In Laudato si’, Pope Francis says that the way to begin solving environmental problems is by “learning to see and appreciate beauty” (§ 215). Environmental ethicists have long known that beauty motivates people to protect nature. What form that takes depends upon how one defines beauty. In A Sand County Almanac, Aldo Leopold shares not only his famous land ethic, but also a land aesthetic. This paper will show that Laudato si’ and A Sand County Almanac present similar aesthetics emphasizing receptivity to objective natural beauty. First, I will consider Pope Francis’s uses of beauty. I then look to how environmental ethicists have evaluated beauty to determine what makes an environmental aesthetic robust rather than superficial. Finally, I examine how A Sand County Almanac both demonstrates receptivity and forms the reader to be receptive. I contend that reading A Sand County Almanac represents one way to practice Pope Francis’s instructions.

The first five messages for the world day of peace (2014 through 2018) from Pope Francis highlight fraternity as “the foundation and pathway” of peace. This paper examines two aspects of fraternity and peacebuilding: the first rooted in the transfiguring power of beauty; and the second in the call to holiness within the Father’s plan of loving goodness, which includes the call to an active nonviolent love and to a contemplative gaze upon our sisters and brothers. Francis’s writings are considered broadly, and in conjunction with those of his predecessors Benedict XVI and John Paul II, as well as with those of contemporary theologians.

Catholic social teaching appeals to the universal dimension of the Church. Specific details and lived experience are sacrificed in an effort to address the universal Church. In striving to speak to the universal, particular voices are missing. American case law approaches the universal through the particular by grounding law in the cases of specific persons. Narrative is tied to the case, and as a result, embedded in the law. This paper asks how the study of Church teaching might be enriched by being in conversation with American case law. In examining the benefits and liabilities of including narrative in an apostolic exhortation, this paper addresses ecclesiological questions and the relationship of law and religion.