Introduction to Focus Issue on Laudato Si' (original) (raw)
Related papers
Latin American and ecumenical insights in Laudato Si'
The Ecumenical Review, 2018
Pope Francis’ encyclical on “Care for our common home,” Laudato si’, marked a turning point in the social doctrine of the Roman Catholic Church. In this article I argue that the structure of the encyclical, using the “See-Judge-Act” methodology and the “cry of the earth and the cry of the poor” as leitmotivs, can be seen as contributions of Latin American liberation theology. Furthermore, I show with examples that the Encyclical catalyzes what the ecumenical movement has been saying and doing for decades, especially through the leadership of His All Holiness the Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew on ecological issues and the work of the World Council of Churches striving for eco-justice.
LAUDATO SÍ: MAKING THE CONNECTIONS
Laudato Sí is an important and timely teaching document with great relevance for the peoples of Asia. Pastoral agents in the local churches of Asia need to understand this teaching in order to play their part in making it known, and interpreting its implications for local faith communities. This paper provides hermeneutic keys to assist pastoral workers to understand the encyclical and its place within the corpus of Catholic Social Teaching. It examines the context in which the encyclical was issued, its purpose and audience, the teaching authority that it holds, its methodology and main concerns, and its contribution to the body of CST. These reflections are intended to better equip pastoral workers in Asia to engage more deeply with the meaning and implications of the encyclical for the thinking and action of local churches. Through such engagement, they may be able to make contextualized contributions to the ongoing development of the local and universal social teachings.
Ecumenical background and reactions to Laudato si' - Voices 2016/2
Laudato Si’ marks a turning point in the contents of Catholic Social Teaching (CST) by including ecology in its core concerns. As the Pope himself states, the concerns on our common home have previously been addressed by other churches and Christian communities, especially by the Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew (§7-9). After making a summary of key points of the Encyclical from the See-Judge-Act methodological perspective, I will respond to the invitation to dialogue that the encyclical conveys and show some examples on how the ecumenical movement has addressed care for creation and for the poorest.
Laudato si' 4 years later, 2019
The Christian churches’ traditional environmental ethics, borrowed from Antiquity, is stewardship. It is still the official position of the Compendium of social doctrine of the Catholic Church, which has integrated neither the ethics nor the ecology of Laudato si’. Laudato si’ has augmented the stewardship ethics with an ethics of care, borrowed from the spirituality of Saint-Francis of Assisi and the philosophy of Saint-Bonaventure. The ethics of care is also the one that inspires indigenous people and feminist ethics. The feminist theologians are the ones who built on the feminist movement, deconstructed the patriarchal conception of the omnipotent Creator and of the dominion ethics found in the Bible, and tied social injustices, mainly affecting women, to ecological degradation. Liberation theology, mainly L. Boff, picked up from there to assimilate ecological degradation to the predicament of the poor. While liberation theology had to shed its Marxist ties under the pressure of the Catholic hierarchy, it abandoned, at least in its Argentinian version, its Marxist analysis of social phenomena in favor of education of the faithful. This is one explanation for the major emphasis of Laudato si’ on education and the scant attention paid to policy. Another explanation is the conviction that deep changes need to occur at the individual and social level and that policy is less effective in bringing about these changes. Individualism, in part responsible for the disaffection towards institutional religion, is comforted by this conviction and by the imaginary of the relation networks existing among humans and between humans and non-human nature. On the other hand, the homogeneity of the religious groups should not be overestimated when it comes to more technical scientific or policy questions. Policy towards global ecological problems has been difficult to formulate and implement because the latter are “wicked problems”. The history of American climate policy, as retraced by D. Jamieson and N. Rich, is an illustration thereof. These authors tend to fall back on ethics as a major motivator for appropriate individual behavior, confirming the pope’s conviction. The relatively recent ethics of relational values may be a useful tool in order to build bridges among different types of ethics. Could religion, any religion, be an alternative motivator of pro-environmental behavior? Abundant sociological analysis, at least for the United-States, tends to lead to the opposite conclusion. One analysis finds that environmental illiteracy of the faithful is a major obstacle. The club mentality of numerous churches is such that environmental enthusiasm, if any, doesn’t spill much over the church walls. Generally speaking the conservative/liberal divide affecting religious congregations has been found over and over again to be the most significant explanatory variable. Eco-theology is creation theology which has been shaped by the environmental movement. It is still in its infancy and does not have a unified methodology yet. It is strongly influenced by Whitehead’s process theology and by Teilhard de Chardin. However, it offers the possibility of a mobilising “grand-narrative”. Its detailed analysis requires the enlistment of professional theologians.
Bebida de Salvación: Spirituality Studies and Latina/o Theology
For twenty three years the ACHTUS Colloquium has been an opportunity for us Catholic Hispanic Theologians to consider how various theological disciplines, popular culture, US Society and religion has influenced Latino/a theology. This year we went to the corazón of our Catholic faith and worship, the Eucharist and drew from it pan de vida. In a relaxed atmosphere of reflection and convivencia, we have invited Jesus to stay with us and in us as we looked at His Eucharistic presence and challenge in the official liturgy of the Church, in our people’s devotions, in our ecclesiologies and in our Church’s social teaching . These directions are reflected in our colloquium title Pan de Vida: Eucharistic Liturgy, Piety and Justice.
New Catholic Encyclopedia, Supplement 2012-13: Ethics and Philosophy (4 Volume Set)
"Published by Gale Cengage and the Catholic University of America Press. The New Catholic Encyclopedia Supplement 2012-13: Ethics And Philosophy expands upon and complements the scholarship in the 2003, 2nd edition of the New Catholic Encyclopedia. It features approximately 740 (540 new and 200 updated/revised) signed, peer-reviewed articles dedicated to philosophical themes, with a focus on philosophy in the Western tradition. The 4-volume publication (also available online in GVRL) covers a wide range of topics including ethics, metaphysics, epistemology, logic, aesthetics, philosophy of literature, art, and music, political philosophy, and philosophy of law. It contains numerous articles of special interest to Catholic thought and culture covering such areas as the philosophical aspects of love, hope, wisdom, marriage, friendship, death, pain and suffering, the human person and the human soul, and the philosophy of God and religion." http://www.cengage.com/search/productOverview.do?Ntt=21135528693655775214795319621571820665&N=197&Ntk=P\_EPI"