Courtney McGrailAhead of a key world summit on climate change, Fr Martin Magill appeals to the Pontiff for courageous leadership
Fr Martin Magill
Dear Pope Francis,
Recently I was part of a small group who met to discuss your encyclical which turned out to be a fascinating and stimulating event and the catalyst for this letter. I am now writing to ask you to encourage parishes and Catholic institutions throughout the world to implement at least some of the recommendations of Laudato Si’ as I am concerned it may not have the impact you clearly would like it to have (something I also strongly desire). I am not sure that many Catholics throughout the world are aware of it, have read it let alone changing their lifestyles as a consequence of reading it. I also believe Catholics don’t appreciate how reading, reflecting and implementing its message is an opportunity to live the Catholic faith in this current time of crisis, change and opportunity.
At the recent discussion group on it, one woman talked about her concern that there would be study groups on it but that these would affect little change in behaviour. It strikes me that in many dioceses throughout the world, study groups are not even taking place. Whilst of course “without vision there the people perish” and Laudato Si’ outlines the contours of an ecologically embedded and attuned vision of care for self, community and our common home, visions alone will not constitute “ecological conversion”.
In Laudato Si’, you emphasised the importance of education in environmental responsibility which you said: “can encourage ways of acting which significantly affect the world around us, such as avoiding the use of plastic and paper, reducing water consumption, separating refuse, cooking only what can reasonably be consumed, showing care for other living beings, using public transport or car-pooling, planting trees, turning off unnecessary lights, or any number of other practices” (211).
Before reading Laudato Si’ I had picked up from the media your criticism of governments and how power is used in the world; I knew you had referred to the bailing out of banks deemed “too big to fail” and of course your concern for the poor who were not accorded the same status in public policy.
In fact, when I read it, I was moved by how central to the encyclical is the link between our failure to care for our “common home” and our failure to address the urgent needs of the poor.
You remind us at different times in the encyclical that the cry of the Earth and the cry of the poor are the same and how it is always the poor who suffer most from our failure to care for our common home. I had not realised however you had challenged so strongly people of faith on our lack of concern for environmental damage to our common home: “Obstructionist attitudes, even on the part of believers, can range from denial of the problem to indifference, nonchalant resignation or blind confidence in technical solutions” (14). I had not realised you stressed the essential nature of creation care: “Living our vocation to be protectors of God’s handiwork is essential to a life of virtue; it is not an optional or a secondary aspect of our Christian experience” (217).
The line that struck me most was: “to commit a crime against the natural world is a sin against ourselves and a sin against God” (8). Having read your encyclical, I now believe it is a wakeup call for people throughout the world. I had to read it for myself to recognise this. Your call for an “ecological conversion” is an injunction and invitation to partake in what theologian Thomas Berry has called the ‘Great Work’ of healing the Earth which is at one and the same time a recuperative and redemptive movement towards healing divisions, inequalities and blighted human relations within the global human family.
Recently, you asked every Catholic parish in Europe to receive and welcome refugees and that galvanised us. In my home diocese of Down and Connor, we now have in place a coordinating committee of key personnel to ensure your wishes are carried out and we have been preparing for the first people to arrive.
It would seem logical therefore for you to ask every Catholic parish and institution throughout the world to put in place practical measures to implement Laudato Si’ and its worthy ideas and principles. You have given us the theory, you have given numerous practical examples of what we can do but now we need to get down to the implementation. Imagine the difference if every Catholic parish and institution throughout our “common home” began to do even a few of the things you suggested.
An important and inspiring contribution Laudato Si’ makes here is that it offers an important corrective to the sometimes well-meaning, sometimes arrogant technological imperative response to the cry of the Earth – namely that more, bigger and better technology will solve our problems. But, as I read the encyclical, you suggest another response – what if an essential and Christian response is (which is not denying the role of technology) not to do something more, but thoughtfully to reduce, remove and reflect on our impact on our common home. That is to do less not more.
Pope Francis, as we approach this major global conference on the environment in Paris I now appreciate how timely Laudato Si’ happens to be. You call us to a new global solidarity and action; it occurs to me not least in the light of recent tragic events how important that call has turned out to be. I would hope the attention this conference will generate might be a catalyst for people to read, study and implement Laudato Si’. We need people to access and read it. I am aware there are and have been some efforts made to encourage people to read your encyclical.
The Irish Catholic newspaper produced a study guide based on the “see, judge, act” approach. Drumalis, the Cross and Passion Retreat Centre in Co. Antrim has organised a number of retreats based on it and another retreat coming up in the New Year. The discussion group I referred to earlier was organised by Prof. John Barry from Queen’s University in Belfast and the Catholic Chaplaincy in the same university has copies of Laudato Si’ on sale.
Pope Francis, like your name sake St Francis, you clearly have a love for our “common home”, you have given leadership at world level at a strategic time on this issue – speak out again now and ask us to practice what you preach.
In short, your message is powerful and prophetic, encourage us to read, study and implement Laudato Si’ in our dioceses, our parishes, our schools and places of learning.
Laudato Si’ has to become a ‘call to action’, based on its inspiring vision and thoughtful diagnosis of the malaise in, on and with the world.
Our common home is being destroyed, defiled and degraded, partly wilfully and in the interests and to the benefit of a minority of the human family, partly out of ignorance, as this degradation is sequestered and occluded from the everyday perception of people simply getting on with living.
In the literal sense of the term, Laudato Si’ is apocalyptic in the sense of ‘lifting the veil’, opening up the opportunity that in the appreciation of crisis lies redemption, recovery, growth and change.
Hence I read Laudato Si’ as a spiritual call to action, for spiritual and practical change as responses to climate change as it were – a necessary and courageous recognition of the reality of the current human condition and the Earth.
Given the tremendous changes required to repair and heal the damage we have wrought to our common home, a necessary result of the ‘ecological conversion’ we and our home so badly need will be viewed (somewhat fearfully) by many (especially those of us who live in the minority world, the high energy, high consumerist, highly polluting societies of the industrialised world).
But as can be discerned in the wisdom of Laudato Si’, the end of the world as we know it is not the end of the world. Just the end of the world as we currently know it, and the start of something different, something better, a world in which humanity lives in harmony with one another and our common home, a respectful, reverential and gracious ‘re-inhabiting’ of the Earth, a wise stewardship over that which we have not created yet upon which we are utterly dependent.
In this ‘ecological conversion’ we can discern a paradigm shift in human attitudes to our common home: it is not the Earth that was made for us, our species alone (here we can see the error or sin of an arrogant human-centeredness).
Rather it is the opposite: the gift and responsibility of our species is to care for the Earth: we were in part made for this purpose.
At the discussion group I attended, a ‘collapsed Catholic’ (his own words) concluded with some lines from one of the prayers you included at the end of your encyclical and the following quotation from T.S. Eliot’s poem Little Gidding.
Assuring you of my daily prayer for your ministry.
“We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.”
Yours in Jesus Christ
Martin J Magill
Parish Priest,
Sacred Heart Parish, Belfast.