Reflections on Six Months of the Laudato Si Blog

We’ve now been writing these weekly blog posts for half a year (or, more precisely, for 28 weeks, although who’s counting?). This seems like an appropriate time to summarize six months of posts, including both our practical calls to action and our reflections on science and faith.

Despite the severity of the environmental and human crisis that faces our world, not all problems will be solved at once or are even capable of easy solution. Therefore, You Don't Have to Be an Environmental Superhero! pointed out that you just have to begin somewhere, with one small step.  And that post, as well as the remaining practical posts, listed possible first steps, along with additional steps for those already committed to preserving our common home. Some of these are obvious, such as recycling as much as possible and ensuring that at little of our garbage as possible goes into a landfill. But other actions are not so obvious. Most of us don’t recognize the significant ecological damage that we do to the environment (and often to ourselves!) through mundane, everyday activities like washing our clothes or our dishes. As a result, we discussed the environmental impact of washing the dishes and of doing the laundry not only in one post, but in a second post as well.

Not only do many of our everyday activities contribute to environmental degradation, but many of the products that we use every day also do. Most noteworthy are products made of plastic, a substance which is arguably the hallmark of modern civilization. We discuss the catastrophic impact of plastic on the environment and on human health and offer some suggestions for liberating ourselves (as much as is humanly possible) from a dependence on plastics.

In a culture that emphasizes consumption and views the world around us transactionally, we often assume that resources are unlimited and are simply there for our taking. The result of this ethos of wanton consumption is waste. Two of our posts suggest ways to reduce water consumption and to eliminate food waste, two resources that are in fact scarce and likely to become more scarce as the crisis facing our common home becomes more acute.

One of the byproducts of our culture’s transactional view of the world  is death: that it brings death (and in some cases extinction) to the life forms that God has created and that the Holy Spirit has brought into existence, We discuss the extent of the crisis and examine practical action that we can take to slow down the death and extinction of birds and of pollinators such as bees in two posts.

This transactional view of the lives of other living creatures leads us to rely on chemical pesticides, herbicides, and fungicides to eliminate the life forms we don’t like. Besides eliminating them, however, we do permanent damage to the world around us as well as to our own health. One post examines the damage these products do to the ourselves and to the environment, while the first in what will be a series of posts discusses specifically the organic herbicides that we can use to safely eliminate weeds and other plants without causing human and environmental damage.

Taking action to preserve our common home is not enough, however. We must also redefine the way in which we relate to the world around us. In a small way, our reflections aim at helping us to do that.

At a time when scientific truth is under attack, particularly from Christians, one of our posts examines the historically close relationship between science and Catholicism, while another explores the monotonous pattern of science denial, a pattern of falsehood and deceit that we see at work today in the denial of climate change and the diverse attacks on the COVID-19 pandemic and the COVID-19 vaccine.

As Christians, we are called to imitate Christ in our lives, and it is ironic that many non-believers expect Christians to imitate Christ. Yet Christians have difficulty understanding that their every action reflects a particular theology, and others are quick to notice when those actions violate Christian tenets. But what does it mean to strive to imitate Christ? We examine this issue through the lens of St. Francis’ Canticle of the Creatures, which calls us to view ourselves as integrally related to and dependent upon the whole of God’s creation, rather than separate from, autonomous, and above it. In keeping with the spirit of St. Francis’ view that we are intimately connected to the world around us, we also examine the meaning of the dominion that God granted to humankind in Genesis. Besides living as interrelated parts of God’s creation, we also are (or should be) living for the generations that follow us. Pope Francis terms this intergenerational solidarity, a topic that we also explore in one of our posts.

One of the ways in which we can begin to understand our own interconnectedness with humankind and with all of God’s creation that Pope Francis recommends is to say grace before meals. This can be effective, however, only if we actually express our appreciation for the food that God has provided for us by eating it without complaint!

In What if Climate Change Is a Hoax?, we examine whether it really matters whether climate change is real o bring about a change in our behavior and our lifestyle. Ours is a culture of conspicuous and mindless consumption, of loving the things we buy (as eBay tells us), and of evaluating the objects (and living beings) around us in terms of their convenience or utility to us. This is a form of idolatry; and as we point out in our What's So Bad About Idolatry? post, Psalm 115 warns us that idolatry involves a lifeless idol taking possession of us and controlling us. A particular form of this idolatry is associated with plastics, as we argue in The Spirituality of Plastic.

Some Christians have advanced the argument that it doesn’t matter whether climate change is real or not; God has promised to save us anyway. We examine the merits of the ridiculous claim in Will God Save Us from Ourselves? In Is the Second Coming Approaching?, we also examine the meaning of Pope Francis’ statement that doomsday must be taken seriously if we fail to take urgent action. He does not mean by that that Christ will come (especially since the Second Coming of our Lord is not an occasion for gloom) but rather that we will destroy and doom ourselves.

We hope that you’ve enjoyed the first six months of the Laudato Si blog. We look forward to our contributions over the next six months. We also look forward to hearing your feedback and your suggestions for topics that we should discuss.