CSDC 460

Man, then, must never forget that “his capacity to transform and in a certain sense create the world through his own work ... is always based on God's prior and original gift of the things that are”.⁹⁶⁵ John Paul II, Encyclical Letter Centesimus Annus, 37: AAS 83AAS — Acta Apostolicae Sedis (official gazette of the Holy See)Volume 83 (1991) at vatican.va — scanned PDF (1991), 840. He must not “make arbitrary use of the earth, subjecting it without restraint to his will, as though it did not have its own requisites and a prior God-given purpose, which man can indeed develop but must not betray”.⁹⁶⁶ John Paul II, Encyclical Letter Centesimus Annus, 37: AAS 83AAS — Acta Apostolicae Sedis (official gazette of the Holy See)Volume 83 (1991) at vatican.va — scanned PDF (1991), 840. When he acts in this way, “instead of carrying out his role as a co-operator with God in the work of creation, man sets himself up in place of God and thus ends up provoking a rebellion on the part of nature, which is more tyrannized than governed by him”.⁹⁶⁷ John Paul II, Encyclical Letter Centesimus Annus, 37: AAS 83AAS — Acta Apostolicae Sedis (official gazette of the Holy See)Volume 83 (1991) at vatican.va — scanned PDF (1991), 840. If man intervenes in nature without abusing it or damaging it, we can say that he “intervenes not in order to modify nature but to foster its development in its own life, that of the creation that God intended. While working in this obviously delicate area, the researcher adheres to the design of God. God willed that man be the king of creation”.⁹⁶⁸ John Paul II, Address to the 35th General Assembly of the World Medical Association (29 October 1983): L'Osservatore Romano, English edition, 5 December 1986, p. 11. In the end, it is God himself who offers to men and women the honour of cooperating with the full force of their intelligence in the work of creation.