From May 15-17, 2024, American leaders including California Gov. Gavin Newsom and Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healy will be attending a global conference on environmental issues. The host? The Vatican.The summit, “From Climate Crisis to Climate Resilience,” will focus on human adaptation, not just trying to mitigate climate change. “We need to embark on building climate resilience so that people can bend the emissions curve and bounce back from the climate crisis safer, healthier, wealthier to a sustainable world,” the Pontifical Academy of Sciences said in a statement announcing the workshop.The Catholic Church might seem a surprising institution to convene a climate change event. But many saints, activists and religious leaders have called on their faith to inspire care for the Earth. Pope Francis in particular has been vocal about the risks of climate change, especially its impact on the world’s poorest and most vulnerable people.Here are five aspects about Francis’ views – and Catholicism’s broader relationship with the environment – that scholars have written about for The Conversation.1. God’s creationCare for the Earth has a long Catholic lineage, dating back centuries.“One of the basic beliefs of Christianity is that the material world was created directly by God, and thus fundamentally connected with God’s goodness,” explained Joanne M. Pierce, a religious studies scholar at College of the Holy Cross.One saint who took that teaching to heart was Hildegard of Bingen, who died in the 12th century. A German expert on herbal medicines and botany, she was also a writer, and she “espoused a kind of ‘green’ theology, called viriditas.”Another Catholic saint famous for his love of nature is Francis of Assisi, the patron saint of ecology: an Italian friar described as treating animals “with the same dignity as human beings.” Read more: Caring for the environment has a long Catholic lineage – hundreds of years before Pope Francis 2. Faith – and reasonIn fact, when Pope Francis published an encyclical on the environment in 2015, he took its title from one of his namesake saint’s poems: “Laudato si.”The encyclical links concern for climate change with Catholic teachings. But it is not just meant for Catholics; Francis also makes science-based arguments that people can appreciate with or without religious faith, noted Lawrence Torcello, a philosopher at the Rochester Institute of Technology.“Laudato si” is a notable “example of how reason ought to be incorporated into public discourse,” Torcello wrote. In a time as polarized as our own, arguments need to be framed in a way that anyone can understand, even if they don’t agree, “regardless of private religious or parochial commitments.” Read more: The pope as philosopher: faith, climate change and public reason 3. An influential messengerSimilarly, University of Michigan business scholars Andrew Hoffman and Jenna White zoomed in on the pope’s ability to speak to people beyond divid …
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[mwai_chat context=”Let’s have a discussion about this article:nnFrom May 15-17, 2024, American leaders including California Gov. Gavin Newsom and Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healy will be attending a global conference on environmental issues. The host? The Vatican.The summit, “From Climate Crisis to Climate Resilience,” will focus on human adaptation, not just trying to mitigate climate change. “We need to embark on building climate resilience so that people can bend the emissions curve and bounce back from the climate crisis safer, healthier, wealthier to a sustainable world,” the Pontifical Academy of Sciences said in a statement announcing the workshop.The Catholic Church might seem a surprising institution to convene a climate change event. But many saints, activists and religious leaders have called on their faith to inspire care for the Earth. Pope Francis in particular has been vocal about the risks of climate change, especially its impact on the world’s poorest and most vulnerable people.Here are five aspects about Francis’ views – and Catholicism’s broader relationship with the environment – that scholars have written about for The Conversation.1. God’s creationCare for the Earth has a long Catholic lineage, dating back centuries.“One of the basic beliefs of Christianity is that the material world was created directly by God, and thus fundamentally connected with God’s goodness,” explained Joanne M. Pierce, a religious studies scholar at College of the Holy Cross.One saint who took that teaching to heart was Hildegard of Bingen, who died in the 12th century. A German expert on herbal medicines and botany, she was also a writer, and she “espoused a kind of ‘green’ theology, called viriditas.”Another Catholic saint famous for his love of nature is Francis of Assisi, the patron saint of ecology: an Italian friar described as treating animals “with the same dignity as human beings.” Read more: Caring for the environment has a long Catholic lineage – hundreds of years before Pope Francis 2. Faith – and reasonIn fact, when Pope Francis published an encyclical on the environment in 2015, he took its title from one of his namesake saint’s poems: “Laudato si.”The encyclical links concern for climate change with Catholic teachings. But it is not just meant for Catholics; Francis also makes science-based arguments that people can appreciate with or without religious faith, noted Lawrence Torcello, a philosopher at the Rochester Institute of Technology.“Laudato si” is a notable “example of how reason ought to be incorporated into public discourse,” Torcello wrote. In a time as polarized as our own, arguments need to be framed in a way that anyone can understand, even if they don’t agree, “regardless of private religious or parochial commitments.” Read more: The pope as philosopher: faith, climate change and public reason 3. An influential messengerSimilarly, University of Michigan business scholars Andrew Hoffman and Jenna White zoomed in on the pope’s ability to speak to people beyond divid …nnDiscussion:nn” ai_name=”RocketNews AI: ” start_sentence=”Can I tell you more about this article?” text_input_placeholder=”Type ‘Yes'”]
