Benedict XVI - The Environment

The Environment

The Environment

BY POPE BENEDICT XVI

Collected and Edited by Jacquelyn Lindsey

Our Sunday Visitor Publishing Division
Our Sunday Visitor, Inc.
Huntington, Indiana 46750

All quotations from Pope Benedict XVI are copyright 2012 by Libreria Editrice Vaticana. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

The Scripture citations contained in this work are taken from the Catholic Edition of the Revised Standard Version of the Bible (RSV), copyright 1965 and 1966 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

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Copyright 2012 by Our Sunday Visitor. Published 2012.

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ISBN: 978-1-61278-628-5 (Inventory No. T1325)

eISBN: 978-1-61278-220-1

LCCN: 2012932797

Interior design by M. Urgo

Cover design by Lindsey Riesen

Cover art: Life (oil on panel), by Rebecca Campbell (Contemporary Artist), Private Collection/Courtesy of Jonathan Cooper, Park Walk Gallery, London/The Bridgeman Art Library

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

Table of Contents

INTRODUCTION

To speak about the environment is to speak about a great deal! In this introduction to an enormously rich and inspiring collection, I would like to offer you a few suggestions for appreciating Pope Benedict XVIs teaching on environment and ecology.

Four Key Words

Environment comes from the French virer, to turn or to veer, and environ around, from which we get to turn round and, finally, surroundings. In the title of this book, environment not only refers to all the surrounding conditions that influence plant and animal life, but also suggests that we pay ever more careful attention to how pollution might damage them.

Ecology starts with three letters, eco, from the Greek oikos, which means home or household; and then adds logos, which is discourse, meaning, sense. So ecology is meaningful talk about our home, the earth. The modern term ecology was introduced by the biologist Ernest Hckel in 1869. It is the scientific study of living beings in relationship with their surroundings. Being a wondrous work of the Creator, the natural environment contains a grammar which sets forth ends and criteria for its wise use, not its reckless exploitation.

Ecology, as treated by the Holy Father, relates to two other words beginning with more or less the same letters. Economy starts with oikos and adds nomos, rule or law; and ecumenical builds on oikos to become oikoumen g, the whole inhabited world and all its inhabitants, including our descendents. The three words beginning with oikos imply how we should dwell and behave here on our planet, one household common to all.

Moreover, each of the four key words suggests a quality that we need in order to embrace Gods gift of nature:

environment calls for awareness;

ecology enjoins responsibility;

economy requires justice; and

ecumenical hearkens to unity, not only global, but also intergenerational.

Thus, in addition to their definitional meanings, these four key words also contain suggestive clues for appreciating this sollection. When reading Pope Benedict on the environment, please notice what should stimulate us all to heighten awareness, accept responsibility, act justly, and strive for unity.

Extremes

Concern for the environment can be led astray when notions are taken to the extreme. Nature contains our human family; it is neither taboo (beyond human touch) nor should it be subjected to abuse. Similarly, nature is not more important than human but equally the human must not presume to have the monopoly on all meaning and design in nature. Unfortunately there are many common distortions which lead to attitudes of neo-paganism or a new pantheism human salvation cannot come from nature alone, understood in a purely naturalistic sense.

It is also necessary to reject the opposite position, which aims at total technical dominion over nature, because the natural environment is more than raw material to be manipulated at our pleasure When nature, including the human being, is viewed as the result of mere chance or evolutionary determinism, our sense of responsibility wanes.

There can scarcely be more dramatic illustrations of such irresponsibility than the chronic social injustices that force the poor into agricultural practices which result in wanton deforestation, erosion, desertification; or the warmongering that leaves devastated landscapes in its wake. We must not ignore the obvious truth that the deterioration of nature is in fact closely connected to the culture that shapes human coexistence. Just as human virtues are interrelated, such that the weakening of one places others at risk, so the ecological system is based on respect for a plan that affects both the health of society and its good relationship with nature. Our duties toward the environment are linked to our duties toward the human person, considered in himself and in relation to others. It would be wrong to uphold one set of duties while trampling on the other.

Having asked us to think clearly about the environment, the Holy Father shows us how to put order into our thinking, keeping things in their proper places, not exaggerating legitimate concerns to the point of becoming ideological and harmful. Let us do the same.

Human Ecology

If we agree that environmental language and action should avoid extremes, this raises the question: What are the proper boundaries?

In the early 1990s, Blessed John Paul II gave eloquent expression to environmental concern: People are rightly worried though much less than they should be about preserving the natural habitats of the various animal species threatened with extinction, because they realize that each of these species makes its particular contribution to the balance of nature in general. He then masterfully broadened and deepened the scope: In addition to the irrational destruction of the natural environment, we must also mention the more serious destruction of the human environment. Too little effort is made to safeguard the moral conditions for an authentic human ecology.

Pope Benedict goes on to develop the links between natural ecology, or respect for nature, and human ecology. Experience shows that disregard for the environment always harms human coexistence, and vice versa. And the vital importance of human ecology rests in this: to protect mankind from self-destruction. If there is a lack of respect for the right to life and to a natural death, if human conception, gestation and birth are made artificial, if human embryos are sacrificed to research, the conscience of society ends up losing the concept of human ecology and, along with it, that of environmental ecology.