Catholics around the world, and many who are not Catholic, are mourning the death of Jorge Mario Bergoglio, Pope Francis, following his death on Easter Sunday.
No one person can rule an institution with a billion members, not even one as hierarchical as the Catholic Church. The church of which Francis took over leadership in 2013 is diverse in many ways - spread across the globe, with adherents both rich and poor who speak hundreds of different languages, live within different cultures and hold different views on a variety of social and theological issues. Key flashpoints include the role of women, the place of LGBTQI+ people, and the tension between church tradition and modernisation in theology and liturgy. Francis also inherited the ongoing reckoning with sexual abuse in the church, and financial misconduct in the Vatican.
On all these issues, some feel he didn't do enough, others that he did too much. He understood, probably more clearly than his critics on both sides, that such issues cannot be resolved through the exercise of authority and require dialogue and consensus. Just as he inherited these issues from his predecessors, he will bequeath them to his successor, but hopefully with lasting progress made. In the meantime, he tried to model the openness, grace and preference for the poor which he wanted everyone in the church to follow.
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His passing has inspired me to read his Laudato Si': Encyclical Letter of the Holy Father Francis on Care for Our Common Home, published in May 2015. I'm ashamed to admit that despite having been engaged in religiously-inspired climate advocacy for most of the past decade, this is the first time I have read this document all the way through. As my mother used to say, the road to hell is paved with good intentions. Still, better late than never.
He opens with a reflection on the words of Francis of Assisi.
"Praise be to you, my Lord, through our Sister, Mother Earth, who sustains and governs us, and who produces various fruit with coloured flowers and herbs”. This sister now cries out to us because of the harm we have inflicted on her by our irresponsible use and abuse of the goods with which God has endowed her. We have come to see ourselves as her lords and masters, entitled to plunder her at will. The violence present in our hearts, wounded by sin, is also reflected in the symptoms of sickness evident in the soil, in the water, in the air and in all forms of life. This is why the earth herself, burdened and laid waste, is among the most abandoned and maltreated of our poor; she “groans in travail” (Rom 8:22). We have forgotten that we ourselves are dust of the earth (cf. Gen 2:7); our very bodies are made up of her elements, we breathe her air and we receive life and refreshment from her waters. (Paragraph 1-2)
This sets the tone for the next 180 pages of reflection on our current environmental crisis and what we should do about it.
He begins with a short summary of the environmental problems that we face - pollution, climate change, loss of biodiversity, depletion of fresh water. However, these are provided to set the context for what follows - he is clear that it is not the church's role to usurp the work of scientists and he honours this work as done by others. What is important about his analysis is his linking together of the plight of the environment and the plight of the poor. Both the non-human creatures God has created, and the poorest of humanity, are suffering from environmental degradation.
He sees humans as special in our bearing of God's image and in our power over the earth, but also sees other living things as equally loved, with their own purposes. Hence our role is not to exploit them, but to care for them. He also reminds us that we are ourselves natural beings, intimately and inseparably connected with the living beings around us.
However, as we gain more power to influence and manipulate the world around us, we increase the risk that we will do harm. This is especially so because we are inclined to see technological advances as inherently good and beneficial, rather than assess them on ethical or spiritual grounds.
There is a tendency to believe that every increase in power means “an increase of ‘progress’ itself”, an advance in “security, usefulness, welfare and vigour; …an assimilation of new values into the stream of culture”, as if reality, goodness and truth automatically flow from technological and economic power as such. The fact is that “contemporary man has not been trained to use power well”, because our immense technological development has not been accompanied by a development in human responsibility, values and conscience.... Our freedom fades when it is handed over to the blind forces of the unconscious, of immediate needs, of self-interest, and of violence. In this sense, we stand naked and exposed in the face of our ever-increasing power, lacking the wherewithal to control it. We have certain superficial mechanisms, but we cannot claim to have a sound ethics, a culture and spirituality genuinely capable of setting limits and teaching clear-minded self-restraint. (105)
A key thing which makes us blind to this issue is anthropocentrism, which to my mind is a fancy word for selfishness, or self-absorption. We act as if our own needs are the only needs to be considered, as if we were not part of a complex, interdependent web of living things. Hence, to put it more bluntly than Francis would (at least in writing), we shoot ourselves in the foot.
Modern anthropocentrism has paradoxically ended up prizing technical thought over reality, since “the technological mind sees nature as an insensate order, as a cold body of facts, as a mere ‘given’, as an object of utility, as raw material to be hammered into useful shape; it views the cosmos similarly as a mere ‘space’ into which objects can be thrown with complete indifference”. The intrinsic dignity of the world is thus compromised. When human beings fail to find their true place in this world, they misunderstand themselves and end up acting against themselves: “Not only has God given the earth to man, who must use it with respect for the original good purpose for which it was given, but, man too is God’s gift to man. He must therefore respect the natural and moral structure with which he has been endowed”. (115)Yet he also warns against the opposite extreme - of seeing humans as just one species among many. To view things this way, he says, is also to deny the reality of our unique capabilities and our unique power to bring about good or evil. 'Biocentrism', in his view, is an abdication of responsibility.
There can be no renewal of our relationship with nature without a renewal of humanity itself. There can be no ecology without an adequate anthropology. When the human person is considered as simply one being among others, the product of chance or physical determinism, then “our overall sense of responsibility wanes”. A misguided anthropocentrism need not necessarily yield to “biocentrism”, for that would entail adding yet another imbalance, failing to solve present problems and adding new ones. Human beings cannot be expected to feel responsibility for the world unless, at the same time, their unique capacities of knowledge, will, freedom and responsibility are recognized and valued. (118)
Instead, we need to hold these two things together - understanding ourselves as integrated with the rest of nature while taking up our responsibility. This includes both our responsibility for one another, especially the poorest among us, and our responsibility for the non-human world. These two belong together - if we don't care about other people and see them only as instruments of our will, we will see nature in the same way. And if we see nature as merely something to be exploited, the first people harmed will be the poorest. Hence Catholic teaching requires that we put the two side by side.
When we speak of the “environment”, what we really mean is a relationship existing between nature and the society which lives in it. Nature cannot be regarded as something separate from ourselves or as a mere setting in which we live. We are part of nature, included in it and thus in constant interaction with it. Recognizing the reasons why a given area is polluted requires a study of the workings of society, its economy, its behaviour patterns, and the ways it grasps reality. Given the scale of change, it is no longer possible to find a specific, discrete answer for each part of the problem. It is essential to seek comprehensive solutions which consider the interactions within natural systems themselves and with social systems. We are faced not with two separate crises, one environmental and the other social, but rather with one complex crisis which is both social and environmental. Strategies for a solution demand an integrated approach to combating poverty, restoring dignity to the excluded, and at the same time protecting nature. (139)
With this relationship in mind, he advocates for an 'integral ecology', a way of interacting with the world which takes account of the complex relationships between humans, between us and other living things, and between all of those living things. This requires deep knowledge and awareness, and an attitude of humility.
Of course, this is not how we live. The original mandate of humanity to tend and care for the Garden was broken at the Fall, and as sinful human beings we fall short of our calling. This is the root cause of the damage we are doing to the earth and to one another, and leads to him, near the close of the letter, to a call for 'ecological conversion'.
“The external deserts in the world are growing, because the internal deserts have become so vast”. For this reason, the ecological crisis is also a summons to profound interior conversion. It must be said that some committed and prayerful Christians, with the excuse of realism and pragmatism, tend to ridicule expressions of concern for the environment. Others are passive; they choose not to change their habits and thus become inconsistent. So what they all need is an “ecological conversion”, whereby the effects of their encounter with Jesus Christ become evident in their relationship with the world around them. Living our vocation to be protectors of God’s handiwork is essential to a life of virtue; it is not an optional or a secondary aspect of our Christian experience. In calling to mind the figure of Saint Francis of Assisi, we come to realize that a healthy relationship with creation is one dimension of overall personal conversion, which entails the recognition of our errors, sins, faults and failures, and leads to heartfelt repentance and desire to change. The Australian bishops spoke of the importance of such conversion for achieving reconciliation with creation: “To achieve such reconciliation, we must examine our lives and acknowledge the ways in which we have harmed God’s creation through our actions and our failure to act. We need to experience a conversion, or change of heart”. (217-218)
Of course, such a conversion is not a one-off event. We need to grow into this life over time, learning both about ourselves and about the world around us. We will often stumble and need to be reminded. Hence, at the end of the letter he offers two prayers, one that can be prayed by all people of faith and one more specifically worded for Christians. Here are the closing words of the second prayer.
as channels of your love
for all the creatures of this earth,
for not one of them is forgotten in your sight.
Enlighten those who possess power and money
that they may avoid the sin of indifference,
that they may love the common good,
advance the weak,
and care for this world in which we live.
The poor and the earth are crying out.
O Lord, seize us with your power and light,
help us to protect all life,
to prepare for a better future,
for the coming of your Kingdom
of justice, peace, love and beauty.
Praise be to you!
Amen.
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Sadly, Pope Francis is no longer with us. Despite frailty and illness, he kept working until the end, blessing the faithful from his balcony on Easter Sunday before succumbing to a stroke later that night. Just as he never lived in the Papal Palace, he asked not to be buried in St Peter's Basilica but in the more humble Chapel of Mary, where he would often pray during his years in the Vatican.
Not long after the publication of Laudato Si' the nations of the world signed up to the Paris Agreement, promising to limit global heating to between 1.5 and 2 degrees Celsius over the pre-industrial average. Each nation agreed to set emissions reduction targets in line with this overall goal and to monitor them regularly. It was a moment of hope for everyone around the world who is alive to the dangers we face.
Yet in the decade since, the agreement has largely been honoured in the breach. Nations have failed to set targets in line with the agreements goals, and emissions have continued to rise. Every two years the nations come together, more often than not in some petro-state, speakers lament the lack of progress, fossil fuel lobbyists throng the halls, and then they go home. If we have not already passed 1.5 degrees of warming we are not far from that threshold. We are not doing any better on other issues, like biodiversity and pollution. The Sister Earth weeps.
Let us remember Francis, then, as a man who pointed us to a better way, and may his death inspire us once again to ecological conversion.
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