Slaying the Plastic Dragon - Day 17 - Catholic Environmentalism

My parish has started a new ministry focused on environment issues, called Care for Our Common Home (CCH for short).  We had a professor from Catholic University who teaches on Catholicism and Ecology come talk to us.  It was great!  I took some notes, but they are a bit jumbled.  Also I am pressed for time and this is actually a deep and complex topic, so I am just going to bullet point some of my notes here.

• First question is why should Catholics care about the environment.  
• Catholics are called to read 'the sign of the times' and as we look around the world today we see the dangerous environmental degradation that is going on.
• Awareness of this often comes to our Catholic sensibilities through the Church's work with the poor.  
• First teaching that addresses the environment comes from a statement by Paul VI.
• First truly significant statement comes from St. John Paul the Great in a letter written in 1990.
• In USA USCCB issues statement in 1991
• Pope Benedict also wrote about the environment
• The pinnacle of authoritative teaching of the magisterium comes from Pope Francis' encyclical Laudato Si.  The Professor said at least 85% of this actually comes from St. JPII's letter in 1990.
• Catholics see creation as good.   Creation is something God pronounced as good in Genesis.  
• Unlike Luther we don't think the fall from paradise means that we are innately evil.  We are made in God's image and likeness but with a tendency toward sin (concupiscence).  
• Manicheaism which teaches that nature/matter is evil is a heresy to Catholics.
• God gave us dominion but that doesn't mean we can be tyrants - stewardship is taught as care of God's gift.  When someone gives you a gift what is your relationship with that gift?  
• In paradise before the fall, we had kinship with animals;  our disconnection from nature is part of the consequence of the fall.
• Nature as metaphor for our relationship with God - I am the vine, you are the branches - this should bring us closer to appreciating God's creation.
• St Francis felt a kinship with all of God's creation - Brother Wolf, Sister Moon.  We are called to emulate his holiness
• JPII/Laudato Si calls us to an ecological conversion.  We must realize how interconnected we are with the rest of God's creation.  We must hear both the cry of the poor and the cry of the earth.  We need  an integrated ecology that includes both!
• This is a radical conversion that springs from understanding of the common good and the sacramentality of creation.
• We must learn to live in sustainable ways.  The upper middle class, developed world generates pollution and problems that is felt most severely by the poor developing world.  
• Materialism/consumerism which makes us selfish, disconnects us from each other, the poor, the earth and God.
• We need to live more simply.  Things do not make us happy, virtue does.
• We need to develop a sense of ecological virtue.
• We need to radically change our behavior and our practices for future generations.  
• We shouldn't be hypocritical - lecture others to change but maintain our own destructive lifestyles
• We need hope - not optimism which isn't based in reality, but hope, the virtue that gives us perseverance
• This needs to start at the parish level - the teaching is there but the bottleneck is at local level
• Parishes should try to 'green' - reduce wasteful expenditure of energy, promote ecological virtue.
• Ways Professor's parish has done this:  energy audit for parish, highway clean up service project, gardening classes, in liturgy, celebrating feast of St. Francis with blessing of animals, during Lenten suppers have at least one talk on environment, petitions for prayers of faithful, quotes or statements in bulletin, parish sponsored field trips to learn more about local environmentalism/creation.