Two new perspectives recently opened up for me in dialogue with bishops and theologians. The first is the sad fact that “Laudato Si’” and its implementation has stalled in the church. The second is that we must look at the Christological perspectives of our care for creation and our common home. The two are related.
I recently participated in a conference held at the University of San Diego, part of a multi-year series of gatherings of bishops, theologians and others focusing on a way forward for the church. This year’s theme was “Laudato si`: Protecting Our Common Home, Building Our Common Church.” In so many ways, this gathering was remarkable—but not because it provided quick and easy solutions to the daunting climate and environmental challenges we face and must work through with patience and commitment. In my estimation, its significance stemmed from our dialogue that opened new perspectives—including those above—and stimulated deeper reflection.
Consider how “Laudato Si’” has landed in the church and how the church has carried its vision into the world. There have been some admirable efforts to educate and raise consciousness, such as the Jesuit Ecology Project and its free, interactive environmental e-textbook Healing Earth from Loyola University Chicago. I am also proud of the initiatives that my own Archdiocese of Chicago has taken to move in ecologically responsible pathways (as announced December 2023, the Archdiocese will convert to 100 percent renewable energy sources). That said, overall, it is accurate to say that there is no deep or widespread awareness in the church of “Laudato Si’,” and certainly not in the United States.
Assuming environmental responsibility
The pope’s letter “Laudate Deum” on the eighth anniversary of “Laudato Si’” indicates that this lack is also evident worldwide. There is certainly no large-scale church mobilization for action on environmental issues. Also telling is that the general public does not often identify the Catholic Church as standing for environmental responsibility. Why is this so? Why is this critically important document, now nine years old, largely bypassed and generally stalled in Catholic Church life?
One important reason pastoral leaders and those responsible for spiritual formation in the church are reluctant and might hesitate to take up “Laudato Si’”is that climate issues and, more generally, environmental concerns have been politicized. This is especially true in the United States. Religious leaders do not want to step into a fractured and polarized political world that would threaten and divert them as they try to fulfill their spiritual mission.
At some point, of course, assuming environmental responsibility does include making public policy choices. Well before that, however, there are non-political foundations. For example, embracing values for our life together on this earth, looking clearly at environmental challenges, and assuming our true responsibility are all deeply spiritual movements. Within the church, preachers and teachers are summoned to align the faith of their people with an ecological commitment to the care of our common home that is God’s creation. But how to do this?
My recommendation is to link this task with the great mission entrusted to us to proclaim Jesus Christ. We must, however, make this proclamation in a more comprehensive way than we are accustomed to. Let me explain.
At the beginning of “Laudato Si’,” Pope Francis identifies his hope for the encyclical: “I would like to enter into dialogue with all people about our common home.” The Holy Father then offers the world a unique moral and spiritual voice. He speaks from and for our universal church that embraces all humanity across all regions and all cultures. From that vantage point, he can and does address “all people,” not only Catholics and other Christians but everyone of good will about the climate crisis and our ecological responsibility—matters that touch every one of us.
Because the Holy Father engages the whole of humanity “to enter into dialogue,” he downplays the specifically Christian dimension of his message. It is nonetheless present: for example, “the gaze of Jesus” in Nos. 96-100 and “the Trinity and the relationship between creatures” in Nos. 238-240.
Even as we recognize the wide-ranging and inclusive outreach of “Laudato Si’,” we also need to identify how its message can specifically galvanize the Christian community. I would suggest that this can happen through our proclamation of and teaching about our relationship with Jesus Christ. Absolutely decisive for the effectiveness of this proclamation is a full and integral sense of that relationship. St. Paul’s experience of his relationship with the Lord can be very helpful in claiming that full and integral sense.
Ecology and Christ
Many of our initiatives for evangelization—and I know this is verified in my own archdiocese—rightly focus on “a personal relationship with Jesus Christ.” This is obviously a good thing. It also echoes Paul’s experience, for example, as he eloquently describes it in his letter to the Galatians: “I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me” (Gal 2: 19-20). Paul’s personal relationship with Jesus Christ radiates an unsurpassed intimacy.
In our moment and in our highly individualistic culture, however, we cannot allow this personal relationship to devolve into something not only personal but also private and not only intimate but also merely sentimental. The temptation to do so is real. And if we succumb to that and find ourselves locked in our own narrow spiritual world, we will find ourselves blocked from the message of “Laudato Si’” and other larger social commitments to which we are called. The remedy for this possible privatization is to embrace two other Pauline perspectives on our relationship with Jesus Christ, as we move to a comprehensive and complex sense of who Jesus Christ is for us.
Paul relates to Jesus Christ not only in the intimate depths of his own existence but also in the interpersonal relationships at work in the community of faith. So, he can write to his beloved Corinthian community: “Now you are the body of Christ and individually members of it” (1 Cor 12: 27). This sense of a communal relationship with Jesus Christ in his body, the church, awakens in us a sense of close connection with each other and a sense of responsibility for each other. That surely paves a way for taking up the call of “Laudato Si’,” and it follows a trajectory of synodality. But even beyond this interpersonal and communitarian dimension of our relationship with Jesus Christ, there is another dimension to that relationship.
Paul is in relationship with Jesus Christ as the cosmic Lord, the one through whom all things are created and the pleroma,or full completion, toward which they are evolving or tending. So, he writes to the Colossians: “He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation; for in him all things in heaven and on earth were created…he is the firstborn of the dead, so that he might come to have first place in everything. For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell” (Col 1:15-16, 18-19).
Teilhard de Chardin described this as Christogenesis, all creation coming to fulfillment in Christ who brings all things to God, “so that God may be all in all” (1 Cor 15:28). This relationship with Jesus Christ as the Lord of the cosmos and of history naturally provides a foundation for our commitment to care for creation. We are with him in this upward movement of all creation into God.
If we proclaim Jesus Christ in this threefold relational perspective, I believe that we would have the sure foundation to give some traction to “Laudato Si’” in the church at large. Our personal relationship with the Lord can draw us to claim our personal identity in him as well as our connection through him with all creation. As the Incarnate Word, he has assumed our flesh and become one with us who are also one with the earth. The communal relationship with him in his body, the church, can underscore the multiple connections and shared responsibility that we have with each other for the care of our common home.
Finally, our relationship with Jesus, the cosmic Lord who is the source and goal of all creation, sets us on firm footing to embrace the environmental commitments to which “Laudato Si’” summons us.
All this coalesces in our celebration of the Eucharist. Recall Paul’s words to the Corinthians and permit me to fill them out: “For as often as you [together, as a community, as his body] eat this bread and drink the cup [his body and blood of the earth that he shared with us], you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes [in glory, leading us and all creation into the pleroma, the very fullness of God]” (1 Cor 11: 26).
If we regularly meet the Lord Jesus Christ in the Eucharist personally, interpersonally and cosmically, then I think we will be ready and very willing to take up our responsibility for God’s creation and our common home.
