Michael McCarthy has an article in the 25 March issue of The Tablet in which he complains that "the Church appears not to have even the faintest notion" of the threat to the health of the planet. It appears that by "Church" here he means the hierarchy and, perhaps even more narrowly, Rome or the Pope. He concludes: "When the environment was merely a quality-of-life issue the Church could get away with [ignoring the issue]. It was a disappointment, but it did not irretriebably damage the Church's relevance and moral authority. But as the envfironment becomes a life-or-death issue for the world, the Church is going to find itself overtaken by the historical process, helpless and uncomprehending, just as it was by socialism, just as it was by fascism.

"How can the Church hope to help its children cope with the strange, terrible crisis of the twenty-first century if it cannot see it coming? How can it hope to advise those who wish to take the urgent steps that might still stave off the worst? What excuse will it give for its failure, for being caught out by history for a third and fatal time?" What strikes me about this is that the issue is posed in terms of "the Church," but does not speak about the Church, but about the hierarchy. This for me is not just a terminological question. If the matter is as serious as McCarthy claims, then it's something that the Church, in the proper sense, the Christian faithful ought to be engaged in. OK, yes, the hierarchy should be providing some leadership, but as with the workers' problem in the late 19th-century, often enough the history-making engagements have come from below. I wonder what McCarthy might have to say to "the children of the Church". jak