Berry, Reverend Fr. Thomas

Fr. Thomas Berry has helped to forge a change in the perception of the nonhuman presence in our experience. As a member of the Catholic Passionist religious order and a priest, he has recognized the influence of his learning from sciences, thinkers from China and India as much as from traditional Catholic thought. By framing all of reality from the subatomic through the human to the astronomical as subjects rather than objects, he presents a conception of an all-inclusive environmental community. In this view, all environmental subjects have moral, ethical, and spiritual significance. Concern, then, for an integrated interdependent universe and the well-being of each member of that community are inseparable. Environmental degradation and adverse impacts—whether to other human beings, oneself, or to the trees ...