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Kat Bowman

Contemporary Catholicism

Dr. Martino

18 November 2019

Laudato Si'

I was born and raised Catholic, so I only have a piece of the puzzle when it comes

to theology, much like people who grow up learning a language (including English) have

only a piece of that language. I’ve always been more interested in ancient or “dead”

religions. It’s fascinating to me yet, Catholicism has had the unique pleasure of being

near those religions before they were wiped out by Catholic conversion. Humanity cannot

survive without theological progress and at least we aren’t sacrificing virgins or animals

anymore.

Faith and reason do not have to be complete opposites. The environmental issue

can’t be solved just through applying the sciences. You need to treat the reason people

are doing things that hurt the environment or things will not change. The human mind is

not just blind faith or just reason. It’s a mixture so why should what humans believe in

be any different. There’s no need for human beings to have to choose to follow science

or religion. By re-examining the specific words that were used in Genesis, I came to the

conclusion that the bible tells us to take care of the land and the land will produce the

food we need to survive. Jesus is a prime example of being in touch with the earth.
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Before he started his ministry, he was a carpenter, like his foster father. He probably had

a better idea than most of what hard work and taking care of the earth can do. Change

cannot just happen on one scale. It cannot just happen on a communal, international,

global level, people need to change as well on their small scale. They need to be the

change that they want to see. The technology exists to help improve the environment but

it’s either too expensive or not well known or big business does not care. A big flaw with

humanity as a whole today is that we distract ourselves from issues we do not want to

deal with. For example, People are more likely to be pro-life than have a desire to figure

out a solution to poverty, homelessness and world hunger. We care more about unborn

babies than what’s going to happen to them after their born and potentially become part

of the issues that are ignored.

The most challenging thing that humanity has to overcome is the parts of

technology that harm the environment, even though they are more expensive. This

reluctance to do so is caused by greed, in my opinion. Take any large business or

company throughout history, they sacrifice work safety or environmental safety to save

money. Technology is not the be all end all. God created humankind but yet some

people idealize and practically worship the Golden Calf of Technology, as it were. We

were created as an imperfect, for lack of a better word, clone of God. With that point,

you could argue that Smart technology was an inevitable step, but mankind is not God it

was created in the likeness of God. Another issue of humanity that I have started thinking

about while reading the encyclical is Hubris. Humanity is prideful and having pride and
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confidence in yourself is great until it starts exploiting and hurting others or the

environment.

Consumerism consumes everyday life. If you turn on the TV, especially around

November and December you’ll see at least one commercial selling a phone or a phone

plan or some sort of technological product. The dystopian future that we find ourselves

heading toward (one that is like the Disney movie WALL-E) could not be because

humanity is capable of the worst deeds as well as rising above themselves and doing

great good (Pope Francis par 208). Consumerism operates on the people buying and

consuming. The idea of emphasizing the habits/virtues/individual reminds me of the

saying “Be the change you want to see” and the Michael Jackson Hit “Man in the

Mirror”. One person alone cannot change the way things are but if one hundred people

or one thousand people or even one million people decide to change the way they live

and be more environmentally friendly, the change that would be seen would be

spectacular. People deciding to just let someone else change or even deny that the

environmental problem is a problem are part of the environmental problem. According to

Pope Francis, “It must be said that some committed and prayerful Christians, with the

excuse of realism and pragmatism, tend to ridicule expressions of concern for the

environment. Others are passive; they choose not to change their habits and thus become

inconsistent. So what they all need is an “ecological conversion”, whereby the effects of

their encounter with Jesus Christ become evident in their relationship with the world

around them. Living our vocation to be protectors of God’s handiwork is essential to a

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life of virtue; it is not an optional or a secondary aspect of our Christian experience.” (par

217). People need to wake up and realize that the community cannot change unless the

people in the community change. Humanity is an imperfect constantly changing group of

beings. Humanity should continuously strive to be better, religiously, scientifically and

morally.

Intellectually, I found the Encyclical challenging to read and understand but I

enjoyed the arguments that were made once I reached understanding. The arguments

made sense and hit home in different ways and I’m sure there would be and/or are

stubborn people who refuse to see reason and declare the paper Hogwash or something of

the like. The Encyclical did give me some new perspectives on the environmental issue,

but it also confirmed my pessimistic outlook of most human beings are horrible greedy

jerks. Now I believe it is not entirely the individual’s fault. The society that is being

created is not helping people to have environmentally friendly lifestyles. They are

isolated from learning about the issues they need to know about to band together to make

change with boycotting and protesting.