It has to be said - over and over, forcefully - and I am glad the editor of Asianews was quick to get to the point of the Holy Father's Message for the World Day of Peace in 2010. I'm looking today for other sane voices like his who will not distort the Pope's message for their own ideologically self-serving purposes.
The Pope on the environment:
Urgent but not apocalyptic,
man-centered, not eco-centric -
a moral issue above everything
by Bernardo Cervellera
Editor
Vatican City , Dec. 15 (AsiaNews) - Benedict XVI's Message for World Day of Peace 2010, entitled "If you want cultivate peace, protect creation", was released just days before the conclusion of the Copenhagen conference on climate change.
But the Pope’s voice stands out from the chorus - sometimes not quite in agreement – of the voices expounding on the environment in recent days.
First, the concern of the Pope and the Church is urgent, but not apocalyptic, as we have used the distressing film or articles over the years.
He quotes from Paul VI in 1971 to show that the Church is concerned about the environment, even before it became fashionable or an economic interest.
Sure, some of Message's points may find agreement among participants in Copenhagen. The inter-generational solidarity (No. 8), for example, has been much emphasized at the meeting, with UN films and slogans urging concern for the climate in behalf of "future generations".
In Copenhagen, rich and poor nations are at each other's throats, with the developing nations demanding that the rich nations, which have caused much of air pollution so far, take more responsibility to pay the costs for poorer countries not just to offset development setbacks due to measure for cleaner energy but even for actual physical risks (small countries at sea level, who have been told they will soon be drowned by melting of the polar icecaps].
[And such apocalyptic hysteria is clearly wrong and counter-productive. You only need plain common sense to decide that an eco- and egocentric prophet of doom like Al Gore is clearly over the top when he says that 'unless something is done now, the polar icecaps will be gone in five years'!
First, before that can happen, the rest of the world would have fried to a crisp, and assuming that the phenomenon could happen in five years [something that historically takes eons], what could anyone possibly do to stop it in such a time frame?
Gore is not a stupid man, obviously, but his ecocentric obsessions have robbed him of all common sense and caused him to make increasingly preposterous claims and resort to outright lying about scientific data.
More scientists and world leaders are needed who can listen to Benedict XVI and speak out like him in rational, man-centered and pragmatic words about environmental protection. It is the middle way the world needs between the eco-obsessed, for whom the ultimate means to save the planet is to have less people on earth (Malthus revived in the ecological context), and those who airily dismiss legitimate concerns about manmade pollution and appear to advocate only minimal measures to curb it.]
But some themes of the message are absolutely unique and if heeded, could make really the UN conference in the Danish capital effective.
Benedict XVI said in fact that environmental care requires a conversion, a change in mentality: a change in lifestyles, making them more sober (No. 9); a change in our development model, all too often designed to "narrow economic interests "without care for creation (No. 7); experiencing solidarity "that is projected in space and time "(No. 8).
In a word: the problem of protecting the environment is a moral one. Thus, " humanity needs a profound cultural renewal; it needs to rediscover those values which can serve as the solid basis for building a brighter future for all.
Our present crises – be they economic, food-related, environmental or social – are ultimately also moral crises, and all of them are interrelated" (no. 5).
The moral issue is not just a matter of doctrine or of techniques: it comes from a deeper and truer conception of man and God. To the extent that the human person discovers "creation", God's work, then he also discovers that he must be a "guardian" and not "master" of creation, a careful cultivator and not blind "exploiter" of nature (see No. 6).
In Copenhagen the problem is this: on the one hand there is the search and the exaltation of any new technical solutions that often masks the economic interests of rich countries
[they can make money from the poor countries by providing them with 'clean energy' technology]; and the other is the search for a 'ecological purity' in which both technology and man are 'excluded'.
In both cases, the missing factor [or at least, only minimal] is man and his individual responsibility (see No. 13).
Bjorn Lomborg, once a fierce environmentalist and now an 'ecological skeptic', fears that the conference in Copenhagen will be a failure: "They will promise once again to cut carbon emissions; good documents will be drawn up and signed, and then they won’t be applied”.
[But Lomborg was being totally unrealistic if he really expected Copenhagen would fare any better than Kyoto, the UN's previous flagship initiative for global environmental control. Ideology, which is always totalitarian in all senses when it holds sway, will never provide a workable or genuine solution. Calm reason and pragmatism are essential when devising global solutions.]
For the Pope, a true ecology must review certain sources of energy, concerning itself with water, forestry, waste disposal, farmers (No. 10), but above all, it must reaffirm an ‘authentic human ecology '... . [that of] the inviolability of human life at every stage and in every condition, the dignity of the person and the unique mission of the family, where one is trained in love of neighbour and respect for nature".
"Our duties towards the environment flow from our duties towards the person, considered both individually and in relation to others" (No.12)
This was the front-page editorial in L'Osservatore Romano today:
The centrality of man
Editorial
by Giovanni Maria Vian
Translated from
the 12/16/09 issue of
It is an effective motto for a message that must be read attentively.
The invitation to safeguard Creation in order to cultivate peace is not, in fact, the nth papal appeal in an ecological key, but rather a new reflection, in continuity with Christian tradition, which revolves around a most clear concept: the centrality of man, that is, the human being (man and woman), created by God in his image.
So even in environmental issues, ecocentrism and biocentrism must be rejected as visions that aim to absolutize the environment itself, and plant and animal life with it.
With the consequence of opening the way to 'a new pantheism with neo-pagan accents', which the papal document [message for the World Day of Peace, 2010] explicitly denounces.
At the core of the Pope's message is the Biblical narration of the origins of the world, with the commandment to cultivate and safeguard the earth and its resources.
It is a task entrusted to that creature whose centrality, notwithstanding original sin, shines forth in sacred Jewish and Christian texts, as synthesized in the second century by an expression of Irenaeus that was dear to Paul VI, identifying the glory of God - and therefore, his presence - in the living human being [
gloria Dei vivens homo).
Indeed, the psalmist asks the Lord: "What is man that thou art mindful of him?"
But the Pope's message also returns insistently to its unifying theme of man's responsibility for Creation. In continuity with the teaching of his predecessors - particularly of Paul VI in
Populorum progressio and in
Octogesima adveniens, and of John Paul II - Benedict XVI warns realistically that the inconsiderate exploitation of nature risks sweeping away man himself, a victim of such 'degradation'.
His analysis of the crisis, as in
Caritas in veritate, is once again realistic when he evokes the 'environmental escapism', the economic and political myopia of many, but also
the opportunity that the crisis itself holds out to change for the better, without indulging in unproven and, in any case, sterile catastrophism.
Thus the evocation of the theme of protecting Creation, with the very realistic invitation to "consider the cost entailed – environmentally and socially – as an essential part of the overall expenses incurred".
Finally and especially, the issue of responsibility towards the poorest and to future generations, with the exhortation for new lifestyles.
Because all Creation, illuminated by Christ, is a gift of God to the entire human family.
[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 16/12/2009 20:39]