231. 129. There are also translations in German, Clodovis Boff, Theologie und Praxis. God of love, show us our place in this world as channels of your love for all the creatures of this earth, for not one of them is forgotten in your sight. Christian spirituality proposes a growth marked by moderation and the capacity to be happy with little. The Conference of the United Nations on Sustainable Development, “Rio+20” (Rio de Janeiro 2012), issued a wide-ranging but ineffectual outcome document. Human beings, even if we postulate a process of evolution, also possess a uniqueness which cannot be fully explained by the evolution of other open systems. Laudato Si’ is a personal commitment of the pope. 53. [156] That is why the Church set before the world the ideal of a “civilization of love”. 167.

Today, in view of the common good, there is urgent need for politics and economics to enter into a frank dialogue in the service of life, especially human life. They live and reason from the comfortable position of a high level of development and a quality of life well beyond the reach of the majority of the world’s population. Frequently, we find beautiful and carefully manicured green spaces in so-called “safer” areas of cities, but not in the more hidden areas where the disposable of society live. The outcome may be a decision not to proceed with a given project, to modify it or to consider alternative proposals. Soil, water, mountains: everything is, as it were, a caress of God.
Should we not pause and consider this? Nobody is suggesting a return to the Stone Age, but we do need to slow down and look at reality in a different way, to appropriate the positive and sustainable progress which has been made, but also to recover the values and the great goals swept away by our unrestrained delusions of grandeur. [96] 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. “He himself made both small and great” (Wis 6:7), and “he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good” (Mt 5:45). The Portuguese bishops have called upon us to acknowledge this obligation of justice: “The environment is part of a logic of receptivity. [63] Catechism of the Catholic Church, 340. Liberation theology (especially Latin American LT) has insisted on the need for structural change. I have read and accept the terms and conditions, View permissions information for this article. A serious consideration of this issue would be one way of counteracting the throwaway culture which affects the entire planet, but it must be said that only limited progress has been made in this regard. Christian thought sees human beings as possessing a particular dignity above other creatures; it thus inculcates esteem for each person and respect for others.
In some countries, there are positive examples of environmental improvement: rivers, polluted for decades, have been cleaned up; native woodlands have been restored; landscapes have been beautified thanks to environmental renewal projects; beautiful buildings have been erected; advances have been made in the production of non-polluting energy and in the improvement of public transportation. He has also organized several international scientific environmental symposia, for instance in Patmos (1995) and around the Black Sea (1997), along the Danube River (1999), on the Adriatic Sea (2002), on the Baltic Sea (2003), on the Amazon River (2006), in the Arctic (2007), on the Mississippi River (2009), and most recently the Green Attica symposium in Greece (2018). It is in the Eucharist that all that has been created finds its greatest exaltation. The pope concludes that what is needed is a conversion and a pursuit of spiritual and ecological reformation, accountable to the best scientific consensus available.

II, lectio 14. A number of countries have a relatively low level of institutional effectiveness, which results in greater problems for their people while benefiting those who profit from this situation. This is why nature ‘groans and travails’ in all its parts (Rom.

And yet, when there is a general breakdown in the exercise of a certain virtue in personal and social life, it ends up causing a number of imbalances, including environmental ones. How can we genuinely teach the importance of concern for other vulnerable beings, however troublesome or inconvenient they may be, if we fail to protect a human embryo, even when its presence is uncomfortable and creates difficulties? These community actions, when they express self-giving love, can also become intense spiritual experiences. [129] BENEDICT XVI, Encyclical Letter Caritas in Veritate (29 June 2009), 67: AAS 101 (2009). [135] Message for the 2010 World Day of Peace, 9: AAS 102 (2010), 46. Even the fleeting life of the least of beings is the object of his love, and in its few seconds of existence, God enfolds it with his affection. In this discernment, some questions must have higher priority. 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.

So too is the Church. So the question, now, is not whether science and religion can coexist. POLITICS AND ECONOMY IN DIALOGUE FOR HUMAN FULFILMENT.

When they remain on their land, they themselves care for it best. A global consensus is essential for confronting the deeper problems, which cannot be resolved by unilateral actions on the part of individual countries. He did not hesitate either in recalling that “all of this shows the urgent need for us to move forward in a bold cultural revolution” (§114). Their naturalistic observations and methods laid important groundwork for what we now know as the scientific method, but the significance of those endeavors is more obvious to us in retrospect than it was to many Church officials at the time. Can we then say that given the emphasis put on the poor, Laudato Si’ is an expression of Latin American liberation theology (LALT)?

[116] In this sense, social ecology is necessarily institutional, and gradually extends to the whole of society, from the primary social group, the family, to the wider local, national and international communities. At the same time, Judaeo-Christian thought demythologized nature. What is needed, in effect, is an agreement on systems of governance for the whole range of so-called “global commons”. 79.

I believe that Saint Francis is the example par excellence of care for the vulnerable and of an integral ecology lived out joyfully and authentically. [94] Cf.