Mary Taylor, in her blog, utilizes Dante’s words from Paradiso 33 to counter the claims of a conditional love on behalf of God by Clive Hamilton:

“For many, religion is little more than a cluster of stories that are only acceptable if they function as utilitarian aids to the ultimate end, the Summum Bonum of ‘saving the earth.’ This movement is part of a larger picture which eventually culminates in what David C. Schindler called the “tendency to reduce thinking to politics,” and an impoverished conception of reason that ultimately forces us to see every question in terms of an eternal struggle between ‘liberals’ and ‘conservatives’ (political terms left over from the French Revolution that should have no place in discussions of Catholic faith and teaching).

“But reductionism is double-edged: like holding up a stencil or template to the world, great swatches of our vision are blocked out entirely, and whatever else remains to be seen is forced into a certain shape. ‘The alternative to seeing what is there,’ says Frank Sheed, ‘is either not seeing what is there, and this is darkness; or seeing what is not there, and this is error, derangement, a kind of double darkness.'”   —Mary Taylor, “‘Love that Moves the Sun’: Catholicism’s Deeper Ecology – A Response to Clive Hamilton,” ABC, March 16, 2021 (retrieved March 6, 2024)