Table of Content
- Ecological consciousness
- Ways Shepherd’s Corner Embodies Laudato Si’
- Praise Be to You: On Care for Our Common Home (Laudato Si') by Pope Francis
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- Laudato Si -- On Care for Our Common Home Paperback Francis I
- Pope Francis: Everyone’s responsibility to care for our common home
A spirituality which forgets God as all-powerful and Creator is not acceptable. That is how we end up worshipping earthly powers, or ourselves usurping the place of God, even to the point of claiming an unlimited right to trample his creation underfoot. The best way to restore men and women to their rightful place, putting an end to their claim to absolute dominion over the earth, is to speak once more of the figure of a Father who creates and who alone owns the world.
Spirituality is essential in that it should motivate us to be filled with compassionate concern to protect our world. Every action that seeks to build a better world will build and make a difference to our common home. We find ourselves increasingly frail and even fearful, caught up in a succession of “crises” in the areas of health care, the environment, food supplies and the economy, to say nothing of social, humanitarian and ethical crises. They also forecast a “perfect storm” that could rupture the bonds holding our society together within the greater gift of God’s creation. Today’s children and teenagers will face catastrophic consequences unless we take responsibility now, as ‘fellow workers with God’ (Gn 2.4–7), to sustain our world.
Ecological consciousness
The encyclical states that developed nations are morally obligated to assist developing nations in combating the climate-change crisis. Poor nations, the pontiff says, are ill-prepared to adapt to the effects of climate change and will bear the brunt of its effects. Linking the issues of poverty, which has been a major issue in his papacy, and the environment, he insists that the world must "hear both the cry of the earth and the cry of the poor." “The external deserts in the world are growing, because the internal deserts have become so vast”.
"Never have we so hurt and mistreated our common home as we have in the last two hundred years," he states. The real problem, according to Francis, lies in the fact that humans no longer see God as the Creator. Nature cannot be seen as something apart from humanity, or merely the place where we live. He says that our social and environmental crises are thus one complex crisis that must be solved holistically. The rich heritage of Christian spirituality, the fruit of twenty centuries of personal and communal experience, has a precious contribution to make to the renewal of humanity. Here, I would like to offer Christians a few suggestions for an ecological spirituality grounded in the convictions of our faith, since the teachings of the Gospel have direct consequences for our way of thinking, feeling and living.
Ways Shepherd’s Corner Embodies Laudato Si’
In recent decades this warming has been accompanied by a constant rise in the sea level and, it would appear, by an increase of extreme weather events, even if a scientifically determinable cause cannot be assigned to each particular phenomenon. Humanity is called to recognize the need for changes of lifestyle, production and consumption, in order to combat this warming or at least the human causes which produce or aggravate it. As these gases build up in the atmosphere, they hamper the escape of heat produced by sunlight at the earth’s surface. The problem is aggravated by a model of development based on the intensive use of fossil fuels, which is at the heart of the worldwide energy system.
He devotes an entire section to global inequality, reminding us that the environmental deterioration will affect the world’s most vulnerable people. The many “warnings” we are experiencing, among which we can see Covid-19 and global warming, are pushing us to take urgent action. I hope that the COP26 on climate change, to be held in Glasgow next November, will help to give us the right answers to restore ecosystems both through a strengthened climate action and a spread of awareness and consciousness. However, when we look around ourselves, what do we see? We see the destruction of nature, as well as a global pandemic leading to the death of millions of people.
Praise Be to You: On Care for Our Common Home (Laudato Si') by Pope Francis
Let us make an effort to change and to adopt more simple and respectful lifestyles! Now is the time to abandon our dependence on fossil fuels and move, quickly and decisively, towards forms of clean energy and a sustainable and circular economy. Let us also learn to listen to indigenous peoples, whose age-old wisdom can teach us how to live in a better relationship with the environment. A change in lifestyle could bring healthy pressure to bear on those who wield political, economic and social power. This is what consumer movements accomplish by boycotting certain products. They prove successful in changing the way businesses operate, forcing them to consider their environmental footprint and their patterns of production.
With the encyclical's publication in 2015, the Laudato Si Movement was founded to bring together Catholics interested in promoting its message. In 2022, the Laudato Si' Movement consists of 967 member organizations, Laudato Si' Animators, 204 Laudato Si' Circles and 58 National Chapters around the globe. In 2019, the journal Biological Conservation published research by Malcolm McCallum showing evidence of widespread, sustained growth in interest in the environment in many countries around the world. These results were most prominent in countries with large Catholic populations, especially those with biodiversity hotspots present. Pankaj Mishra wrote that the encyclical was "Arguably the most important piece of intellectual criticism in our time."
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We frequently hear from young people who understand that their futures are under threat. For their sake, we must choose to eat, travel, spend, invest and live differently, thinking not only of immediate interest and gains but also of future benefits.We repent of our generation’s sins. We stand alongside our younger sisters and brothers throughout the world in committed prayer and dedicated action for a future which corresponds ever more to the promises of God. «We have the freedom needed to limit and direct technology; we can put it at the service of another type of progress, one which is healthier, more human, more social, more integral».
More than in ideas or concepts as such, I am interested in how such a spirituality can motivate us to a more passionate concern for the protection of our world. A commitment this lofty cannot be sustained by doctrine alone, without a spirituality capable of inspiring us, without an “interior impulse which encourages, motivates, nourishes and gives meaning to our individual and communal activity”. Environmental education has broadened its goals. Whereas in the beginning it was mainly centred on scientific information, consciousness-raising and the prevention of environmental risks, it tends now to include a critique of the “myths” of a modernity grounded in a utilitarian mindset . It seeks also to restore the various levels of ecological equilibrium, establishing harmony within ourselves, with others, with nature and other living creatures, and with God.
The economy accepts every advance in technology with a view to profit, without concern for its potentially negative impact on human beings. The lessons of the global financial crisis have not been assimilated, and we are learning all too slowly the lessons of environmental deterioration. Some circles maintain that current economics and technology will solve all environmental problems, and argue, in popular and non-technical terms, that the problems of global hunger and poverty will be resolved simply by market growth. They are less concerned with certain economic theories which today scarcely anybody dares defend, than with their actual operation in the functioning of the economy.
It should be added, though, that even the best mechanisms can break down when there are no worthy goals and values, or a genuine and profound humanism to serve as the basis of a noble and generous society. In some places, cooperatives are being developed to exploit renewable sources of energy which ensure local self-sufficiency and even the sale of surplus energy. This simple example shows that, while the existing world order proves powerless to assume its responsibilities, local individuals and groups can make a real difference. They are able to instil a greater sense of responsibility, a strong sense of community, a readiness to protect others, a spirit of creativity and a deep love for the land.
The earth, our home, is beginning to look more and more like an immense pile of filth. In many parts of the planet, the elderly lament that once beautiful landscapes are now covered with rubbish. Industrial waste and chemical products utilized in cities and agricultural areas can lead to bioaccumulation in the organisms of the local population, even when levels of toxins in those places are low. Frequently no measures are taken until after people’s health has been irreversibly affected. Theological and philosophical reflections on the situation of humanity and the world can sound tiresome and abstract, unless they are grounded in a fresh analysis of our present situation, which is in many ways unprecedented in the history of humanity.
In this way, they make their own that trinitarian dynamism which God imprinted in them when they were created. Everything is interconnected, and this invites us to develop a spirituality of that global solidarity which flows from the mystery of the Trinity. Saint Therese of Lisieux invites us to practise the little way of love, not to miss out on a kind word, a smile or any small gesture which sows peace and friendship.
