The 64-year-old pastor [Steve Josoma] at St. Susanna, a Catholic Parish in Dedham, Massachusetts, located just outside Boston, wasn’t trying to make waves or cause controversy last Christmas when he decided to put a cage around the Baby Jesus in the St. Susanna’s nativity scene, and wall off the Three Wise Men — he was merely trying to start a conversation. [Emphasis added.]
He's far from the only one. Churches across the country are using Christmas nativity scenes to make political statements and protests, from putting the Holy Family in cages, in a nod to the Southern border crisis, to depicting animals in the manger underwater and a creeping tide about to overtake Jesus, Mary and Joseph, in a nod to climate change.
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This year, St. Susanna opted to set up a nativity scene under climate siege, with drowned animals and plastic water bottles floating in water, and the encroaching tide inching closer and closer to the Holy Family, threatening to pull them under. The banner this year reads, “God so loved the earth … will we?”
Perhaps in order to answer the question properly one has to go back in time, before the industrial revolution [2] and begin there. The answer back then would likely have been a resounding no.
Going back to the beginning to the Garden of Eden, the answer to the question was a definite no. Since Adam and Eve did not love God enough to obey His one and only command back then, to not eat the Forbidden Fruit from the Tree of Knowledge, why would they love any of God's other creations?
Just as Adam blamed God for creating Eve, and Eve blamed God for creating the Serpent for having eaten the Forbidden Fruit, pastor Steve Josoma can blame every single one of their descendants including himself for every single societal ill as a result of Original Sin.
Would Jesus have asked pastor Josoma how big is his own carbon footprint since he appears to be self-righteous enough to satirize the Nativity Scene which in this blogger's opinion is tantamount to committing sacrilege.
Is there no limit to the number of evil ways that can be used to crucify Jesus again and again?
Why not focus on the humility surrounding the birth of Christ and become humble like Christ?
With humility, there would not be a need to deplete the earth natural resources at an ecologically unsustainable pace so that more and more people can have higher and higher standards of living which is unceasing.
For those who had already profited and benefited and are now living comfortably, and using disposable coffee cups for those who want their caffeine fix, to then turn around and point the finger at other people, blaming deforestation in part, after having met their demands for new homes, renovations, new furniture, and so on, leading to climate change is simply hypocritical.
This is reminiscent of these words of Christ [3]:
“Let the one among you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.”
[1] https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2019/12/14/nativity-christmas-scene-cages-churches-political-statements-border-crisis/2638344001/
[2] https://www.history.com/topics/natural-disasters-and-environment/water-and-air-pollution
[3] http://www.usccb.org/bible/john/8, at 7.
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