Pope Francis Reminds Us All Life Is Interconnected, Stresses Importance Of Wonder To Prevent Self Perception As Ruthless Exploiters, Masters

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The pope’s new letter isn’t just an ‘exhortation’ on the environment – for Francis, everything is connected, which is a source of wonder

Pope Francis cleans the sky from pollution in graffiti by the artist Maupal, inspired by ‘Laudato Si.’ Image Credit - Maupal Instagram

Pope Francis cleans the sky from pollution in graffiti by the artist Maupal, inspired by ‘Laudato Si.’ Image Credit – Maupal Instagram

Lisa H. Sideris, University of California, Santa Barbara

Eight years have elapsed since Pope Francis released “Laudato Si,” his encyclical urging “care for our common home.” Though hailed as an eloquent plea to protect the environment, climate change was just one part of the pope’s message, from encouraging solidarity with the poor to criticizing “blind confidence” in technology.

On Oct. 4, 2023, Francis released an addendum to “Laudato Si,” addressed to “all people of good will on the climate crisis.”  This document will be partially pasted at the end of the document, with the full text linked to here.  October 4 marks the feast day of the pope’s namesake, St. Francis of Assisi, who famously loved all of creation. The new installment, “Laudate Deum” – “Praise God” – is no less sweeping in the way it links environmental problems with economic, social and technological issues.

Like “Laudato Si,” the new document strongly reproaches wealthy nations that contribute the most to climate change, accusing them of ignoring the plight of the poor. It offers a similar rebuke of rampant individualism, lamenting that responses to global crises of climate change and the pandemic have led to “greater individualism” and hoarding of wealth, rather than increased solidarity.

Scarcely any facet of modern life emerges unscathed by Francis’ sometimes withering critiques. In his view, societies have failed to respond to crises that are profoundly interrelated: global inequality, pollution and even new forms of artificial intelligence that feed the illusion of humans’ unlimited power. His 2015 broadside, in fact, targeted today’s “technocratic paradigm” with such vehemence that one critic likened these passages to the rantings of an “Amish hippie.”

At the root of Earth’s interlocking crises, the pope argued in 2015 and again in 2023, is a denial of the fact that all life exists in relationships. The larger whole in which all beings are embedded is, for Francis, both an inescapable reality and a source of wonder.

An integrated vision

I am an environmental ethicist, and my work explores both science and religion. And while these fields often look at the natural world through very different lenses, they also share a common value: wonder. Francis’ social critique, I believe, stems from his vision of life – one filled with awe for the depth of meaning and mystery to be found in an interconnected world.

Conversely, the list of social and environmental ills Francis addresses in his environmental documents all involve a tendency to fracture and obscure the bigger picture – to ignore the larger context of each particular issue. He criticizes “excessive anthropocentrism,” for example: overlooking humans’ bonds with the rest of creation. Within society, excessive individualism similarly prioritizes “parts” at the expense of the whole community.

Pope Francis attends a 2021 meeting in the Vatican, sending an appeal to participants in the 26th United Nations climate change conference.

Cheap consumer goods mask the full cost of production, such as the environmental and health costs of manufacturing, obscuring the relationship between customers’ habits and their harmful consequences. The impacts of air travel, for example – air and noise pollution, land use, carbon emissions – are not factored into the ticket price. Failure to see these connections contributes to what Francis assails as an unsustainable “throwaway culture.”

Meanwhile, ubiquitous technology – with an app for everything at each person’s fingertips – encourages a techno-fix mentality. Francis’ environmental writings reprove tech solutions that target the symptoms of problems without addressing their deeper causes. Geoengineering may offer hope to mitigate the effects of climate change, but not if societies keep burning fossil fuels in the meantime. Social media supposedly helps build connections, but researchers have found that people who go on the apps to maintain relationships feel more lonely than other users. In an August 2023 speech, Francis warned of social media’s “reduction of human relationships to mere algorithms.”

Integral ecology

In Francis’ eyes, all these problems result from denial of how deeply interconnected the world is. When humans attempt to declare “independence from reality,” he writes, relationships are the first casualty.

The word “reality” appears over 40 times in the pope’s 2015 encyclical, by my count. In his 2023 addendum, Francis once more features the word prominently. He argues that nonhuman creatures have their own “reality” and that climate change is a complex “global reality” that many try to deny, or simplify by blaming others – notably developing societies – rather than recognize their own role.

To understand what he means by “reality,” I look to the idea of “integral ecology,” a term popularized by Francis’ 2015 encyclical. In short, integral ecology is a holistic way of thinking about economic, social, political, ethical and environmental problems. The Earth is not confronting a variety of separate crises, Francis insists, but rather “one complex crisis” with many faces. His new document reinforces this idea, stressing that climate concerns are about more than ecology, because care for the Earth and care for one another are intimately linked.

Mauro Pallotta, in Maupal art, recounts his Pope Francis in an unreleased form, that of the street artist, who exactly like the author of the work, wakes up at night armed only with a brush and blue color to paint in an imaginary Via della Pace, the very famous “Blue Dove” by Paolo Picasso who has an olive branch in his mouth, messenger of peace.. Image Credit - Maupal

Mauro Pallotta, in Maupal art, recounts his Pope Francis in an unreleased form, that of the street artist, who exactly like the author of the work, wakes up at night armed only with a brush and blue color to paint in an imaginary Via della Pace, the very famous “Blue Dove” by Paolo Picasso who has an olive branch in his mouth, messenger of peace.. Image Credit – Maupal

Nuns hold a banner at a march reading ‘I ask you in the name of God to defend Mother Earth’ during the Global Climate March in Bogota, Colombia, in 2015.

Mystery in a dewdrop

The pope often turns to Saint Francis of Assisi, patron saint of animals, as a model of integral thought. The 13th century saint understood the “inseparable bond” that exists “between concern for nature, justice for the poor, commitment to society, and interior peace,” the pope wrote in 2015. St. Francis spoke of all of creation as family, praising “Mother Earth,” “Brother Moon” and “Sister Sun.”

In 2015, the pope wrote admiringly about his namesake’s sense of awe, adding that without wonder, humans’ attitude is that of “masters, consumers, ruthless exploiters.”

Indeed, wonder can create a shift in how people understand themselves in relation to something larger. There has recently been a renaissance of interest across many fields of study in the power of wonder to encourage behaviors that are good for the environment and for human health and relationships.

Psychologists have found that experiences of wonder can shrink the ego, encouraging generosity, humility and ethical decision-making. Wonder also weakens the perception of boundaries, increasing a person’s sense of connection with something larger than the self. Other studies suggest that experiences of awe have the power to broaden people’s moral concerns, increasing their consideration toward other humans, plants, animals and the environment.


For the pope, however, integral reality is about more than humans and nature; it encompasses relationships between all living things and God – an even larger, mysterious reality that is divine.

“The universe unfolds in God, who fills it completely,” he writes in both documents. Therefore, “There is a mystical meaning to be found in a leaf, in a mountain trail, in a dewdrop, in a poor person’s face.” All are knit together in wondrous patterns of interconnection.The Conversation

Lisa H. Sideris, Professor of Environmental Studies, Affiliate Faculty in Religious Studies, University of California, Santa Barbara

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Partial Text of the Addendum to Laudato Si:

APOSTOLIC EXHORTATION

LAUDATE DEUM

OF THE HOLY FATHER
FRANCIS

TO ALL PEOPLE OF GOOD WILL
ON THE CLIMATE CRISIS

 

1. “Praise God for all his creatures”. This was the message that Saint Francis of Assisi proclaimed by his life, his canticles and all his actions. In this way, he accepted the invitation of the biblical Psalms and reflected the sensitivity of Jesus before the creatures of his Father: “Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not clothed like one of these” (Mt 6:28-29). “Are not five sparrows sold for two pennies? Yet not one of them is forgotten in God’s sight” (Lk 12:6). How can we not admire this tenderness of Jesus for all the beings that accompany us along the way!

2. Eight years have passed since I published the Encyclical Letter Laudato Si’, when I wanted to share with all of you, my brothers and sisters of our suffering planet, my heartfelt concerns about the care of our common home. Yet, with the passage of time, I have realized that our responses have not been adequate, while the world in which we live is collapsing and may be nearing the breaking point. In addition to this possibility, it is indubitable that the impact of climate change will increasingly prejudice the lives and families of many persons. We will feel its effects in the areas of healthcare, sources of employment, access to resources, housing, forced migrations, etc.

3. This is a global social issue and one intimately related to the dignity of human life. The Bishops of the United States have expressed very well this social meaning of our concern about climate change, which goes beyond a merely ecological approach, because “our care for one another and our care for the earth are intimately bound together. Climate change is one of the principal challenges facing society and the global community. The effects of climate change are borne by the most vulnerable people, whether at home or around the world”. [1] In a few words, the Bishops assembled for the Synod for Amazonia said the same thing: “Attacks on nature have consequences for people’s lives”. [2] And to express bluntly that this is no longer a secondary or ideological question, but a drama that harms us all, the African bishops stated that climate change makes manifest “a tragic and striking example of structural sin”. [3]

4. The reflection and information that we can gather from these past eight years allow us to clarify and complete what we were able to state some time ago. For this reason, and because the situation is now even more pressing, I have wished to share these pages with you.

Read the rest of this article here

Banner Image: Pope Francis cleans the sky from pollution in graffiti by the artist Maupal, inspired by ‘Laudato Si.’ Image Credit – Maupal Instagram


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Lisa H. Sideris The Conversation

Professor of Environmental Studies, Affiliate Faculty in Religious Studies, University of California, Santa Barbara I am interested in the value and ethical significance of natural processes. My areas of research include environmental ethics, and the science-religion interface. Much of my research focuses on conflict and compatibility between scientific and religious interpretations of nature and natural processes. My first book Environmental Ethics, Ecological Theology, and Natural Selection (Columbia, 2003) critiques the tendency of Christian environmental ethics, or “ecological theology,” to misconstrue or ignore Darwinian theory, and examines the problems this creates for developing a realistic ethic toward nature and animals. More recent research has focused on Rachel Carson, whose book Silent Spring (1962) arguably marks the beginning of the environmental movement in America and abroad. I co-edited (with philosopher and nature writer Kathleen Dean Moore) a volume of interdisciplinary essays on Carson's life and work, titled Rachel Carson: Legacy and Challenge (SUNY, 2008). My current research centers on the role of wonder and enchantment in (and with) science, nature, and religion, and the variety of ways in which scientific narratives, particularly those involving evolution and the Anthropocene, are being "re-enchanted" and recast as mythopoeic stories with moral content. My most recent book, Consecrating Science: Wonder, Knowledge, and the Natural World (2017) is the product of that research. I also write about the spiritual and ethical dimensions of emerging technologies of the Anthropocene, like de-extinction and other high-tech interventions in nature. I currently serve as President of the International Society for the Study of Religion, Nature, and Culture (ISSRNC).

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