Passion for the Earth: The Christian Vocation to Promote Justice, Peace and the Integrity of Creation

National Catholic Reporter, Sept 8, 1995 by Stephen B. Scharper

Visitors to the Bronx Zoo in New York are confronted by a stark exhibit. After having strolled past lions, tigers, bears and other fear-inducing human consumers, they face a large mirror. Looking at their own reflections, they read an inscription claiming that they are gazing at the "most dangerous animal" the world has ever known.

These two books highlight the pernicious and predatory aspects of the human "animal" in light of our present ecological destruction and unconscionable global poverty. The authors, who both serve on the editorial advisory board of the Orbis Ecology and Justice Series, themselves exemplify the global dimensions of the environmental crisis.

Leonardo Boff, having earned his doctorate in Munich, Germany, writes from his native Brazil, where he serves as national adviser to base communities. Sean McDonagh, having served two decades as a missionary in the Philippines, writes from his native Ireland, where he chairs the national office of Greenpeace. Both authors forge a solid and cogent nexus between human and environmental exploitation..

Building upon the work of Aldo Leopold, Thomas Berry and John B. Cobb, among others, Boff provides a compelling introduction to some of the most salient environmental concerns. Perceptively noting that the ecological crisis is part of a larger questioning of the modern project, marked by a mechanistic, dualistic understanding of reality proffered by Rene Descartes, Francis Bacon and others, Boff claims the motif of the new ecological paradigm is interrelation, as evinced by ancient mystics and 20th century physicists.

Yet he is eager to add that any proposals for sustainability must acknowledge a preferential option for poor and endangered persons, especially the remaining native peoples whose lives and habitats are jeopardized by unbridled development. (When he tries to extend this option to other species, however, one is left hungering for more clarity.)

Boff, a chief architect of Latin American liberation theology who endured repeated silencings by Rome before leaving the Franciscans in 1992, provides a hard-hitting challenge to the church to embrace the North-South dichotomy as an ecological as well as a social concern. His writing exhibits a rare and captivating sense of mystery that carries him beyond disciplinary and geographical borders to posit an authentically worldwide vision of justice, peace and sustainability.

The work is also an honest soul-searching in light of the collapse of communism and its impact on liberation theology. While acknowledging that socialist experiments have indeed ended owing to abuses and mistakes, he avers that socialism "has not gone into exile," but remains a "dream of liberated humankind."

He masterfully refutes triumphalistic paeans to global capitalism, noting how under its sweeping mantle the rich get richer, the poor get poorer, more and more species are driven to extinction, more toxins are released into our water and air and our overall quality of life is eroded.

Boff grimly quotes an unnamed American Indian: "When the last tree has been felled, and when the last river has been seized, only then will we finally realize that we cannot eat money."

Passion for the Earth adroitly complements Ecology and Liberation. Meticulously researched, it provides the social analysis supporting Boffs contention that economic systems are killing both poor people and the planet. Using the work of Susan George, Bruce Rich and other social scientists, McDonagh masterfully summarizes how international financial institutions such as the World Bank, International Monetary Fund, as well as the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade and its successor, the World Trade Organization, are exacerbating divisions between rich and poor, which in turn contribute to ecological devastation.

Free-trade agreements, for example often cite environmental regulations as unfair, as was the case with the U.S. Marine Protection Act safeguarding dolphins in tuna catches. And structural-adjustment programs often dismantle government support for farmers, which forces them, as in the case of Costa Rica, to the perimeter of the rain forest, where they slash and burn to grow their food.

McDonagh, like Boff, is critical of the church's slow embrace of environmental issues and notes that the church, like the major financial institutions, is going to have to learn to live within ecological limits and promote sustainable rather than inequitable religious, economic and political systems.

While providing a trenchant expose of homocentrism in much of the church's social teachings, McDonagh also highlights constructive environmental messages from the magisterium, such as "What Is Happening to Our Beautiful Land?" by the Filipino bishops and Pope John Paul's 1990 World Day of Peace Message, "Peace with God the Creator, Peace with All Creation," the first papal document devoted solely to environmental issues.

In this document, the pope proclaims that "Christians, in particular, realize that their responsibility within creation and their duty toward nature and the Creator are an essential part of their faith." Though such an insight stems in part from the World Council of Churches' "Justice, Peace and the Integrity of Creation" program, McDonagh asserts, no acknowledgment is given, and joint efforts with the WCC on the environment have been shunned by the Vatican owing to a "different understanding of ecclesiastical communion."