Then God said, “Let us make humankind in our image, according to our likeness; and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the wild animals of the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth.” [Genesis 1:26, NRSV]
Pope Francis’ encyclical Laudato Si’ is a ground-breaking document.
Interlarded throughout with citations from previous Roman Pontiffs, Saint Francis of Assisi and Blessed Charles de Foucauld, Bishops’ Conferences from North and South, and theologians including Saint Basil the Great, Saint Thomas Aquinas, Teilhard de Chardin, Romano Guardini and so on, this encyclical confirms that it is preceded by a long history of Catholic thinking and teaching on environmental protection.
A Third Wave in Catholic Social Teaching
And yet, Laudato Si’ is a watershed moment, representing a third wave of Catholic Social Teaching:
- Rerum Novarum (1891) of Pope Leo marks the first wave. Written at the time of the industrial revolution, it dealt with the rights and duties of capital and labour. Workers’ rights received a great boost in this authoritative and trail blazing document. From 1891 up to 1963, most Catholic Social Teaching would give voice to workers’ rights. Of primary concern was the need for serious relief from “the misery and wretchedness pressing so unjustly on the majority of the working class.” Amongst other things, it supported the rights of labour to form unions, rejected socialism and unrestricted capitalism, whilst at the same time affirming the right to private property.
- The spirit-filled Vatican II Pope, Saint John XXIII, initiated a second wave in his document Pacem in Terris (1963), in which he spoke about peace in the world in a time of the cold war, the dynamics of global interdependence, global poverty, human rights, solidarity, subsidiarity and other major questions.
- Now, in Laudato Si’ (2015), we see a response not just to the industrial revolution and the cold war, but a sustained and integrated response to the new era when human activities are impacting the environment in ways and on a scale that had never been seen before. Laudato Si’ of Pope Francis embodies the third wave that deals with crisis in the ecological and social environments, on God’s creation.
Timely and ground-breaking, Laudato Si’ judges and encourages, teaches and invites dialogue, warns and gives hope.
Readers are pleasantly surprised to note a few “firsts” in a teaching document of the official Magisterium. For instance, for the first time, an official papal teaching document consistently and repeatedly uses the inclusive language – “men and women” – to acknowledge the female gender. To be sure, critical readers may lament that just as it is full of valuable reminders that the earth is our sister, and that we all originate from the womb of primal Mater who sustains us in her fruitful material world, it falls glaringly short in not referencing the insights of any female authors past and present at all in this field. The result is that while, with Saint Francis of Assisi, it stresses our profound debt to our sister-mother-earth and raises consciousness of the terrible consequences of our abuse of her as the soul of the encyclical, its slip is evident in that nowhere in the text is the voice of the female half of the world explicitly heard. For, throughout the course of Catholic history, women have fostered significant ecological insights. Omission of their voices is unfortunate and accrues only to the peril of all of creation.
The practice of inclusivity, however, is extensive in other respects in the text. For example, for a papal document, Laudato Si’ is quite shocking in putting flesh to collegiality in its copious citations of bishops’ conferences from around the world. This document is not just the Supreme Roman Pontiff teaching the world, but the Bishop of Rome teaching in concert with the bishops of the world. Inviting the people of the whole world to enter into serious and urgent dialogue on the protection of our common home, Pope Francis even quotes from a Sufi mystic [see foot-note 159].
A Third Wave in Development of Creation Theology
All that, however, pertains to the social teaching of the Church. Laudato Si’, actually, has achieved something else, marking as it does a third wave in Christian consciousness of human relationship to God’s creation. In the particular area of the development of creation theology, the impact can clearly be observed in three steps, marking a third wave as it were in this regard:
- [a] In the early “human dominion over the earth” model, humans were understood as having been given the right, by the Creator, of dominion over all things in creation. Having been accorded the right to rule over creation, humanity was seen as wholly entitled to take whatever was present in creation for its use and advantage. It would be a long while, for the idea of abuse and plunder and environmental degradation to enter into human consciousness.
- [b] Paradoxically, the onset of modernity, scientific discovery and technological creativity, resulting in a greatly enhanced human capacity to control and even override nature to human advantage, would also awaken the sense of horror in critical thinkers of the harm that humanity was doing to nature. In a second stage of development, therefore, the earlier dominion model was rejected in favour of a “stewardship” model, particularly when an awareness of ecological degradation and its harmful consequences to humanity was felt. Steward is a biblical term that refers to a manager who is responsible for the goods and property of another. A steward is not therefore an owner, but one who has a responsibility to an owner to treat property with care and respect. Stewardship is a term that refers to the responsibility of a steward to manage wisely. In creation theology, this steward is agent and representative of the Creator, and whose reason and purpose for existence is to image God in the world.
- [c] Now, in a development that clearly moves beyond the theologies of dominion and stewardship and identifiable as a third wave in ecological consciousness, Laudato Si’ stresses the intrinsic worth of all of creation [“brother sun”, “sister moon”, and “mother–sister earth”]. In an intensive grasp of the inter-relatedness of all things in creation on account of their common source, Laudato Si’ sees all things in creation as what Robert Barron describes as “ontological siblings” because we all came from the same “Father”. There is now a fresh appreciation of the Creator’s command “to keep and till”, honouring God by honouring His creation.
The language of “sacrament” is now used on creation – the physical created world and all things in it, reflects an inner reality, the glory of God. Christians are called “to accept the world as a sacrament of communion, as a way of sharing with God and our neighbours on a global scale. It is our humble conviction that the divine and the human meet in the slightest detail in the seamless garment of God’s creation, in the last speck of dust of our planet” [No.9].
The identification of creation as a sacrament, together with the “seamless garment” language applied to our whole ecological life, makes for a powerful thought. There is a lot of depth to be mined from that way of thinking. At the United Nations on September 25, Pope Francis even spoke of the “right of the environment”, tantalisingly thereby pointing to a nascent but significant development in Catholic thinking about the inherent worth of creation apart from the humans who dominate it. The consequences of this third wave are huge and extensive and alluded to throughout the encyclical, especially in Chapter Four on Integral Ecology.
Integral Ecology
Take, for example, the idea of the inter-relationships and the inter-connectedness of all of creation. Where humanity is concerned, solidarity means we must participate in promoting the ecological and social environment both for the inter-generational as well as intra-generational good. There is inter-dependence between all things created by God. We must acknowledge and respect the intrinsic values in all of creation, whether animate or inanimate. And to ignore the connection between ecological degradation and human degradation is to ignore God’s preferential care and concern for the Poor.
The encyclical draws a connection between social and environmental injustice and the heart of the proposals in this document is “integral ecology” as a new paradigm of justice, an ecology “which respects our unique place as human beings in this world and our relationship to our surroundings” [No.15].
In fact, “nature cannot be regarded as something separate from ourselves or as a mere setting in which we live” [No.139]. This holds true in all fields: in economy and politics, in different cultures particularly in those most threatened, and even in every moment of our daily lives.
The integral perspective also brings the ecology of institutions into play: “if everything is related, then the health of a society’s institutions affects the environment and the quality of human life. ‘Every violation of solidarity and civic friendship harms the environment’” [No.142].
With many concrete examples, Pope Francis confirms his thinking that “the analysis of environmental problems cannot be separated from the analysis of human, family, work-related and urban contexts, and of how individuals relate to themselves” [No.141]. “We are not faced with two separate crises, one environmental and the other social, but rather one complex crisis which is both social and environmental” [No.139].
“Human ecology is inseparable from the notion of the common good” [No.156], but is to be understood in a concrete way: in today’s context, in which, “injustices abound and growing numbers of people are deprived of basic human rights and considered expendable” [No.158], committing oneself to the common good means to make choices in solidarity based on “a preferential option for the poorest of our brothers and sisters” [No.158]. This is also the best way to leave a sustainable world for future generations, not just by proclaiming these truths, but also by committing to care for the poor of today. Benedict XVI already emphasized this clearly: “In addition to a fairer sense of inter- generational solidarity there is also an urgent moral need for a renewed sense of intra-generational solidarity” [No.162].
Integral ecology also involves everyday life. The Encyclical gives specific attention to the urban environment. The human being has a great capacity for adaptation and “an admirable creativity and generosity is shown by persons and groups who respond to environmental limitations by alleviating the adverse effects of their surroundings and learning to live productively amid disorder and uncertainty” [No.148]. Nevertheless, a great deal of integral improvement in the quality of human life – public space, housing, transport, etc. – is still needed in order to achieve authentic development [Nos.150-154].
Also “the acceptance of our bodies as God’s gift is vital for welcoming and accepting the entire world as a gift from the Father and our common home, whereas thinking that we enjoy absolute power over our own bodies turns, often subtly, into thinking that we enjoy absolute power over creation” [No.155].
Chapter Four is worth careful attention for the practical examples the Pope offers of the effect that mistreatment of our home, the earth, has on those who are poor and disadvantaged. A particularly telling subsection is entitled the “Ecology of Daily Life.”
Copyright © Dr. Jeffrey & Angie Goh, October 2015. All rights reserved.
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