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My Hope for the Pope, Page 2: Francis Encounters Bartholomew

Monday, 1 September 2015

When the Archbishop of Buenos Aires, Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio, was elected the new pope of the Catholic Church I wrote a short blog entitled “My Hope for the Pope”.  My hope rested on his selection of Francis, after St. Francis of Assisi, as his papal name.  I drew on Lynn White’s classic essay, “The Historical Roots of Our Ecological Crisis,” to express that hope.  White famously blamed the ecological crisis on religion, yet also suggested the remedy to the ecological crisis must be religious.  “Since the roots of our trouble are so largely religious,” he wrote, “the remedy must also be essentially religious, whether we call it that or not.”  Those that have taken my graduate level environmental ethics course in the Quinlan School of Business know that I, too, feel this way (not so much about the cause, which I lay, partly, at the feet of the ancient Greek philosophers, but about the solution).  At the end of his essay White proposed St. Francis of Assisi as “a patron saint for ecologists” because St. Francis proposed an alternative Christian view of nature and man’s relation to it.  As White expressed it, St. Francis “tried to substitute the idea of the equality of all creatures, including man, for the idea of man’s limitless rule of creation.”

It was upon the choice of Francis as his papal name that I placed my hope for the pope.  St. Francis’ idea never took firm hold; maybe, I felt, there might be a second chance.

Then came the encyclical Laudato si’: On Care for Our Common Home, and my hope for the pope was bolstered.  I thought of updating my blog, but I was busy preparing for the 40th Macromarketing Conference, which took place on the Water Tower Campus in late June.  And besides, the news media and blogosphere interest in Laudato si’ was enormous.  I saw no need for another (very minor) voice.

Today, however, I will add my two cents worth.  Why today?  Because earlier this month Pope Francis announced his decision to institute an annual “World Day of Prayer for the Care of Creation,” and to celebrate this, with the Orthodox Church, on September 1st.  He selected September 1st of each year for this “World Day of Prayer for the Care of Creation” because the Orthodox Church had made a similar designation for September 1st a quarter of a century ago.

Perhaps we can consider September 1st an ecclesiastical and ecumenical Earth Day, parallel with the other Earth Day on April 22nd.

I will not comment directly on Laudato si’ as there has been plenty of that, both in praise and in condemnation.  As you might expect, even faculty and students at Loyola have chimed in and on September 9th Loyola’s Center for Catholic Intellectual Heritage, together with the Institute of Environmental Sustainability, the Catholic Studies Minor, and the Department of Theology, will host a day-long symposium, town hall, and teach-in entitled “Caring for Our Common Home: Conversations on Ecology + Justice.  In preparation for the event, the Center for Catholic Intellectual Heritage Undergraduate Fellows (Angelo Canta, ’17, and Ron Amiscaray, ’16) compiled a video of reactions to and reflections on Laudato si’.  Click here to see what some in the Loyola community are saying about the encyclical.

Rather than comment directly on Laudato si’, I will comment on the wider and ecumenical context surrounding it.  But first I cannot help myself but to note that those objecting to Laudato si’, as near as I can tell, are fearful that Pope Francis’ call for action to confront environmental degradation, and especially climate change, is simultaneously a call for more and greater government control of the economy.  The pope’s focus on our reckless pursuit of profits, our excessive faith in the techno-fix, and our devotion to market expansion rankles his detractors, Catholics included.  They see it as a frontal assault, from on high, on nothing less than capitalism (see The American SpectatorThe American Conservative, Ross Douthat in the NYT, Damon Linker in The Week magazine, and the Acton Institute.  Their counter is that it is better to rely on free-markets to solve environmental problems (if there are any) and to rely on free-markets to address climate change (if it is changing).

As much as I want to deal with the identity, which I just employed, between capitalism and free-markets, that will have to wait for another day and another post.  For now it is enough for me to say that while used synonymously, free-markets and capitalism are not the same things, any more than work is the same as labor, two other words we often uses as synonyms.  (I have wrestled with the distinction between work and labor, which a good friend wishes I would drop, but I won’t for etymological reasons, and our present tendency to over-consume.  See my paper “Work, Consumption, and the Joyless Economy,” in Philosophical and Radical Thought in Marketing edited by A. Fuat Firat, Nikhilesh Dholakia and Richard P. Bagozzi. Lexington, Mass.: D.C. Heath Company/Lexington Books, 1987, pp. 235-250.)

To be clear, the encyclical, Laudato si’, didn’t appear out of thin air.  Even before the encyclical, Pope Francis had taken a stance against environmental destruction.  But the pope is Catholic and the Catholic Church is nothing if not respectful of tradition.  As Emma Green wrote in The Atlantic, “In the Church, precedent is everything. Francis’s argument is deeply grounded in Catholic teachings dating back to the late-19th-century writings of Pope Leo XIII (and before that, Jesus).”  One should not be surprised if the pope directly cited, as he did, passages of two papal predecessors, John Paul II and Benedict XVI.

Having said that, one of the surprising aspects of Laudato si’ is its connection to Eastern Orthodoxy, a connection on which the media have not been completely silent (see this from the NYT and this from Religion News) but have been, shall we say, muted.  (See, however, Brandon Gallaher’s “Common Themes for Our Common Home, The Tablet, July 2015, pp. 12-13.)

As John Chryssavgis outlines it, the environmental initiatives of the Ecumenical Patriarchate date back to a Pre-Synodal Pan Orthodox Conference held in 1986 when the abuse of the natural environment was raised as a concern.  A subsequent conference, entitled “Revelation and the Future of Humanity,” recommended that the Ecumenical Patriarchate designate one day each year for the protection of the environment.  The following year, on September 1st, Patriarch Dimitrios I released the first encyclical on the environment.  In the encyclical he formally established September 1st, the first day of the Orthodox calendar, as a day for all Orthodox Christians within the jurisdiction of the Ecumenical Patriarchate to offer prayers for the presentation of the natural creation.  As Chryssavgis explains it, “Whereas in the past Orthodox faithful prayed to be delivered from natural calamities, they were now called to pray that the planet may be delivered from the abusive and destructive acts of human beings.”

The present Ecumenical Patriarch of the Eastern Orthodox Church, Bartholomew I, was elected in November 1991.  A month after his election he convened an ecological gathering in Crete, and then, in the summer of 1992, organized an environmental convocation and, in 1993, visited with the Duke of Edinburgh at Buckingham Palace where they signed and sealed a friendship of common purpose and cooperation – the protection of the environment.  In June 1994 Bartholomew established the Religious and Scientific Committee, which hosted seven international, interdisciplinary and inter-religious symposia to reflect on the fate of the rivers and seas of the earth.  The first of these symposia was in 1995, followed by seven dedicated to a specific body of water.  The first to specifically focus on a body of water was in 1996 (“The Black Sea in Crisis”).  The most recent was in 2009 (“The Great Mississippi River”).

These symposia were preceded by a series of five successive seminars (1994-1998), each focusing on an aspect of the environment and each designed to promote environmental awareness and action by engaging “leading theologians, environmentalists, scientists, civil servants and especially students” (Chryssavgis).  These seminars were held at the historic Theological School of Halki.

The symposia have been followed by what are being called Halki Summits, of which there have been two to date.  Halki Summit I, billed as a conversation on environment, ethics and innovation, was held in June 2012 and featured environmentalists (Jane Goodall; Bill McKibben) and scientists (James Hansen; Amory Lovins).  My friend George Nassos, formerly with the Illinois Institute of Technology, was invited and attended Halki Summit I.

Halki Summit II was held this year (June 2015).  It was billed as a conversation on the environment, literature, and the arts and featured the literary theorist and critic Terry Eagleton, poet and author Terry Tempest Williams, mountaineer and photographer James Balog, author and activist Raj Patel, and theologian and apiculturist (beekeeper) Timothy Gorringe.

At the 2002 symposium, dedicated to the Adriatic Sea, Patriarch Bartholomew co-signed, with Pope John Paul II, The Venice Declaration, which has been referred to as a direct fore bearer of Laudato si’ (Gallaher).  The Venice Declaration emphasized that the protection of the environment was a spiritual duty of all peoples and that it would require a radical change of heart.  I don’t know about you, but I hear an echo from St. Francis of Assisi in this but remain unclear how that radical change of heart will get into the nation’s schools of business administration.

So, to end this post, when Pope Francis credited others, as he did, including both Bartholomew and a ninth-century Sufi mystic, Ali al-Khawas, and included others in the ceremonial release of Laudato si’, as he did, it was not simply as a show of unity.  It was a genuine show of unity of purpose and values and vision.  Some in the media discuss Pope Francis and Laudato si’ as though it came from him whole cloth.  It didn’t.  Rather, Pope Francis was hopping on a train that had already left the station, a train many people do not even know existed.  Those concerned with the fate of the planet welcome as many riders on that train as we can get.

Raymond  Benton, Jr.
Emeritus Professor of Marketing
Quinlan School of Business
Loyola University Chicago

If interested in reading more on Eastern Orthodoxy and the environment, I recommend the following three books.  The first is a collection of essays written by the Ecumenical Patriarch.  The second book is a more traditional academic collection of articles written by others.  The third is a collection of essays all on the topic.

Encountering the Mystery: Understanding Orthodox Christianity Today.  New York: Doubleday (2008).  Especially relevant is Chapter VI: “The Wonder of Creation: Religion and Ecology”

Toward an Ecology of Transfiguration: Orthodox Christian Perspectives on Environment, Nature, and Creation edited by John Chryssavgis and Bruce V. Foltz (New York: Fordham University Press, 2013).  There are many good essays in this volume.  I especially like the essay by Jurretta Jordan Heckscher in Part II entitled “A ‘Tradition That Never Existed’:  Orthodox Christianity and the Failure of Environmental History,” (pp. 136-151).  It addresses a weakness, from the Orthodox perspective, in Lynn White’s classic essay, “The Historical Roots of Our Ecological Crisis,” to which I refer.  Appendix B: “Environment, Nature, and Creation in Orthodox Thought: A Bibliography of Texts in English” is also useful.

On Earth As In Heaven: Ecological Vision and Initiatives of Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew by Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew, edited by John Chryssavgis, with a forward by His Royal Highness The Duke of Edinburgh. New York: Fordham University Press (2011).  

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