Brand New Testament – Analysis of the papal encyclical Laudato Si

Ever since Benedict XVI resigned, his successor eagerly and methodically provokes controversy – a confusion fit to be clothed in it’s proper ancient Greek original of skandalon or “darkening of minds”.

While some Catholics of traditionalist mindset initially welcomed Bergoglio’s election, others shunned him from the outset. On the other hand, so-called liberals or modernists rejoice his ambiguous gestures and statements, pointing out, nevertheless, that he is far from being liberal enough. No wonder, because his public utterances and writings present just enough rope for both groups to feed the fires of endless arguments and to successively love and hate him. In a way one is led to a strange conclusion that Bergoglio is really an adequate Pope for all of them, the man capable of turning the Catholic Church into chaotic, bureaucratically controlled, debate club for irreconcilable opponents, on the sole condition that they are prone to group thinking.

There’s no better evidence for this than his much praised encyclical Laudato Si, which sums up more or less all contradictions of his PR, politics and theology, and which we’ll submit to analysis in the lines to follow.

The order is crucially important here. Namely, as we shall see, the theology is a rare occurrence on the 182 pages of the document. No wonder, because in essence Laudato Si appears to be a confusing piece of PR for very concrete – and very non-Christian – political option. As such it figures as a sort of preparatory course for Catholics to accept and interiorize the principles of a political plan which is global and all pervading in scope. Admittedly, this politics, pushed on by trans-national institutions and trans-national money, has it’s religious dimension from the outset. We are talking, of course, about sustainable development, the focal point of globalization, now getting on the fast track with the presentation of Post 2015 development Agenda or Agenda 2030, effectively obliging the nation states to turn their respective turfs and, consequent wise, the globe into sustainable system or, in layman’s terms, perpetual, yet managed, state of manufactured emergency – all summed up in a common buzzword Change.

The religious aspect of this program has already been systematized, all the way back in 2000., in a document called Earth Charter, a collection of 16 political guidelines, thinly veiled as ethical principles, aimed to offer “a shared vision of basic values to provide an ethical foundation for the emerging world community.” We will return to this document which the author(s) of Laudato Si accepted as a “courageous challenge” (LS, 207., pg. 152) to be reiterated and upheld.

Sustainable scandalizing Laudato Si is meant to be a contribution to Catholic social teaching, i.e. an update to already pre-existing and, in principle, unchangeable theological doctrine which provides the analysis of current historical moment, and proclaims the means of coping with it.

However, at the outset we see that the encyclical displays one significant novelty: it is subtitled “on care for our common home” and is meant to provide the world with introduction to something called “integral ecology”, requiring nothing less than “ecological conversion”. Even for uninformed, this introductory specification should rise some questions. Namely, leaving ecology aside for a moment, who are “we” and, consequently, what is this “home”, “common” to “us”? The answer is quick to follow: “we” are all interconnected inhabitants of planet Earth and the globe is our “common home”. If we inject some information – just a bit to make things going – this seemingly innocent dedication gets really ominous. “Our common future”, “Our common destiny”, “Our global commons”, “Our common this” & “Our common that” are various, admittedly not very creative, terms used to denote the policy of trans-national institutions, recently enshrined in the Goal 17. of Agenda 2030 as a “New global partnership” (Agenda 2030, pg. 14). In the virgin days of sustainable development, when our common future was a preferred denotation, the corner stone of this partnership was formulated thusly:

„The sustainability of development is intimately linked to the dynamics of population growth. The issue, however, is not simply one of global population size. A child born in a country where levels of material and energy use are high places a greater burden on the Earth’s resources than a child born in a poorer country. (…) In fact, increased access to family planning services is itself a form of social development that allows couples, and women in particular, the right to self-determination.“ (Our Common Future. IV 4. 48 – 51.)

Nowadays, as political correctness got the better even of those implementing it, mandatory birth control, as a corner stone of sustainable development, is buried a bit deeper. But isn’t it only natural when you build a house – a global sustainable oikos, no less – to dig the foundation deep in the quagmire of bureaucratic language? For instance, High level panel of eminent persons, the international body tasked to devise guidelines for implementation of Agenda 2030, had this to say about the subject:

“Quality education positively effects health, and lowers family size and fertility rates (…) it can also lead people to appreciate natural resources, become aware of the importance of sustainable consumption and production and climate change, and gain an understanding of sexual and reproductive health.” (A New Global Partnership, pg. 36-37.)

This will suffice to shed a light on some implications of the subtitle to encyclical. It has a Catholic ring to it, but entirely non-Christian meaning, and as such accurately foreshadows what follows under it. Someone could argue that this could be just a coincidence and more imaginative reader could presume that Pope is cunningly screwing the globalists over by infusing their terminology with Catholic meaning.

Well, no, he doesn’t.

Change you can believe in Laudato Si rather comes off as a propaganda piece entirely dedicated to “awareness rising” about necessity of implementation of worldwide technocratic system by giving it a necessary religious tone. It’s proclaimed subject is supposed “ecological crisis” a.k.a. “doomsday” the climate alarmist and population control fanatics “warn” us about for more than forty years now, with lamentation on “injustice towards the poor” added for good measure; it is the call for “ecological conversion” and “redistribution of wealth”, summed up into paradoxical call to combat “technological paradigm” by all-out technocratic sustainable development doctrine. The theological musings, when they at all occur among the mumbo jumbo of system’s theory, sustainable development terminology and science of “climate change”, serve just as an incentive to push forward idea of giving due reverence to global ecosystem, smuggled under the Christian notion of “creation”. Pope doesn’t proclaim the doctrine. Instead he “suggests” the ways in which Catholics and “all people of good will” should redeem themselves in the “eyes” of “our sister Earth”. This is how he, at the outset, defines troubles of “our common home”:

“Although change is part of the working of complex systems, the speed with which human activity has developed contrasts with the naturally slow pace of biological evolution (…) Change is something desirable, yet it becomes a source of anxiety when it causes harm to the world and to the quality of life of much humanity.” (LS. 18., pg. 15)

The term ‘change’ is a mainstay of doctrine of sustainable development, in a nutshell: a morally neutralized equivalent of ‘crisis’ to be ‘managed’ in the threefold system of society, economy and ecology. The ‘complex system’ is, of course, a term borrowed from system’s theory, perhaps even from sociological “theory of everything” epitomized by works of German neo-functionalist sociologist Niklas Luhmann. As such it endeavors to explain away the totality of what can be known, by reducing literary everything to activity of complex, communicating, systems and their functioning in the contingent environment. The essential feature of every system is it’s ability to observe and re-create – Luhmann’s term is autopoiesis – itself in order to adapt to complex and always in part unforeseeable environment. System’s theory cuts through every ontological strata but is essentially rooted in biology, more precisely: cognitive biology, which serves as a paradigm through which everything else is observed. The biological adaptation of organisms is thus elevated, fairly similarly as in more crude classical Darwinian theology of evolution, to all-pervading metaphysical principle of function, it’s pinnacle apparently being completely vague and morally neutral state of quality of life.

This term is not to be confused with “good” or “happy” life, or any other moral qualification, because it is essentially a corporate-made expression, which cannot be isolated from a semantic system of “human resources”, “consumers”, “stakeholders” and such. It primarily denotes a proper functionality of human beings in the context of system of sustainable development. In this instance it denotes inadaptability of humans to change when it’s happening too fast – nothing more and nothing less. Furthermore, like all sustainability terminology, it can appear to mean anything you want it to mean: it is not a term denoting something substantial or inherent to human being. Hence, it is quite strange that papal encyclical uses this term instead of well defined notion of soul which is a subsistent principle of life, in case of humans, inherently prone to accomplishing a good life in a moral sense, through rational direction of the will. Well, writer(s) seem to prefer highly refined evolutionary metaphysics, forgetting to mention, of course, that it is diametrically opposed to anything Catholic Church, or any traditional metaphysics for that matter, teaches.

Praise System! Be that as it may, the goal is seemingly a noble one: to fight the technocratic paradigm. As “our sister Earth” is supposedly groaning and moaning – nay: squealing – in pain from our irresponsible use of it’s resources, while the “world poor” join the choir, tortured by the unfettered power of free market economy and inequality stemming thereof, we must “act now” to rescue it and bring about sustainable and just development. Technocratic paradigm treats the poor, sniveling, planet as a mere resource, in the words of Laudato Si:

“Nature is usually seen as a system which can be studied, understood and controlled, whereas creation can only be understood as a gift from the outstretched hand of the Father of all(…)” (LS. 76. pg. 56)

This is more or less orthodox Catholic answer to paradigm which treats the nature as a system. But consider the proposed solution, only few paragraphs further:

“In this universe, shaped by open and intercommunicating systems, we can discern countless forms of relationship and participation. This leads us to think of the whole as open to God’s transcendence, within which it develops (…) Human beings, even if we postulate a process of evolution, also possess a uniqueness which cannot be fully explained by the evolution of other open systems. Each of us has his or her own personal identity and is capable of entering into dialogue with others and God himself.” (LS. 79., 81. pg. 57 – 59)

So the nature is not a system, but … err … a system. The expression ‘open system’ is again a term taken from biology and/or neo-funcionalist sociology, denoting the cognitive adaptability of organisms or their societal derivates, while in terminology of system’s theory, “personal identity” is merely a product of adaptive functionality of a system we call “person”. It follows, therefore, that we humans indeed are ‘open systems’ adapting to survival of the fittest, developing personal identities as byproducts necessary for functional societal system. And we can, sort of, talk to ultimate open System called “God”, too. This utter theological rubbish is an insult to even moderately intelligent reader, not the least because it displays how disjointed and chaotic the entire document is. One should expect that, even if it is meant to provide erroneous and misleading propositions, its author(s) could at least make it all stick together. On the contrary, we see blatant contradictions in terminology, a reliable sign that various commissions, which probably drafted different passages, didn’t even communicate with each other and that the final draft was poorly edited. This is a real pain for your humble analyst, but don’t worry, we’ll flush out the coherent doctrine from this disjointed mess. Namely, “the technocratic paradigm” the document condemns is summed up in this manner:

“It can be said that many problems of today’s world stem from tendency, at times unconscious, to make the method and aims of science and technology an epistemological paradigm which shapes the lives of individuals and the workings of society (…) The technocratic paradigm also tends to dominate economic and political life (…) Finance overwhelms the real economy.” (LS. 107., 109. pg. 80 – 81)

This is followed by twenty or so pages of rather generic lamentations on exploitation of resources and poor people in developing countries, and expressions of lukewarm “concerns” about GMOs, relativist ethics, need to create new job opportunities, etc. Those passages, as all others where Laudato Si treats scientific data, are simply not worthy of extensive quoting. The whole document is written in the shade of “global warming” or “climate change” trope, looming over it as a dark cloud, notwithstanding that it is more and more obvious that this is nothing but a pseudo-scientific sham, which will probably relatively soon be discarded even by secular promoters of sustainable development. Although author claims that he is using “best scientific research available today” (LS. 15. pg. 13), there’s not a single one reference to any relevant scientific paper, while climate alarmism is simply taken for granted, and rather crudely sexed up to provide the reader with a sense of dread and urgency, something even UN’s “perception managers” are slowly beginning to discard. Yet, we must take it on face value that we are faced “with global environmental deterioration” (LS. 3. pg. 4) and simultaneously forget the fact that all the way from early ninety seventies, when global oligarchs had a “eureka!” moment and appropriated environmentalism as a vehicle for implementing their politics, the same old tune is ringing in our ears. This author, growing up in eighties in a semi-westernized communist country, always lagging few years in pseudoscience behind developed West, remembers very well the late seventies alarmism about new ice age, the cold terror as inevitable and, obviously, as unreal as global warming and, hopefully, as the last of the bogeymen: climate change. However, the “suggested” (LS. 137., pg. 103) answer to the unchecked reign of technocratic paradigm is quite interesting. It is dubbed integral ecology and presented in this way:

“We are faced not with two separate crises, one environmental and the other social, but rather with one complex crisis which is both social and environmental. Strategies for a solution demand an integrated approach to combating poverty, restoring dignity to the excluded and at the same time protecting nature.” (LS. 139., pg. 104)

This is simply a description of sustainable development as management of three systems: society, economy and ecology. One could say that main difference in tone between this encyclical and operative UN documents as Agenda 21, Agenda 2030 and Our Common Future lies in the intensity of saccharine sentimentality applied to language in order to obfuscate the real meaning of terminology. Namely, however you flip it, sustainable development itself is the technocratic paradigm. Society, economy and ecology are systems of resources and not groups of men and women making a living in an organic universe.

Here we must note that secular Church of UN appears to be much more orthodox when it comes to preservation of it’s doctrine than Catholic Church is towards preservation of deposit of Faith, organized in the body of dogmas. There’s no chance in Hell you’ll catch any of sustainability luminaries in deviating from the principle that sustainable development is through and through about resources management, and that you, dear reader, are a resource too. This fact, obvious even on superficial glance at any of programmatic UN documents, is the simplest, most clear and transparent formulation of technocratic paradigm. When all the flowery rhetoric is peeled away, sustainable development comprises to centrally implemented standardization of systems, where literally everything is considered to be manageable or controlled, most of all and above all our private and intimate lives. Precisely this last, yet fundamental, dimension of human existence is a sore point for “eminent persons” who devised this world encompassing policy, because it is by it’s very nature elusive and prone to defy external control.

Elusive here means, simply: not prone to be systematized and codified; because, despite all ballyhoo about codification of intimacy, love and compassion being servo functions of open systems, family being accidental product of evolution and religion being merely a mode of system communications, the very fact that technocracy is manifestly impotent to conquer this source of human freedom proves, via negativa, something Catholic Church used to proclaim via positiva. Namely, the religious aspect of sustainable development, meant to imbibe precisely this: hearts and minds or, if you like, wills and intellects, of people, never really got off the ground. It’s foundational document, Earth Charter, was not successfully devised and agreed upon at Rio Earth Summit in 1992. and, although Agenda 21 still is the most complete operational blueprint – a veritable Global Constitution – of sustainable development, it is still lacking this important factor. Truth be told, nowadays we have religion of Scientism which will in the future inevitably lead to implosion of natural sciences, but it is obviously a substitute taken seriously only by it’s lunatic fringe patriarchs and media con-men like Dawkins, Kaku and Kurzweill, and their redditing and twitting flock. Despite this, when push comes to shove, majority of Christian people still cry for that one, unique, personal Name. So what can you do then to imbibe it with new meaning and bring the impostor to bear it?

Sustainable embryos Let’s see how institute of intimacy, the family, fares:

“Doomsday predictions can no longer be met with irony and disdain (…) The effect of the present imbalance can only be reduced by our decisive action, here and now (…) Men and women of our postmodern world run the risk of rampant individualism, and many problems of society are connected with today’s self centered culture of instant gratification. We see this in the crisis of family (…) Parents can be prone to impulsive and wasteful consumption, which then affects their children who find it increasingly difficult to acquire a home of their own and build a family” (LS. 161., 162., pg. 119, 120)

Well, now. You can’t have an integral ecology if you don’t integrate each and every dimension of human life into it. So, the main problem of family is lack of responsibility in managing of it’s resources. No planning, you see. But there is a long tradition of planning, i.e. managing the primary output of family system, alive and well in the world. It’s institutionalized under the charming, one could almost say ‘sustainable’, moniker of “Planned Parenthood”. Why, as we learned in the past few months, it can even teach us how to turn aborted babies into recyclable resource. It is impossible to believe that white capped shithead and his co-authors were unaware of the fact that Planned Parenthood was caught red handed in the business of selling infant body parts. Wouldn’t it be only natural to expect the Bishop of Rome having something to say about it? It would. But it wouldn’t be sustainable. The problem of abortion gets only few lukewarm but very telling mentions in LS. We’ll quote one:

“Since everything is interrelated, concern for the protection of nature is also incompatible with the justification of abortion. How can we genuinely teach the importance of concern for other vulnerable beings, however troublesome or inconvenient they may be, if we fail to protect a human embryo, even when its presence is uncomfortable and creates difficulties? “If personal and social sensitivity towards the acceptance of the new life is lost, then other forms of acceptance that are valuable for society also wither away“ (LS. 120., pg 89 – 90, the last sentence is a quote from Caritas in Veritate encyclical from 2009.)

So it is in order to integrate ecology or to ecologically integrate – to protect the nature – we should put up with those “uncomfortable” and “difficult” embryos, not because they are infant humans. Think globally, act locally, Ye people of God. It’s easy to talk about sustainable management of resources and then go home and scrap that semi-evolved kid baking in utero. Why, that’s where you get un-ecological while thinking you are so ecological. And look what happens then:

“Particularly threatened are marine organisms which we tend to overlook, like some forms of plankton; they represent a significant element in the ocean food chain, and species used for our food ultimately depend on them.” (LS. 40., pg. 29)

So the rampant, although apparently sustainable, abortion industry is not worth the papal mention, but we have to take care of planktons, for how will they sing the hymns to God if we eradicate them? Let us not presume that Laudato Si simply points out the true problem of exploitative destruction of biosphere. On the contrary, it is putting forward the new paradigm into gullible minds, the paradigm which is essentially anti-human. The teaching on dignity of man is very well organized part of Catholic doctrine and it is above it’s philosophy of nature: man is an image of God insofar as he is endowed with subsistent, rational soul, the entity which is substantial and consequently simple to define. But the new paradigm relies on “interconnectedness”, the term used to explain the nature as a system, therefore it is precisely the technocratic principle encyclical is supposedly meant to combat. The confusion is multifaceted, deliberate and stretched on many pages, just to incite the right level of confusion. But it’s origin is quite simple. Interconnectedness is a category of relation, therefore, if taken in itself, a completely insubstantial qualifier. It is a term used in ecology, human and otherwise, to provide an image of nature appropriate for technological mind, i.e. it is the very essence of technocratic paradigm. And there’s one hidden detail: it relies on complete rejection of any kind of stable foundation – metaphysical, logical or otherwise – which traditional metaphysics underlying Christian theology of Patristic and Middle Ages called ousia or substance. There is, nothing behind the system because if it were so, then we could not say that everything is interconnected but ordered. Christian metaphysics presupposes hierarchy of Being which produces the order we call ‘the world’. The system of pure relations, the being where everything is interconnected with everything else, on the other hand, is not the definition of order. It is, properly speaking, a definition of chaos. Aristotle called ‘the relation’ weakest of categories because it has a secondary existence to everything else. For his mind, as well as for the mind of anyone not suffering from psychotic disorder, it was impossible to conceive the pure relation, the world as a totality of relations – and this means: the world as a system.

So the chaos of Laudato Si appears to be of intrinsic nature. It’s not just the matter of poor editing and confused mind. On the contrary, as we shall see in the depiction of damning part of the encyclical, the mind(s) that devised this document were quite concentrated and wills quite deliberate. The ballyhoo of cry of the Earth, cry of the poor is a sort of acid trip to get the readers just into right mood for taking a shot of relaxing, petrifying, intellectual dope. So, to sum up: earth is squealing, the poor are wailing, the song of plankton is muffled before the Throne of Most High and it is time to make an “ecological conversion” (LS. 219., pg. 160) and munch on the host of “splendid universal communion” (LS, 220., pg.160). After all, “Christian spirituality proposes an alternative understanding of quality of the life, and encourages a prophetic and contemplative lifestyle(…).” (LS. 222., pg. 162)

The Ecological Covenant The damning part of Laudato Si is short exposition of “theology” paired tellingly with propositions for educational reform, most of it grouped in the sixth chapter of the document, named “Ecological education and spirituality”. But, before we proceed to dissect the dead tissue of Sustainable Christianity, we must introduce the document which, for all intents and purposes, served as it’s veritable source.

The Earth Charter was perhaps best summed up in the words of one of his co-creators, Mikhail Gorbachev:

“We also need a new international environmental legal code rooted in an Earth charter – a covenant similar to the United Nations Declaration on Human Rights. … My hope is that this charter will be a kind of Ten Commandments, a ‘Sermon on the Mount,’ that provides a guide for human behavior toward the environment in the next century and beyond.”(source)

This was reiterated by his college, Maurice Strong:

“The real goal of the Earth Charter is that it will in fact become like the Ten Commandments, like the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.” (source)

The history of the genesis and authorship of the Earth Charter is very intriguing and deserves some verbatim quotations. While people pushing it on hoped to have it codified and presented at Rio Summit in 1992., the actual drafting of the document began in December of 1996. and was conducted by Earth Charter Commission, then presided by Steven D. Rockefeller. The benchmarks of drafting process were:

“three meetings (…) held at the Rockefeller Brothers Fund (RBF) Pocantico Conference Center outside New York City“. These meetings secreted “a small core group that grew from three to eight persons (and) worked especially closely with Steven Rockefeller on the actual writing of the text.“ Finally, „On June 29, 2000, the Earth Charter Commission with the support of Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands formally launched the Earth Charter at the Peace Palace in The Hague.“ (source)

Well, you can’t have ten (plus six) commandments just lying around – you have to make the Ark of Covenant to enshrine them. And so, in order to adequately present the Earth Charter it’s faithful took trouble to find an appropriate container for it. It is enshrined in the Ark of Hope, the lively colored box made of sycamore tree and painted with depictions of five elements: fire, water, air, earth and spirit, while copy of Earth Charter’s 16 principles is written on a single piece of papyrus. As the Ark of Hope website narrates:

„The Ark of Hope was created for a celebration of the Earth Charter held at Shelburne Farms, Vermont on September 9, 2001. The event, For love of Earth, featured keynote speaker Jane Goodall, global peace walker Satish Kumar, musician Paul Winter, and Dr. Steven C. Rockefeller, a member of the Earth Charter Commission. On September 11, 2001 volunteers were cleaning up from the September 9th event when news of the New York and Washington, DC terrorist attacks and tragedies was heard. Sally Linder’s immediate, spontaneous response to the horror was to begin walking the Ark of Hope to New York and the United Nations. Joined by Andrea Morgante and Janet Fredericks, they carried the 200-pound chest across the meadows of the farm to Rt. 7 where they were joined by Susan Diehl Dufort. Hundreds of walkers joined the pilgrimage to New York City, bringing with them hope and the vision of the Earth Charter to communities along the way. For two months the Ark of Hope was walked over 350 miles through four states. The last leg of the journey down the Hudson River was aboard Pete Seeger’s legendary sloop The Clearwater. Due to heightened security at the United Nations the Ark of Hope rested at New York’s Interfaith Center upon arrival. “ (source)

There’s a symbolism in this story: the Ark of (Brand) New Covenant was taken towards Holly of Hollies on the day the old world fell. Must be that ole’ synchronicity the New Agers rave about, but who knows. History is known to have almost human, if not demonic, sense of irony.
As to the content of the Earth Charter, we read this in it’s preamble:

„The dominant patterns of production and consumption are causing environmental devastation, the depletion of resources, and a massive extinction of species. Communities are being undermined. The benefits of development are not shared equitably and the gap between rich and poor is widening. Injustice, poverty, ignorance, and violent conflict are widespread and the cause of great suffering. An unprecedented rise in human population has overburdened ecological and social systems.“ (EC. „The global situation“)

It is ironic – if not cruelly sarcastic – that panel presided, among others, by top level oil industry manager, former General Secretary of Communist party of USSR and the member of Rockefeller dynasty is passing this thinly veiled condemnation on global plebs – and that means: you and me, dear reader – and proclaims that “the protection of Earth’s vitality, diversity, and beauty is a sacred trust.“ (EC. „Earth, our home“); further pointing out that “we urgently need a shared vision of basic values to provide an ethical foundation for the emerging world community.“ It is, for all intents and purposes, a condemnation, an invitation to guilt, made by people who represent the class which shapes global economy and politics, i.e. the class that creates the “patterns of production and consumption” and makes sure that “the gap between rich and poor is widening”. But we won’t indulge in petty accusations.

This is what author(s) of Laudato Si has to say about Earth Charter:

“The Earth Charter asked us to leave behind a period of self-destruction and make a new start, but we have not as yet developed a universal awareness needed to achieve this. Here, I would echo that courageous challenge: ‘As never before in history, common destiny beckons us to seek a new beginning (…)Let ours be a time remembered for the awakening of a new reverence for life, the firm resolve to achieve sustainability, the quickening of the struggle for justice and peace, and the joyful celebration of life’.“ (LS, 207., pg. 207)

The three dots indicating the missing text are a real eye sore, so we’ll put back some of the Earth Charter lines the author took out. So, “to fulfill this promise, we must commit ourselves to adopt and promote the values and objectives of the Charter.“ Really? The Church is not good enough? And what does it mean? Well, „this requires a change of mind and heart. It requires a new sense of global interdependence and universal responsibility.“ But Catholic Church vehemently opposes scraping kids from uterus and population control is obviously crucially important for Earth Charter? Oh, well, „life often involves tensions between important values. This can mean difficult choices. However, we must find ways to harmonize diversity with unity, the exercise of freedom with the common good, short-term objectives with long-term goals.“

The Earth Charter is a compilation of religious commandments, demanding “change of mind and heart” – a conversion (metanoia) – and as such, despite all the sweet talk, the catechism of the Church of UN does not suffer competition. Catholic Church can implement this only on condition that it ceases to be the Church and replace Christian theology and ethics with their sustainable mockery.

Overreacting, are we not?

Well, let’s see how the things fare in the subsection of Laudato Si named “Educating for the Covenant between humanity and environment”. For a moment we’ll skip the explanation of the italicized expression, but keep it in mind. Bergoglio affirms:

“An awareness of the gravity of today’s cultural and ecological crisis must be translated into new habits.” (LS, 209., pg. 153)

“Environmental education has broadened it’s goals (…) It seeks also to restore the various levels of ecological equilibrium, establishing harmony within ourselves, with others, with nature and other living creatures, and with God. Yet this education, aimed at creating an “ecological citizenship”, is at times limited to providing information, and fails to instill good habits. The existence of laws and regulations is insufficient (…) to curb bad conduct (…) If the laws are to bring about significant (…) effects, the majority of the members of society must be adequately motivated to accept them, and personally transformed to respond. Only by cultivating sound virtues will people be able to make a selfless ecological commitment.” (LS. 210., 211., pg. 153 – 154)

Reader unversed in classical philosophy can easily skip the essential thing about this passages and it is the contention of undersigned that author(s) of encyclical counted on that. But – woe unto them – there’s still some people who read Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas. Namely, the crucial thing is a term ‘habits’. At first glance it may seem that it is just the manner of common sense to teach kids good habits: to wash their teeth, regularly change socks, not to stick the chewing gum in someone else’s hair, etc. But ‘habits’ have a much deeper meaning than it appears. Namely, Aquinas, following Aristotle, defines habit, as a ‘quality of the soul’, i.e. that which belongs to “the mode or determination of the subject, in regard to the nature of the thing” (Summa Theologiae, II, 49., article 2). This means, if we take concrete subject, for example, elementary school kid, his habits are dispositions he displays towards his own nature and nature of things in general. Now, nature is a principle determining the answer to questions of what some being is and why it exists, telling us hence what is it’s essence and it’s end. The end necessarily involves a gradation of perfection. For instance, our kid can, as an individual, be prone to being lazy. But as a participant in human nature he is necessarily prone to perfect his own being and this means: to cultivate virtues opposing the vices stemming, in this case, from his material basis, namely bodily or physiological disposition. To “instill the good habit” would therefore mean to shape kid’s soul in order for him to be properly disposed towards his own weakness which is essentially dragging him away from his true nature as a human being. Simply put, he has to be instilled with proper virtue, in this case some mode of temperance. In Christian ethics the inclination towards evil is caused by corruption of human nature by Original Sin, but, through Christ, the remedy is at hand, not accessible by one’s own efforts alone, but by the Grace which instills the so called theological virtues of Faith, Hope and Charity. However, the virtues which are proper dispositions towards all those things the life throws at us, the things that cause fear, addiction, sorrow, pain, etc. are something one can be trained in, in a very literal sense. Aquinas’ modification of Aristotle’s ethics is based on concrete process of acquiring certain qualities of character and not merely on analysis of words, as is the case in contemporary post-philosophy – to be trained in virtue is quite analogous to being trained in playing the guitar. It is something you are by nature, as a human, talented in, but you have to exercise and practice it in order to make it habitual. Once the habit is acquired, it doesn’t get lost just like that, moreover because it is a quality of the soul, i.e. it’s manifestation. This is how all those imperatives as “be a man!” or “don’t be inhuman!” came about. Their foundation is not a matter of consensus; no matter how eagerly postmodern thinkers try to convince us to the contrary.

And the writer of the encyclical, apparently, knows this as well as the authors of Earth Charter. Namely, they are aware that nothing will change in man and make him capable to make “a selfless ecological commitment”, if you don’t get to his soul.

Overreacting again, are we?

Let’s see. When the author reiterates idea of “ecological conversion” as metanoia we have to pay attention to the order of his wording, i.e. it’s not about winning “hearts and minds”, but about converting “minds and hearts”. Namely, virtue as a proper disposition of the soul towards itself and other beings is also a quality of reason and will. It is impossible to act right if one doesn’t know what is right. In traditional Christian theology knowing the right principle is essential to willing the right thing and although human will is by it’s nature directed towards the good, i.e. the right thing, the man will necessarily stray from his path if he doesn’t employ the cardinal virtue of prudence, “the knowledge of what to seek and what to avoid” (Augustin, quote from Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, II, 47.). The very essence of Christian morality and indeed of Christian faith is the fact that human being has to go through life constantly endeavoring to fulfill the destiny inscribed in it’s nature while trying to avoid everything that is contrary to it. The task would be downright impossible if it weren’t for a faith which is an act submited to intellect, a reasonable acceptance of the revealed Truth. Now, ecological metanoia is formally completely in accordance with this definition, because the entire encyclical is an exercise in talking the reader into accepting a new religion or modfying an existing one into something hardly recognizable.

The God of Laudato Si is the God of Earth Charter and that God certainly has nothing to do with Christianity. For the sake of brevity, we won’t quote extensively the raving praise of encyclical on behalf of one of the Earth Charter Initiative board members, ex-Franciscan ecoliberation theologian Leonardo Boff, but on this link you can find his accurate demonstration of convergences between Earth Charter and Laudato Si, as well as  interpretation of Trinity as a manifestation of interconnectedness, and judge for yourself whether it has anything to do with Christian. We also won’t dwell any further in a notion of capitalized Mother Earth – also known as Gaia – mentioned in this Earth Charter International’s praise of papal encyclical:

“Reflecting on the 15th anniversary of the Earth Charter, I am reminded of the values taught by St. Francis of Assisi. St. Francis lived in accordance with the values formulated in the Earth Charter, long before the Earth Charter Document was written. And now, after so many centuries, these values are needed more than ever. Values such as logic and power seem to be outmoded. According to St. Francis, we should focus on relevant qualities such as self-knowledge, modesty and compassion. These qualities will lead to authentic behavior and will serve the environment and the Earth community (…) We should feel inspired by both St. Francis and Pope Francis. The urgent message of the Papal Encyclical to all of us should foster a new awareness within ourselves, as human beings related to Mother Earth. Being aware that the Earth is our only home should spur us to a generous, service-minded attitude towards others and the Earth. As stated by Angaangaq Angakkorsuaq, shaman and Eskimo-Kalaallit Elder from Greenland, “The Big Ice is melting and we can’t do anything about it. The only thing we can do, is melt the ice in the heart of men.” We have to see, hear, and feel with our hearts, in order to act with the power of compassion for the Earth and all living beings.“ (source)

Laudato Si is a scandalous document quite in keeping with original meaning given to this word in the Gospels.

Make of it what you like.

Branko Malić