Pope Drafting Encyclical on "Ecology of Man"

[TimothyH]

Vatican spokesman, the Rev. Federico Lombardi, said the document was still very much in its early stages and that no publication date has been set. He said it would be about ecology and more specifically the "ecology of man."

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-Tim-

 

[YoungTradCath]

Can someone address what this topic means theologically?

 

[TRH1292]

Awesome!!! Living up to his namesake! Pope Francis, like Pope Benedict XVI, is very concerned about the environment. I believe the environment is one of his prayer intentions in one of the upcoming months.

 

[janeway529]

Can someone address what this topic means theologically?

It’s about man’s duty of stewardship towards God’s creation.

 

[Rock7]

I wonder no hostility just is their going to be a joint session between the pope and his cardinals and oh I don’t know a Wiccan High priest and a bunch Gaia nuts Gaia is our angry mother for drinking irrigated water we must starve to please her, practice green black magic and burn the bible for to appease the angry goddess?

 

[TimothyH]

Can someone address what this topic means theologically?

It means that Mary is the Mediatrix of all Grace. He is going to declare the fifth Marian dogma.

(dramatic pause)

I’m not sure if this is the same thing but Pope Benedict XVI spoke about the ecology of man.

***The importance of ecology is no longer disputed. We must listen to the language of nature and we must answer accordingly.

Yet I would like to underline a further point that is still largely disregarded, today as in the past: there is also an ecology of man. Man too has a nature that he must respect and that he cannot manipulate at will. Man is not merely self-creating freedom. Man does not create himself. He is intellect and will, but he is also nature, and his will is rightly ordered if he listens to his nature, respects it and accepts himself for who he is, as one who did not create himself. In this way, and in no other, is true human freedom fulfilled…**

Read more at catholic.org/international/international_story.php?id=42957*

Ecology is a branch of biology which studies the relationships of organisms to one another and to their natural surroundings. The opening lines of the Bible speak of this this when it gives us the order in which God creates things, and what we are to eat, and that man gives names to the beasts but gets his name from God. I wonder if it is about our relationship to each other, our relationship to God and our relationship to the natural world - the right ordering of ourselves within creation of which we are a part.

…and that Mary is the Mediatrix of all grace.

All of this is speculation on my part!

-Tim-

 

[TimothyH]

Also this from Benedic XVI in 2009…

***“It is necessary that there be something such as an ecology of man, understood in the proper manner,” he said.

This human ecology, he affirmed, is based on respecting the nature of the person, and the two genders of masculine and feminine.

“It is not outmoded metaphysics,” Benedict XVI affirmed, “when Church speaks of the nature of the human being as man and woman, and demands that this order of creation be respected.”

He said it has more to do with “faith in the Creator and listening to the language of creation, the contempt of which will lead to the self destruction of humanity.”**

Reference zenit.org/en/articles/pontiff-calls-for-ecology-of-man*

-Tim-

 

[M-Dent]

The pope may expand on what he spoke of here,

However “cultivating and caring” do not only entail the relationship between us and the environment, between man and creation. They also concern human relations. The popes have spoken of a human ecology, closely connected with environmental ecology. We are living in a time of crisis; we see it in the environment, but above all we see it in men and women. The human person is in danger: this much is certain — the human person is in danger today, hence the urgent need for human ecology!

A few days ago, on the Feast of Corpus Christi, we read the account of the miracle of the multiplication of the loaves. Jesus fed the multitude with five loaves and two fish. And the end of this passage is important: “and all ate and were satisfied. And they took up what was left over, twelve baskets of broken pieces (Lk 9:17). Jesus asked the disciples to ensure that nothing was wasted: nothing thrown out! And there is this fact of 12 baskets: why 12? What does it mean? Twelve is the number of the tribes of Israel, it represents symbolically the whole people. And this tells us that when the food was shared fairly, with solidarity, no one was deprived of what he needed, every community could meet the needs of its poorest members. Human and environmental ecology go hand in hand.

POPE FRANCIS
GENERAL AUDIENCE

Saint Peter’s Square
Wednesday, 5 June 2013

vatican.va/holy_father/francesco/audiences/2013/documents/papa-francesco_20130605_udienza-generale_en.html

 

[RC_David333]

** the Catholic monk, brother Dimond, totally destroys the heretical arguments of the calvinist in this debate. Here is the link to that debate…

youtube.com/watch?v=Qn1vC1Ez-OI

To learn more about brother Dimond, his Monastery and the true teachings of our Lord, Jesus Christ, then please visit VaticanCatholic.com or MostHolyFamilyMonastery.com **

 

[McCall1981]

Hm, not sure at all what to make of this. I hope it is in reference to humanity’s relationship to the natural environment.

 

[TRH1292]

Hm, not sure at all what to make of this. I hope it is in reference to humanity’s relationship to the natural environment.

What else would it mean?

 

[TimothyH]

It might not be about nature - the natural world.

Man has a nature. created by God in his image, male and female. This is directly from Genesis 1:27. Blessed Pope John Paul II spoke about this at length in Theology of the Body. Pope Benedict XVI’s comments on the subject cannot be ignored.

"when Church speaks of the nature of the human being as man and woman, and demands that this order of creation be respected."

He speaks about the self-destruction of humanity when we ignore our own natures as beings created male and female in the image of God.

Then again, he took the name Francis, the patron Saint of ecology.

-Tim-

 

[McCall1981]

What else would it mean?

Like the above quotes from Benedict, I think it could refer to the nature of what a human being is, rather than to the natural environment.

 

[RPRPsych]

Awesome!!! Living up to his namesake! Pope Francis, like Pope Benedict XVI, is very concerned about the environment. I believe the environment is one of his prayer intentions in one of the upcoming months.

I share your enthusiasm. It would be great to have an entire encyclical on this important issue, which is often politicized and emotionalized to such an extent that rational discourse becomes difficult, if not impossible.
Jack Chick's Twin:

I wonder no hostility just is their going to be a joint session between the pope and his cardinals and oh I don’t know a Wiccan High priest and a bunch Gaia nuts Gaia is our angry mother for drinking irrigated water we must starve to please her, practice green black magic and burn the bible for to appease the angry goddess?

You’ve been reported. Take your anti-Catholic venom elsewhere, and may God guide you to a true understanding of His Church.

 

[TRH1292]

I share your enthusiasm. It would be great to have an entire encyclical on this important issue, which is often politicized and emotionalized to such an extent that rational discourse becomes difficult, if not impossible.

Although he never wrote an encyclical on it, I know Pope Benedict was very concerned about the environment and did quite a bit of writing on it. I have been meaning to read the books he released on the matter for some time, but I haven’t gotten to it yet.

 

[Genesis315]

It seems to be a pretty broad topic. It has as much to do with man’s moral environment as his physical one. This is from the encyclical Caritas et Veritate
Benedict XVI:

The Church has a responsibility towards creation and she must assert this responsibility in the public sphere. In so doing, she must defend not only earth, water and air as gifts of creation that belong to everyone. She must above all protect mankind from self-destruction. There is need for what might be called a human ecology, correctly understood. The deterioration of nature is in fact closely connected to the culture that shapes human coexistence:* when “human ecology”*[124] is respected within society, environmental ecology also benefits. Just as human virtues are interrelated, such that the weakening of one places others at risk, so the ecological system is based on respect for a plan that affects both the health of society and its good relationship with nature.

In order to protect nature, it is not enough to intervene with economic incentives or deterrents; not even an apposite education is sufficient. These are important steps, but the decisive issue is the overall moral tenor of society. If there is a lack of respect for the right to life and to a natural death, if human conception, gestation and birth are made artificial, if human embryos are sacrificed to research, the conscience of society ends up losing the concept of human ecology and, along with it, that of environmental ecology. It is contradictory to insist that future generations respect the natural environment when our educational systems and laws do not help them to respect themselves. The book of nature is one and indivisible: it takes in not only the environment but also life, sexuality, marriage, the family, social relations: in a word, integral human development. Our duties towards the environment are linked to our duties towards the human person, considered in himself and in relation to others. It would be wrong to uphold one set of duties while trampling on the other. Herein lies a grave contradiction in our mentality and practice today: one which demeans the person, disrupts the environment and damages society.

vatican.va/holy_father/benedict_xvi/encyclicals/documents/hf_ben-xvi_enc_20090629_caritas-in-veritate_en.html

See also Bl. John Paul II’s Centisimus Annus, passages 38 and 39.
vatican.va/holy_father/john_paul_ii/encyclicals/documents/hf_jp-ii_enc_01051991_centesimus-annus_en.html

Here’s an article by Archbishop Gomez on how it relates to the family:

the-tidings.com/index.php/viewpoints/cardinals-archbishop-gomez/1768-the-human-ecology-of-marriage-and-family

Also, see it’s relationship to peace in the section titled “ecology of peace” in Pope Benedict’s 2007 address for the Word Day of Peace. See paragraphs 8 to 11:

vatican.va/holy_father/benedict_xvi/messages/peace/documents/hf_ben-xvi_mes_20061208_xl-world-day-peace_en.html

 

[Filii_Dei]

I’m not so certain about it being about the environment. After all, ‘sacramental economy’ is not quite what people think it is. It’s certainly not finance and business, for one, so an ‘ecology of man’ might not necessarily be related to the environment either.