Begin now! We need lifestyle changes

Mar 18, 2016

By Fr Sean McDonagh

NCR: What were you hearing from people on Care for Our Common Home? McDonagh: I was hearing from people that they would like to see the Catholic Church giving leadership (on ecological issues), and particularly the theological side of things. There isn’t a Catholic institute here that actually has taken on board the theological side, with interdisciplinary approaches to this that would include physics, biology and chemistry and cosmology.

And the resources are there, and we need this. This is a huge effort, it’s not a simple thing into the future. We have an opportunity. If you would’ve asked me 10 years ago — I’ve been at this since 1978, so I’ve been at it a long time — if you had asked me six years ago, in my lifetime, would something like this emerge, I would have said no, there’s no possibility for this emerging. And it has emerged, but it’s 99 per cent ahead of where most Catholics are. And it needs to be not 99 per cent, it needs to be our lived doctrine and our lived practices from here on in. Now, you need good theology to do that.

You were involved in the development of this encyclical. What was that process like? Were you focused on a specific aspect of the text?
Well, I was asked by Cardinal Peter Turkson in November 2013 to write a document for the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, and I wrote it up, like 30,000 words … now eventually, in 2014, that kind of morphed into the beginning of the encyclical itself. So that whole section, basically, on what’s happening in our world, those were issues I developed.

Do you see a particular importance of raising this conversation around Laudato Si’? Sure. [Francis] quotes the New Zealand bishops saying 20 per cent of the global population use up 80 per cent of the resources of the planet. Now that’s not just the United States, that’s also Europe, that’s also Japan, that’s also 350 million people in China. So yes, he’s very strong on that. One of the things he’s very strong on he takes in from Centesimus Annus, in which Pope John Paul II talks about how, especially in the United States and Europe, we have a love affair with science, particularly with technology, because we think it’s great. And we actually do think that some technology is going to solve the issue of climate change for us. And (the Pope) is very strong on that: He says, No, that’s not going to happen. He’s not saying that technologies are not important but he’s saying we need lifestyle changes.

… So, yes, there’s a huge message here. But I don’t think the Church here, the episcopal Church here — and that’s true of Ireland, too — have actually taken on board the profound message that it is. Because we’re focused on the culture wars, all those things, they come easier to us. We think we know more about that side of moral theology. But like with this, you’re talking about making the planet a less livable place then, for future generations — that’s the alternative. We could bring about geologic disorder, changes of magnitude within a hundred years if, for example, greenhouse gas emissions continue the way they do, the average global temperature rises to 4 degrees above what it was (before the Industrial Revolution.) That would be in 200 years, humans would have caused a geological change that is irreversible; most geological periods are 20 or 25 million years or 40 million years. So we don’t take those on board as part of our pastoral responsibility. Now I think we got to start doing it.

Beyond lifestyle changes, are there other messages you see of particular importance?
Two areas that will be most difficult is the new understanding of ethical imperatives. The people who opened up the prairies here in the 19th century did not think they were doing wrong. The people who destroyed the tropical forests in the 1950s, ‘60s and ‘70s and ‘80s in the Philippines didn’t think they were doing morally wrong things. So that is a huge change. So how do we now develop the moral imagination that includes those things? That’s number one. ?

And then number two, from a theological and spiritual perspective, [Francis has] now come with an extraordinary new teaching that species have intrinsic value … and so a new spirituality has to include our understanding and intimacy with the natural world. So here in Boston College, how many trees actually have you named outside, and have you named how supportive they are of other species? That’s the kind of intimate understanding that will become part of an ecological theology.

Now, it’s challenging. I’m not saying that it’s going to be easy, but that’s what he has laid out for us, that we should be doing. And it’s going to take different kinds of spiritual and theological work to do that, but the most certain thing it’s going to do is we’re going to have to work with other people. We’re going to have to work with the scientific community, to work with other religious traditions, so we can’t do it alone. But we will also need very good rituals, very good prayers, very good concerns for our moral life: How do we actually assess this new change? So all of that would need to emerge from the pastoral world.

How might reflection on Laudato Si’ relate to how someone may view the issues that arise this election season?

Very easy. I mean, you had one candidate the other night in Detroit telling us that he would take apart the Environmental Protection Agency. Now, can you think of anything more irresponsible? So, what he wants to do, he wants to give back to the corporate world the permission to pollute everything, with PCBs [man-made toxic chemicals banned from US manufacturing in 1979] that continue in our system, and the system of all creatures, and actually poison and are toxins to our children and their children.

So I would say, be seriously real about what people are saying to you. If they’re not saying anything to you on climate change, they’re living in cloud cuckoo land. And it’s your children that are going to face it, and your grandchildren. The reality of climate change is not the end of the next 1,000 years. We now know that if we continue as is, even after the Paris Agreement with the things we’ve put in there we’re willing to do, it would still be a 3.8 degrees Celsius rise, which would be close to a geological order magnitude change. We’re only at the beginning, and anyone who tells you different is just not telling it as it is, and they’re fooling you.

You’ve said Laudato Si’ is not a policy document, but that it could help in that realm. What types of policies might develop from this encyclical?
Fundamentally, one is in power and energy. … In the United States and Europe, we give billions, billions, billions of dollars to the fossil fuel companies. So we got to start a different way of actually creating energy. And to a fair assessment, a lot of it is beginning to be here, but it needs to be supported. And then, we need to be extraordinarily critical of people who toxify our planet. … So we have to be careful that we don’t allow this planet to become more and more toxified. And the Pope is very good on that. I mean, he studied chemistry himself, so he knows the persistent realities of toxins in the atmosphere.

How do you transition Francis’ vision in the encyclical to consideration by policymakers?
To a certain extent, that transfer is beginning to happen. I’ve been at a lot of the United Nations Framework Conventions on Climate Change. … The first time that the Church ever made, on policy levels, an impact that I felt was actually at the Paris one in December. Many, many people quoted Laudato Si’ as the beginning of creating new policies in terms of the whole era of fossil fuel, reducing it — mitigation — and then also the alternatives, and how to support the alternatives and the kinds of economic policies that are necessary to do that. So here was a document that was being used and quoted for that.

… We’re beginning to come of age and this is a great era for us. Don’t let it pass — that’s my thing to anyone I talk. This is a wonderful time, but wonderful times can be let pass. And I keep pointing out what Pope John Paul II said: “Concern for the environment is an essential part of our faith.” He said that in a 1990 document (World Day of Peace Message) which is 35 years ago, so it hasn’t actually percolated with the people because we didn’t actually teach them that. And that’s my great fear will possibly become of Laudato Si’, that if we don’t actually now address them in these couple of years with a good tool like the synodal process, 25 years from now, someone could be back here and say, ‘Sorry God, we never got around to implementing these.’ That’s my concern.