Earth Day 2021
Laudato Si” is Pope Francis’ landmark encyclical on the environment, or more formally, “On Care for Our Common Home.”
“Laudato Si” means “Praise be to you,” taken from the first line of a canticle by St. Francis that praises God with all of His creation.
Normally, papal documents are addressed to bishops or the lay faithful. But, similar to St. John XXIII’s “Pacem in Terris” (“Peace on Earth”), Pope Francis addresses his message to all people.
His goal: “I urgently appeal, then, for a new dialogue about how we are shaping the future of our planet. We need a conversation that includes everyone, since the environment challenge we are undergoing, and its human roots, concern and affect us all” (14).
Pope Francis also has a very striking call to conversion for those in the Church as well:
“The ecological crisis is also a summons to profound interior conversion. It must be said that some committed and prayerful Christians, with the excuse of realism and pragmatism, tend to ridicule expressions of concern for the environment. Others are passive; they choose not to change their habits and thus become inconsistent. So what they all need is an ‘ecological conversion,’ whereby the effects of their encounter with Jesus Christ become evident in their relationship with the world around them.
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).
“Laudato Si” is a worldwide wake-up call to help humanity understand the destruction that man is rendering to the environment and his fellow man.
While addressing the environment directly, the document’s scope is broader in many ways as it looks at not only man’s impacts on the environment, but also the many philosophical, theological and cultural causes that threaten the relationships of man to nature and man to each other in various circumstances.
The document is in many ways the epitome of Pope Francis. It is an unexpected topic. It presents Gospel truths. And it provides a challenge for every believer (and non-believers, too).
— Kevin Cotter, FOCUS. Kevin Cotter is the executive director of programming at Amazing Parish. He previously served with Fellowship of Catholic University Students (FOCUS) for 11 years as a missionary and senior director of curriculum. This is adapted from a 2015 FOCUS blog post.
Learn more about Care for Creation
CHARLOTTE — Did you know that caring for creation is part of Catholic Social Teaching? This Earth Day, learn more about how environmental changes impact the most vulnerable among us, and how caring for creation promotes human dignity and peace.
All are invited to attend “Catholics & Creation Care,” an Earth Day event organized by St. Matthew Church’s Care for Creation Team, the Sisters of Mercy and other parishes in the region. The event will be held starting at 7 p.m. Thursday, April 22, with both in-person and livestreaming options available.
The featured speaker is Dr. Catherine Wright, a St. Matthew parishioner, author and founding member of the parish’s Care for Creation Team. Wright recently completed an interactive guide to Pope Francis’ second encyclical, “Laudato Si: On Care for Our Common Home.”
The in-person event will be held at St. Philip Neri Church, located at 292 Munn Road in Fort Mill, S.C. To register for the in-person or livestreamed event, go to the parish’s website at www.saintphilipneri.org and click on “St. Philip Neri Catholic Social Teaching Ministry” on the homepage.
For more information, go online to www.stmatthewcatholic.org/creation or contact This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..
— Catholic News Herald
Quotes on some of the main themes in ‘Laudato Si’
Impacts of the market on the environment: “Once more, we need to reject a magical conception of the market, which would suggest that problems can be solved simply by an increase in the profits of companies or individuals. Is it realistic to hope that those who are obsessed with maximizing profits will stop to reflect on the environmental damage which they will leave behind for future generations? Where profits alone count, there can be no thinking about the rhythms of nature, its phases of decay and regeneration, or the complexity of ecosystems which may be gravely upset by human intervention” (190).
False belief in technology: “There is a tendency to believe that every increase in power means ‘an increase of “progress” itself,’ an advance in ‘security, usefulness, welfare and vigor; …an assimilation of new values into the stream of culture,’ as if reality, goodness and truth automatically flow from technological and economic power as such. The fact is that ‘contemporary man has not been trained to use power well,’ because our immense technological development has not been accompanied by a development in human responsibility, values and conscience. Each age tends to have only a meager awareness of its own limitations. It is possible that we do not grasp the gravity of the challenges now before us” (105).
Global warming: “A very solid scientific consensus indicates that we are presently witnessing a disturbing warming of the climatic system. In recent decades this warming has been accompanied by a constant rise in the sea level and, it would appear, by an increase of extreme weather events, even if a scientifically determinable cause cannot be assigned to each particular phenomenon. Humanity is called to recognize the need for changes of lifestyle, production and consumption, in order to combat this warming or at least the human causes which produce or aggravate it” (23).
Science and technology as a belief system: “It can be said that many problems of today’s world stem from the tendency, at times unconscious, to make the method and aims of science and technology an epistemological paradigm which shapes the lives of individuals and the workings of society. The effects of imposing this model on reality as a whole, human and social, are seen in the deterioration of the environment, but this is just one sign of a reductionism which affects every aspect of human and social life” (106).
The environment and the poor: “The human environment and the natural environment deteriorate together; we cannot adequately combat environmental degradation unless we attend to causes related to human and social degradation. In fact, the deterioration of the environment and of society affects the most vulnerable people on the planet: ‘Both everyday experience and scientific research show that the gravest effects of all attacks on the environment are suffered by the poorest’” (48).
Consumerism: “When people become self-centered and self-enclosed, their greed increases. The emptier a person’s heart is, the more he or she needs things to buy, own and consume. It becomes almost impossible to accept the limits imposed by reality. In this horizon, a genuine sense of the common good also disappears” (204).
Water as a fundamental right: “One particularly serious problem is the quality of water available to the poor…. Yet access to safe drinkable water is a basic and universal human right, since it is essential to human survival and, as such, is a condition for the exercise of other human rights. Our world has a grave social debt towards the poor who lack access to drinking water, because they are denied the right to a life consistent with their inalienable dignity” (29-30).
How we can help the environment: “Education in environmental responsibility can encourage ways of acting which directly and 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. All of these reflect a generous and worthy creativity which brings out the best in human beings. Reusing something instead of immediately discarding it, when done for the right reasons, can be an act of love which expresses our own dignity” (211).
Social media’s effects on our culture: “When media and the digital world become omnipresent, their influence can stop people from learning how to live wisely, to think deeply and to love generously…. True wisdom, as the fruit of self-examination, dialogue and generous encounter between persons, is not acquired by a mere accumulation of data which eventually leads to overload and confusion, a sort of mental pollution. ... Real relationships with others, with all the challenges they entail, now tend to be replaced by a type of internet communication which enables us to choose or eliminate relationships at whim, thus giving rise to a new type of contrived emotion which has more to do with devices and displays than with other people and with nature” (47).
On overpopulation: “Instead of resolving the problems of the poor and thinking of how the world can be different, some can only propose a reduction in the birth rate. At times, developing countries face forms of international pressure which make economic assistance contingent on certain policies of ‘reproductive health’…. To blame population growth instead of extreme and selective consumerism on the part of some, is one way of refusing to face the issues” (50).
Transgender ideology: “Learning to accept our body, to care for it and to respect its fullest meaning, is an essential element of any genuine human ecology. Also, valuing one’s own body in its femininity or masculinity is necessary if I am going to be able to recognize myself in an encounter with someone who is different. In this way we can joyfully accept the specific gifts of another man or woman, the work of God the Creator, and find mutual enrichment. It is not a healthy attitude which would seek ‘to cancel out sexual difference because it no longer knows how to confront it’” (120).
Abortion: “Since everything is interrelated, concern for the protection of nature is also incompatible with the justification of abortion. How can we genuinely teach the importance of concern for other vulnerable beings, however troublesome or inconvenient they may be, if we fail to protect a human embryo, even when its presence is uncomfortable and creates difficulties? ‘If personal and social sensitivity towards the acceptance of the new life is lost, then other forms of acceptance that are valuable for society also wither away’” (120).
Hope in this situation: “Yet all is not lost. Human beings, while capable of the worst, are also capable of rising above themselves, choosing again what is good, and making a new start, despite their mental and social conditioning. We are able to take an honest look at ourselves, to acknowledge our deep dissatisfaction, and to embark on new paths to authentic freedom. No system can completely suppress our openness to what is good, true and beautiful, or our God-given ability to respond to His grace at work deep in our hearts. I appeal to everyone throughout the world not to forget this dignity which is ours. No one has the right to take it from us” (205).
Pictured: This is a rare earth open-pit mine in Mountain Pass, Calif., Jan. 30, 2020. Rare earth metals are used in many devices that people use every day: cell phones, computer chips, DVDs, rechargeable batteries, fluorescent lighting and more. Pope Francis’ 2015 encyclical, “Laudato Si: On Care for Our Common Home,” encourages “a new dialogue about how we are shaping the future of our planet.” (CNS | Steve Marcus, Reuters)