together a life-time of intellectually rigorous and faithfully Catholic work in Bioethics. As Australia’s preeminent Christian scholar in the area, Nicholas Tonti-Filippini was for the past generation one of the most outspoken and sane voices in public debates over abortion, genetic testing, the new reproductive technologies and end-of-life decisions.” In preparing for tonight’s address I searched the word “Tonti” on my computer drive and found his name came up hundreds of times: in personal and professional correspondence, in requesting and receiving advices from him, in lectures, course outlines, conference presentations and slides he shared with me, in innumerable citations of Nick in my own lectures and writings, and so on. Indeed, it is hard to underestimate the influence he had on the likes of me as a professional colleague and friend, on a generation of students, and on the wider community.

Nicholas Tonti-Filippini was the most highly regarded voice in Catholic bioethics in Australia of his generation not just amongst Catholics and the media, but also in civil society. He taught in secular universities and at academic conferences. He advised on legislation and regulation, served on various NHMRC and other government working parties, and counselled political leaders. In the Catholic world, he worked for the Australian Catholic Bishops’ Conference and, despite being up so close to us bishops, he did not lose his faith! Whether it was for Matercare International, the International and Australian Associations of Catholic Bioethicists, their sponsor organisation the Order of Malta, the Billings Organisation or the John Paul II Institute for Marriage and the Family where he was Professor and Associate Dean, he gave his all as leader and servant. For all this and more he was honoured with a papal knighthood.

And in all this he seemed indomitable, despite his chronic pain and a condition which required regular hospitalisation, surgery and dialysis, and despite the advances of the culture of death – here in Victoria it’s so advanced that there has been legislation against the exercise of medical conscience. Remarkably, even when exhausted by all that and in the midst of controversy, even vilification, sometimes by people who should have been his allies, he remained courteous, humorous and focused on the ball rather than the player, concentrated on building the civilisation of life and love. His ability to maintain good humour and respect in the midst of such challenges always inspired me. And he was very present to me in my own serious sickness last year: I instinctively turned to him in prayer to ask him to intercede for me, as I knew he had endured so much, so well.

Such endurance and productivity would not have been possible without the support of his dear wife, Dr Mary Walsh, and their four beloved children Claire, Lucianne, Justin and John – to all of whom Nick pays tribute in the volume and one of whom – Justin – contributed the moving Foreword. They shared with him his ups and downs, and many of the ‘downs’ could not have been easy. The affection of his family and their pride in each other makes them a real example of what St John Paul II had in mind when he asked the John Paul Institute to cultivate family life as a school of a deeper humanity and a domestic church.

Nicholas had planned six volumes in his About Bioethics series, but death intervened before he could more than sketch out volume six. So the fifth volume we launch tonight will likely be his last published words. Here he draws together the wisdom of the early Church Fathers with the theologians and saints of the Middle Ages, alongside the work of more recent popes, philosophers and scientists, in order to examine the relationship between humanity and creation within a Christian world-view.

Though written without the benefit of Pope Francis’ encyclical, Laudato Si, Nicholas builds on the same tradition as the Holy Father and in many ways offers more rigorous scholarly support for some of the Pope’s claims than the Pope could offer in a non-academic publication. Indeed, in the wake of the challenge that the encyclical presented to every Christian, as well as the furore it provoked amongst its critics, this book Faith, Science and the Environment is more important than ever.

From the beginning (pp.2-4) Tonti-Filippini is aware that in writing on the ecological ‘crisis’ and especially on ‘climate change’ he is entering highly contested territory. But do people even know what they mean when they talk of the natural ‘environment’ or ‘ecology’? Do they risk neglecting more fundamental and ultimately more crucial questions about our relationship to that environment, as well as other practical ecological issues, by focusing so narrowly on climate change and carbon emissions? Should the politics of climate be allowed to drown out all other environmental issues around energy and resources, habitat and land use, pollution and the social ecology? What spiritual and moral resources might we be able to bring to bear on these problems and so assist science and politics to inspire real change?

In Laudato Si Pope Francis turns to his name-saint Francis of Assisi for inspiration in reflecting upon Christianity’s relationship with the environment. He beautifully explores the three main concerns of love for the natural world and its creatures, love for humanity and especially the poor, and love for the Creator of them all. He calls for a radical rethink of our relationship with all three. And he concludes that it is in the Eucharist, above all, that all three concerns are united and creation “finds its greatest exaltation” (236). By a greater attentiveness to the Sabbath spirit on Sunday, to the action of grace in transforming simple things like bread and wine and human company into sacraments, to practices like grace before meals and fasting to share with those who have less, the Pope suggests our relationships with the Creator, creation and our fellow man can be healed (237).

Likewise, in his book Tonti-Filippini speaks of St. Francis’ ‘chivalry’ towards all creation (ch. 9), insisting that environmental concerns must be situated  within a broader moral cosmology of relationships – between human beings and Creator, human beings and the natural world, and human beings and their fellows. As Christians, we have a particular wisdom to offer about matters such as reverence for the Creator in His creation, reverence for God in our fellows as His divine image, about right relationships with others, especially the poor, about what is truly ‘the good life’ for persons, and about the social and moral dangers of rapacious consumption – all of which rightly interrogate science, technology and economy.

In this book Nicholas has achieved a correction of a faulty conception not just of one subject, but of two. Just as Environmentalism is often construed so narrowly as to ignore much of the natural world and eschew the human, moral and spiritual, so Bioethics can be reduced to some tendentious issues for hospitals, health practitioners and researchers and thus to exclude the broader biosphere which bio-ethics properly addresses and within which human health and healthcare, life and death, must be understood. By broadening our understandings of both Nick shows us how each can enrich the other.

This book explores such important questions as evolution and the human soul, the very idea of creation, how we should value that creation for its createdness, goodness, beauty, sacramentality and kinship, and the particular questions of population and climate change. As a first step towards scholarly engagement with Pope Francis’ ecological project for the contemporary Church, drawing upon science, theology and philosophy, we could do no better than read and ponder Nicholas Tonti-Filippini’s latest volume.

For half my life I had the benefit of Nick’s wisdom as a scholar, his piety as a fellow Christian, and his personal support as a true friend. I have said before that I think such friendships can be our most tangible experience of divine grace; they sustain and enlarge us; they are, in a sense, sacramental. In this volume Nick makes some similar points about his experience of the cosmos. As I pay tribute tonight to all Nick taught me, through his research, teaching, writing and conversation, but above all by the courageous witness of his life, I invite you all to benefit from the last published fruit of his wisdom: Faith, Science and Environment.