Reflection from Archbishop Celestino Migliore talks

I just got back from the talk given by Archbishop Migliore, Apostolic Nuncio, Permanent Observer of the Holy See to the United Nations here at the overture center in Madison, WI.

Here is my reflection on what he said today:

He talked about Moral Authority. How moral authority is not determined by a popular vote.
He mentioned that our current pope is dubbed as the "green pope". Of course after seeing the "seemingly" new list of seven deadly sins that was being spoken by Archishop Gianfranco Girotti (one of them being: degradation of the environment). More to read here.

Moreover, he then mentioned that rather than using the terms "defending the environment", the Church uses the term "safeguarding the creation". It reflects on the story of Genesis 2 that we are ought to "till and keep" the garden (which can be seen as humanity).

This part really stick to me, since I had just given a talk on work and worship. Moreover, a couple days ago, I stumbled upon the comment that SteveG gave on "Et-tu" wrote, which comes from Dr. Scott Hahn website (www.salvationhistory.com) about the idea of "abodah and shamar". Read the rest here.

During question and answer session, a priest asked the apostolic nuncio about the use of biofuel. "Since the pope had just raised concern that there is a possibility that the use of corn as biofuel (would increase the price of this particular crop and) would decrease the level of accesibility of corn to the poor and the needy, what is your take on that?" (italicized part is my addition)

Since one of the professor in my department is one of the forefront researcher on this matter. I am pretty familiar on this issue.

He brought the recent news that biofuel is not as green as people might think. But ended up his answer by saying that it would go over the board if the church ban the research of biofuel. In the end, in my opinion, what he was saying is that let the researcher does it research with the topic of accessibility to the poor in mind.

Then a person asked about "religious freedom". That in certain part of the world, religious freedom is not prevalent.

How true is that. I could see it in my own country. Read the recent news here.

He noticed that "religion" is a taboo thing to say at UN when he first got there. But, he noticed that faith based initiative/program flourishes in the past 4 or 5 years at the UN. But then he sees this in a cautious manner. This is due to the fact that sometimes people come in with a political agenda in the name of faith. He then went on saying that faith and religion should be put in its proper place. How appropriate.