FOR Anglicans seeking to deepen and extend their understanding of environmental theology and ethics, the Roman Catholic tradition of social teaching may be a source of new insights and perspectives, not to mention the odd provocation.
Nine years after the publication of Pope Francis’s encyclical Laudato Si’ (2015), and in the wake of his Apostolic Exhortation Laudate Deum (LD), released last year (News, 6 October 2023), it may be opportune to consider the impact and legacy of this tradition.
This body of work is substantial, beginning with Pope Leo XIII’s Rerum Novarum, in 1891, if not before, which has been supplemented ever since. To dip into this material is to encounter language and concepts that may be unfamiliar, and even seem unintuitive. Yet, I would suggest, it is here that Catholic social teaching makes its most interesting contribution; for, in articulating historic doctrine and ethics for our particular time and its issues, it can inspire productive reflection — and for a wider public than just Christians.
Its insights often seem to operate “diagonally” to contemporary debates that have come to appear stale or contentious, encouraging us to move beyond fixed positions towards a new kind of social, cultural, political, and — yes — even theological imaginary — way of looking at the situation. Nowhere is this more true than with the global ecological crisis.
BY WAY of this tradition, then, we can think afresh about the roots of the present situation, our perspective on it, and our response. Consider, for example, how Laudato Si’ diagnoses the crisis. Pope Francis refers to the “technocratic paradigm” of Western society (LS §20).
We may be tempted to object: will this approach be theological enough? In the context of the Catholic social tradition as a whole, this term does indeed serve as vehicle for a critical and even theological examination of our situation.
Francis is referring to the widespread assumption, which for some even has the status of “ideology” (LS §22), that, by means of our scientific, technological, and economic prowess, we have the right to extract from the earth whatever we need — and, more importantly, whatever we desire.
Of course, such a mindset is divorced from reality: as the concept of “planetary boundaries” informs us, the earth will not sustain the ever-increasing extraction of material resources in the pursuit of economic growth and development — certainly not for all people equally.
To inhabit the “technocratic paradigm” is, therefore, to subscribe to a kind of false story for our lives. It is also to hold to an erroneous understanding of who and what we are for; for, within the “technocratic paradigm”, we begin to see ourselves as agents “progressively approaching and gaining control over an external object” (LS §106): that is, over the world itself. We view the resources of the planet as available for “possession, mastery, and transformation” (LS §106).
In its basic posture, this seems to arrogate to ourselves a right belonging to God alone (LD §73). The idea of the “technocratic paradigm”, therefore, makes subtle linkages to Christian understandings of idolatry and sin, and even to something like a theological anthropology. But, with a broad (secular) audience in mind, it achieves indirectly, without antagonism.
Laudato Si’ makes an expansive invitation to all of society to reflect on the attitudes and motivations of our hearts. Only after that does it address choices and behaviour, since these are always secondary and derivative.
IN PLACE of the “technocratic paradigm”, with its apparent dislocation of human life from the material context in which it is embedded, Pope Francis offers a vision of the “interconnectedness” of creation. The natural world is not a “mere setting in which we develop our lives and our projects” (LD §25). We must understand ourselves “as part of nature, included in it and thus in constant interaction with it” (LD §25).
This is not to claim strict ontological equivalence between humans, animals, and other elements of the natural world. After all, a central pillar of Catholic social teaching is the absolute dignity of the human.
But the Pope argues that this dignity “is incomprehensible and unsustainable without other creatures” (LD §67); for “the Judaeo-Christian vision of the cosmos defends the unique and central value of the human being amid the marvellous concert of all God’s creatures” (LD §67).
He echoes here developments in Earth Science, mapping how interactions between different components of our planetary system, both human and non-human, function in a delicate, integrated, and complex way to ensure that habitable conditions are maintained for all life (see LS §62-63 and Querida Amazonia, 2020, §48).
But there is also theological and biblical warrant for such a vision. Think of Psalm 104, with its description of the multiplicity of different forms of created life, together rendering worship to God. Humans are included in this list, of course, but the emphasis is not on what makes us exceptional, but on our fellow-createdness.
Our calling and vocation, then, not autonomously, but with attentiveness to a wider set of creaturely obligations. “Responsibility means that human beings, endowed with intelligence, must respect the laws of nature and the delicate equilibria existing between the creatures of this world” (LS §62).
THIS includes responsibility towards other humans, our neighbours, especially those affected disproportionately by environmental harms; for “there is an intimate relationship between the poor and the fragility of the planet, based on the conviction that everything in the world is connected” (LS §16).
Of particular interest to Pope Francis are the stories of indigenous people around the world, especially in the Amazon region, whom he celebrates as curators of this vision of “the interconnection and interdependence of the whole of creation, the mysticism of gratuitousness that loves life as a gift, the mysticism of a sacred wonder before nature and all its forms of life” (QA §73).
Catholic social teaching calls for a theology that heeds “both the cry of the earth and the cry of the poor” (LS §49), and for acts of justice that flow from this recognition.
Indeed, it may be fair to say that, throughout the tradition, including the period of Francis’s magisterium, a sort of latent political vision is implied, albeit one that again “diagonalises” our assumptions about solutions from right or left, instead of proposing something that cuts across them entirely.
What matters here is improved representation of as many as possible of the earth’s stakeholders, especially those whose “voices” have muted under the terms of the “technocratic paradigm”.
Thus, for example, Laudate Deum (LD) calls for “spaces for conversation, consultation, arbitration, conflict resolution and supervision, and, in the end, a sort of increased ‘democratization’ in the global context, so that various situations can be expressed and included” (LD §43).
The representation called for here is not of humanity alone, least of all one privileged sub-section of it, but of all of creation.
AT A time when the Church’s interventions in politically contested matters can seem fragile and hesitant, and liable to polarise the debate further, might this set the terms of a renewed position for Christianity in the public domain?
Attentiveness to our creaturely situation is not easy: in a complex world, the impact of our decisions can be hard to trace, and it can seem less painful merely to acquiesce in patterns of supply and demand prescribed by market forces. Asymmetry and injustice in global society can seem irreparable.
To this, Catholic social teaching’s strong rejoinder is that, if the roots of the crisis are internal to ourselves, then something more than politics alone will be required: nothing less than conversion of our values and orientation. By analogy with Christian metanoia, we must seek a power that “transforms life, transfigures our goals and sheds light on our relationship to others and with creation as a whole” (LD §61).
Of course, Christians are already seeking to direct themselves towards this power, to ensure that “the effects of an encounter with Jesus Christ become evident in our relationship with the world around us” (LS §217). But Pope Francis dares to open out the range of this word to include the whole world: “In addressing this encyclical to all men and women of good will, I want to say that the ecological crisis is a summons to all of us to a profound interior conversion” (LS §217).
It is here, I think, that this body of teaching offers its profoundest contribution to our thinking about the ecological crisis. It appeals not just to the faithful, but to all society, on the basis of theological commitments to natural justice and the common good. But, in making this appeal, it simultaneously invites us to deeper theological engagement, as we reflect on ideas of the giftedness of creation, our responsibilities to others, and the necessity of a metanoia of the heart. It is worth a closer look.
The Revd Dr Timothy Howles is Associate Director of the Laudato Si’ Research Institute, based at Campion Hall, Oxford, and is an Anglican priest in the diocese of Oxford.
Further reading
For Catholic social teaching on “ecology” during the pontificate of Francis, see: Laudato Si’ (2015), Fratelli Tutti (2020), Querida Amazonia (2020), and Laudate Deum (2023).
For an introduction to the central principles of the tradition, and its relation to contemporary secular society, see: Anna Rowlands, Towards a Politics of Communion: Catholic social teaching in dark times (Bloomsbury, 2021).
For a recent volume applying Catholic social teaching tradition to political ecology, see Patrick Riordan and Gavin Flood (editors), Connecting Ecologies: Integrating responses to the global challenge (Routledge, 2024).
For a scholarly exploration of environmental theology and ethics as significantly inspired by the tradition of Catholic social teaching, especially its vision of “interconnectedness”, see: Celia Deane-Drummond, Theological Ethics through a Multi-Species Lens: The evolution of wisdom Part I (OUP, 2019) and Shadow Sophia: The evolution of wisdom Part II (OUP, 2022).