In Theory: Pope Francis urges ecological stewardship

Along with feeding the hungry, clothing the naked and visiting the sick, Pope Francis has proposed adding a new Christian work of mercy: caring for the environment.

Francis announced his “green agenda” this month, following up on his “landmark” bid to highlight ecological concerns last year, the Associated Press reports.

He said the first step to take to change the current course would be for wealthier countries to repay their “ecological debt” to poorer nations.

“(Repaying the debt) would require treating the environments of poorer nations with care and providing the financial resources and technical assistance needed to help them deal with climate change and promote sustainable development,” he wrote.

Q: What do you think of Pope Francis’ statement? What role can religion play in addressing environmental concerns?

God made the heavens and the Earth, therefore they are his property. Psalm 24:1 affirms that “The Earth is the Lord’s, and all it contains, the world, and those who dwell in it.” So mankind is living on and depends on the sustenance of God’s property. God has given mankind stewardship, not ownership, of the Earth. Genesis 1:28 says that “God blessed [Adam and Eve and] said to them, ‘Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the Earth, and subdue it; and rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over every living thing that moves on the Earth.’” Ruling over does not mean owning. So our mandate before God is to maintain the Earth so that it promotes the growth of mankind, God’s greatest creation, in a sustainable manner.

Ecological responsibility is definitely a biblical concept, but it is not the church’s primary mandate. It is more important to save the souls of lost men and women than it is to preserve the environment. Human souls are eternal, the Earth is not. Hell will last forever, oil spills will not. Jesus told his followers to make disciples, not to save the whales. We must never elevate the value we place on the Earth over the value we place on human lives, and human souls. As long as people remain alienated from God and murdered by others and aborted in the womb and exploited by others I believe people should be the church’s primary area of focus.

Pastor Jon Barta
Burbank

..

I applaud the Pope’s statement and clapped even louder for the message which it followed up, his 2015 encyclical “Laudato Si’: On Care for Our Common Home.” According to an Associated Press summary this papal letter to all his bishops called for a revolution to correct what Francis termed the “structurally perverse” world economic system by which the rich exploit the poor, while turning the Earth into, his words again, “an immense pile of filth.”

With the head of the Catholic Church swinging for the fences about what his Church should be doing, who am I to put any limits on religion’s environmental role? Religious people can and should go for it big time, and in fact many churches are already actively addressing these issues.

Francis calls for small actions such as recycling, carpooling and turning off lights. However his encyclical and message go deeper, opposing the root cause of both environmental destruction and of human exploitation which harms the poor most of all. He and I agree that the problem is capitalism unrestrained by morality or by regulation.

And we can see it right here in ever-growing piles of discarded furniture on Glendale’s curbs and sidewalks. How is this connected? Personal laziness plays a part, however the fundamental cause is that the stuff is too cheap to bother moving. Typically made by Third World workers paid slave wages (or in extreme cases by actual slaves), with no concern for the environment in their material or manufacture, these sofas, etc., are a small-scale, local manifestation of the lack of care for the Earth denounced by Pope Francis.

Roberta Medford
Atheist
Montrose

..

While expressing concern for the environment is laudable, the Roman Pontiff’s recent addition to the Catholic list of merciful duties seems to me just a further muddling of true Christian faith. By this, I mean that the Bible may be referenced for most of these various acts of mercy, but not all, and this recent concern is nothing new (as it’s been in the verses of Scripture for millennia) but officially listing them and holding people in danger of hellfire for not fulfilling them seems to take away from the Biblical message of salvation which Ephesians 2:8-9 says comes “not by works.” Works of mercy flow from salvation, they don’t cause it or cancel it.

Protestants don’t “pray for the dead” which is one of the acts of mercy on the list not found in Scripture, but being biblical, we would already point to the fact that when God made Adam, he put him “in the Garden of Eden to cultivate it and guard it” (Genesis 2:15). As well, Psalm 24:1 says, “The Earth is the Lord’s, and everything in it.” So we can see that God put this living environment into our stewardship, but it’s ultimately his property. Surely we should take care of that which God has entrusted us, for his sake and our own, but this is where our agreement with Francis ends.

We ought not make a wasteland out of the place we live, neither should we destroy its aesthetic nor its sustainability, but we should care for it, tend it, and cultivate its health. Nonetheless, I am not the sort who cares to ensure the next generation of some peculiar strain of mosquitoes at the cost of human habitation, nor do I believe that one country that has done well to develop and achieve great sanitation and plentiful crops, should then be held responsible for other backward nations that have squandered their resources and destroyed their own ecosystems. One does not owe the other anything, and we are already struggling with a national debt that cannot endure such undue expenditures.

I think it’s fine if the Pope wants to remind those who listen to him that there is some obligation to conserve God’s world, but I don’t think it fine that he “pontificates” about imaginary debts and makes them religious obligation. If he has any influence upon the “poorer nations,” tell him to have them join successful ones and give up their sovereignty. America would cross the globe to restart and refurbish a failed country if we gained possession and could utilize its own natural resources to fund its Yankee transformation, but handouts and enabling dysfunction should be over.

Rev. Bryan A. Griem
Tujunga