The Vatican has confirmed that Pope Francis is drafting an encyclical on ecology. Given the weight of such documents in Catholic teaching, issuing one on the natural environment will certainly show the Church and the world the importance Pope Francis places on the issue.
But then, given that Francis’s namesake is the patron saint of the planet’s ecology, this shouldn’t be a surprise. Nor should anyone think that Francis is the first pontiff to speak of the environment. Blessed John Paul II placed the subject early within his first encyclical and continued to write and preach on the subject throughout his pontificate. And Benedict XVI was known as the “Green Pope” for his many, many eco-teachings and actions.
So what will Pope Francis contribute?
The pontiff has already given us clues. In his June 17 General Audience, he spoke at length about the environment and he did so by continuing a theme of his predecessors. This is the concept of “human ecology,” which (as Benedict XVI put it) links our duties toward the environment and our duties toward the human person. Human ecology also means that as nature has laws that tell us what happens when we ingest mercury or when we flood waterways with excessive nutrients, so are there natural laws that tell us that life begins at conception and that marriage between a man and a woman is a union rooted in the natural order of things.
For his part, Francis has been making this link with the term “throwaway culture.”
In other words, as we humans increase our consumption of local and planetary resources, we also become accustomed to disposing of anything we don’t want. This soon translates into disposing people through means such as abortion, euthanasia, and little desire to interact with the least among us. For Francis, terms like “throwaway culture” are another way of saying a “culture of death.”
Here are his own words from his June 17th General Audience:
“[P]eople are thrown aside as if they were trash. This ‘culture of waste’ tends to become a common mentality that infects everyone. Human life, the person, are no longer seen as a primary value to be respected and safeguarded, especially if they are poor or disabled, if they are not yet useful—like the unborn child—or are no longer of any use—like the elderly person.”
And as we know, Francis is not one to speak for the sake of theory. He speaks to each of us—and includes himself in his exhortations. When it comes to the environment, he encourages us all to make changes. He tells us that you and I need to throw out our throwaway culture because how we consume is a matter related not just to the natural environment but also to personal holiness (that is, living virtuously) as well as to the common good.
Lastly, Francis has a strong devotion to the Blessed Mother. Like his predecessors, he routinely entrusts his papacy to her intercession. And so, I would imagine that the underlying theological theme of the document will be Marian.
After all, it was Mary, as a creature, that allowed the grace of God to stir within her and bring into human history the Lamb of God, who came to take away the sins of the world.
Stay tuned for more news about this document. It will certainly highlight the church’s stance on the natural environment because it will remind us of the need to protect all life—especially human life, in all its forms and all its fragile stages of growth and decline.
William Patenaude, M.A., KHS, serves on the diocesan pastoral council, is an engineer with the Rhode Island Department of Environmental Management, and is a parishioner of SS. Rose and Clement Parish, Warwick. He also writes at catholicecology.blogspot.com
