[C]OLCHESTER – An influential piece of recent Catholic doctrine came under discussion at a St. Michael’s College symposium this week.
Pope Francis published an encyclical, or letter, that calls on followers to take action to protect the environment.
The pope’s letter has been lauded by members of the environmental movement and scoffed at by climate-change skeptics. Speakers at a symposium held by St. Mike’s, a private Catholic college in Colchester, say Francis’ environmental advocacy is not surprising, and they say the document is not solely focused on the natural world.
Environmental advocates say the encyclical, titled Laudato Si, carries forward a church tradition of stewardship for the Earth that stretches back to the early Roman Empire’s Christian apologist Tertullian, according to the event’s keynote speaker, Boston Globe journalist John L. Allen, Jr.
The work exhorts Catholics, including the roughly 118,000 in Vermont, to practice their faith holistically, not only in caring for the natural environment but in their approach to human matters.
“As American Catholics, if we are going to take seriously the pope’s message in this document, if we read the document in its entirety, it is a direct and frontal challenge on the current sociological dispensation of the American Catholic church,” Allen said.
The event at Saint Michael’s, called “Saving our Common Home, A Symposium on Integral Ecology,” featured a panel following Allen’s presentation that included UVM ecological economics professor Jon Erickson, Green Mountain Monastery co-founder Sister Bernadette Bostwick, and retired third-world development economist Clive Gray.
Like Pope Benedict XVI’s encyclical Caritas in Veritate, Allen said, Pope Francis’ recent work speaks to “the need to integrate human ecology and natural ecology.”
“If I boil that down into political language, what it means is the need to put the church’s pro-life and its peace and justice message together,” he said. “It’s two sides of one coin. One basic claim running through both these documents is, that you cannot defend the unborn child without being concerned about the poor child who is already born, and conversely, you cannot defend the right to life of created species … without equally passionately defending the right to life of the human person.”
Pope Francis’ encyclical grew out of concern for islanders in the Philippines who were decimated by Typhoon Haiyan in November 2013, Allen said. The islanders had suffered effects of a storm likely resulting from global climate change, and during a visit there the pope saw how societies can harm vulnerable populations through their relation to individuals and to the natural environment, Allen said.
Laudato Si urges people to lessen their harm to the environment through individual acts, such as turning off air conditioning, driving less and recycling.
But to a far greater degree, the May 24 letter calls for collective social and political action, Dr. Laurie Gagne, a theologian at Saint Michael’s College and director of the college’s Edmundite Center for Peace and Justice, said.
“It’s not enough to do things as individuals,” she said of the pope’s message. “You really have to work for systemic change.”
Papal encyclicals – of which most popes have written several – form an important part of Catholic teaching, Gagne said.
Such epistles “are probably the most influential kind of document – the most important kind of document – that a Pope can issue,” aside from infrequent writings upon faith and morals called magisterial teachings, Gagner said.
Nevertheless, a significant number of Catholics remain unconvinced, she said.
“I think they’re in the minority, but they are vocal,” Gagner said. “Some of the Republicans in Congress who deny climate change are Catholics.”
Most of today’s Catholics embrace science, and acknowledge a duty to behave morally within the context of modern scientific precepts, Gagner said.
“Unfortunately, climate change is one of those things human beings have screwed up. And, therefore, we have to take responsibility for it,” she said.
Opinions among the panelists on the encyclical’s import varied widely. Bostwick stressed the document’s mystical elements. Gray disputed the soundness of some of Pope Francis’ pronouncements on economics. Erickson saw the encyclical as a “challenge to higher education,” urging a pedagogy that offers students greater exposure to the humanities.
Joseph Gainza, of Pax Christi Burlington, delivered the symposium’s welcome address, and he described the encyclical as a call to action on the environment specifically.
“I hope, and it is the intention of the organizers, that you will leave here tonight committed to taking action to defend our Earth and all life on it,” Gainza said. “This is the moment we are at: It has fallen to us – people alive today – to determine whether the world as we know it can survive beyond this century.
“We are confronted, for the first time since humanity evolved into self-awareness, with the prospect that our actions may end our evolutionary journey and take millions of forms of life with us,” Gainza said.
Attendees said they left the symposium feeling a renewed sense of responsibility.
“We all have to collectively decide if we’re all going to give up part of ourselves for the whole,” Bobbi Perez said following the event. “The plants and trees and animals aren’t going to be doing it. We are at a critical stage of our existence…where we can decide our own fate.”