“Laudato si’, mi’ Signore” ”“ “Praise be to you, my Lord”. In the words of this beautiful canticle, Saint Francis of Assisi reminds us that our common home is like a sister with whom we share our life and a beautiful mother who opens her arms to embrace us. “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 will take time to read and fully digest but I am initially encouraged that the Pope roots this teaching in the Pauline soteriology referenced in Romans 8 as well as places it in the recent history and context of JPII’s call to “safeguard the moral conditions for an authentic human ecology.” If we must care for the integrity of the earth (and we should if we have a biblically informed conscience), then it is imperative that we care for the integrity of the human person who is at the apex of God’s good creation. Shouldn’t an ecology of trees, for example, prime us to be open to an ecology of the human body? None of us, finally and ultimately, get to pick and choose what parts of God’s redemption we ought to embrace.
I welcome the international conversation and debate this encyclical will provoke. Ecology of the whole creation – not just the isolated parts partisans care about – is a conversation that matters.
Pope Francis is calling for an integral ecology that emphasizes the interconnectedness of life, arising from the purposes of life in the Trinitarian God. Thus the ecological and social crisis are interconnected in his thinking: “today the analysis of environmental problems cannot be separated from their human…contexts…nor how individuals relate to themselves and others….(140).” In other words we inescapably relate to a comprehensive, given order and must learn to reconcile ourselves to it, live kindly and hospitably within it – for however much we might wish to, we cannot ultimately create our own reality.
This is basic orthodox thinking and the non-orthodox, right and left, will not like their little domesticated custom-gospels challenged thus.
I could imagine Wendell Berry writing this, if only he was Catholic rather than Baptist. It’s that good.