Eastern Orthodox leader urges ascesis to reverse climate change

Catholic World News - June 20, 2012

Speaking at a major environmental summit in Turkey, the ecumenical patriarch of Constantinople said that ascesis is the “missing dimension” in discourse about the environment.

“We are convinced that any real hope of reversing climate change and addressing the environmental pollution requires a radical transformation of the way we perceive and treat our planet,” Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew said on June 18. “Many of us have witnessed the positive changes over the last decade. Nevertheless, all of us are deeply frustrated with the stubborn resistance and reluctant advancement of earth-friendly policies and practices.”

“Permit us to propose that perhaps the reason for this hesitation and hindrance may lie in the fact that we are unwilling to accept personal responsibility and demonstrate personal sacrifice,” he continued. “In the Orthodox Christian tradition, we refer to this ‘missing dimension’ as ascesis, which could be translated as abstinence and moderation, or – better still – simplicity and frugality. The truth is that we resist any demand for self-restraint and self-control.”

Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew added:



Of course, sacrifice is primarily a spiritual issue and less an economic one. Similarly, in speaking of the environmental crisis, we are referring to an issue that is not technological or political, but ethical. The real crisis lies not in the environment but in the human heart. The fundamental problem is to be found not outside but inside ourselves, not in the ecosystem but in the way we think. Without a revolutionary change within ourselves, all our conservation projects will ultimately remain insufficient and ineffective.

We know what needs to be done and we know how it must be done. Yet, despite the information at our disposal, unfortunately very little is done. It is a long journey from the head to the heart; and it is an even longer journey from the heart to the hands

Speakers at the Halki Summit, cosponsored by the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople and Southern New Hampshire University, included noted environmentalists Jane Goodall and Bill McKibben.



Additional sources for this story: Keynote address of His All-Holiness Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew at the opening ceremony of the Halki Summit (Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople) http://www.patriarchate.org/documents/2012halkisummit

The Orthodoxy of Catholic Ecology

June 19, 2012

Christianity challenges the world with the unique dignity of not just the human person, but all of creation.

William L. Patenaude
Homiletic & Pastoral Review

When Pope Benedict XVI addressed Germany’s parliament last September, he brought up a topic that would have delighted its Green Party members had they not been boycotting the talk: the Pontiff acknowledged and even praised the ecological motivations for the party’s inception in the 1970s. He did so, of course, not to endorse the entirety of their platform, but because he and members of the Green Party share a similar concern for the natural world. By speaking of this shared concern, the Holy Father linked the laws of nature to the Gospel of Jesus Christ, turning his podium into a pulpit.
Magisterial references to ecology are noteworthy because the subject appears to be a new species within Catholic social thought. This “newness”—and the unfortunate politicization of such issues as climate change and the use of fossil fuels—have led to confusion and more than a few heated debates about whether a good Catholic should be discussing ecology at all—and if so, how.

But given that Benedict XVI is a good Catholic, one can assume that his flock can also speak of ecological concerns from a foundation of revelation and magisterial teachings as well as scientific discoveries. Catholics throughout the Church’s ideological continuum can and should engage in ecological discourse because, in part, it is a topic that evangelizes, unites, and teaches what it means to be human.

While environmental issues may be a recent addition to formal magisterial documents, the Catholic appreciation of ecology is not a new phenomenon, as some would claim. Just as Christ would retreat to the wilderness to fast and pray, so monks and hermits would do likewise, from the first centuries of the Church until today. Moreover, Catholicism’s sacraments proclaim how the physicality of creation partners with grace—not because grace needs a partner, but because its Source chooses that this be so. After all, are not the bread and wine offered in the Mass the stuff of agriculture—of vegetation, water, air, soil, sun, and the work of human hands?

Most especially, in proclaiming that the Word became flesh—that the unseen God became a human being who touched and broke bread with and breathed the same air as his friends—Christianity challenged (and challenges) the world with a unique dignity of not just the human person, but all of creation. The response to the incarnation by pagan cults of the first and twenty-first centuries was and is a denial of the person of Christ. This denial was particularly troublesome for the early Church fathers—and it should be for us—because of what revelation teaches about the final end for the many: that the New Heaven and New Earth will include the reintegration of human souls with our then-glorified bodies. This is indeed good news.

Thus, the created order is not an evil from which we flee—it is a part of who we are. This implies that our planet is not a trough from which we gorge our appetites or a limitless dump into which we cast our refuse. Rather, from Genesis and throughout the Old and New Testaments, creation is meant to be humanity’s common home—the place in which the one, holy, Catholic, and apostolic Church must go and make disciples by preaching and living the Gospel of life.

As Pope Benedict demonstrated on the floor of Germany’s parliament, ecological conversations are an opportunity for the Church to go and make disciples because ecology is about relationships. It transcends political, cultural, social, economic, sexual, and any other division that seeks to isolate us. Ecology’s core is about how organisms, people, and cosmic and earthly realities relate to each other so that we humans can live, love, procreate, nurture life, share resources, and thrive as a community. Ecology encourages relational (that is, Trinitarian) thought because it is about the physicality of human co-existence and our dependence on the outside world.

In his February 12, 2012 Angelus address, the Holy Father explored a particular trait of Christ that underscores this relational nature of Christianity: When healing the sick, Christ often touched them. The Pontiff provided a saintly example of how Christ’s disciples can do likewise—how we can go and touch and heal. St. Francis, who is the patron of ecologists because of his unique admiration of the natural world, knew that central to the created order is relation.

Francis lived the Gospel by remembering that human contact—physical and otherwise—has a purpose beyond the superficial pleasures that the world so often celebrates. Indeed, there is an ecology of human relation—an ecology of sacrificial love—that points to realities far beyond the created world or the hormonal urges of human biology. When authentic, human relation is an acknowledgement and foretaste of the promised communion of Heaven. But if it is to be authentic, this foretaste must be shared. In other words, to seek Heaven is to evangelize—and evangelization cannot occur without connecting and relating to those who are not us.

The Holy Father demonstrated such evangelization—such New Evangelization— when he spoke about the young, eco-idealistic founders of Germany’s Green Party. He said that they “had come to realize that something is wrong in our relationship with nature, that matter is not just raw material for us to shape at will, but that the earth has a dignity of its own and that we must follow its directives.” After noting that he was not endorsing any particular party, he nevertheless used this ecological point of contact to introduce the Gospel of life, much as St. Paul used pagan points of contact at the Areopagus.

“The importance of ecology is no longer disputed,” he went on. “We must listen to the language of nature and we must answer accordingly. Yet I would like to underline a point that seems to me to be neglected, 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 respects his nature, listens to 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.”

The beauty of the Pontiff’s talk was in how he sought to engage those who had rejected him and in how he used the modern relational topic of ecology to re-introduce God’s timeless truths into the remnants of Christian Europe. By beginning with the principles of ecology—that there are natural laws that we violate at our peril—the Holy Father repeated this truth with respect to “human ecology,” which also has laws, such as the anthropology of marriage, among many others, that we likewise violate at our peril.

Ecology also has a role within the Church because it offers unity. In the Pontiff’s third letter to the Church, Caritas in Veritate, he teaches that there is a link between “our duties towards the environment” and our “duties towards the human person.” In much the same way that he sought to converse with German leaders on the both left and the right, in Caritas in Veritate (and elsewhere), the Pontiff reminds his flock that the cafeteria of Catholic social doctrines forms a line on both the right and the left—and that such division is a grave danger that the faithful must reject.

“The book of nature is one and indivisible,” the Holy Father tells us. “[I]t takes in not only the environment but also life, sexuality, marriage, the family, social relations: in a word, integral human development.”

This notion, that natural realities are “indivisible,” is a challenge to Catholic ideologues on both ends of the political spectrum. While many on the left may wish to save seals while ignoring (or encouraging) the slaughter of the unborn, many on the right may self-identify themselves as pro-life while diminishing what Pope Benedict XVI states to be the Church’s responsibility towards creation, which is ultimately the life-support system for the human race. Such exclusionary thought, the Pontiff adds, is “a grave contradiction in our mentality and practice today: one which demeans the person, disrupts the environment, and damages society.”

Of course, the indivisibility of natural laws does not imply equivalency. The damage done to unborn children from mercury poisoning is not the same degree of evil as the intentional death of a child by an abortionist. Nevertheless, we find in Pope Benedict’s linkage between the environment and the human person not just a call for unity, but a significant apologetic tool for traditional pro-life advocates.

That is, from the example above, the harm done to the born and unborn by mercury—which damages life irrespective of one’s personal opinion of it—offers a point of agreement when discussing other and greater violence to the human person, such as abortion—which also harms the born and unborn regardless of one’s personal opinions. When considered thus, ecology provides a path for explaining and championing the Christian view of human life to those—such as the eco-friendly political left—that may not share the Church’s views on human life.

In fact, too often we hear that a major cause of ecological harm is overpopulation—that if the Church were truly concerned about global and local ecosystems, it would change its teachings on abortion and artificial contraception. But the Church, which recognizes those activities as evil, offers something else: she offers the revealed truth about what it means to be human.

Consider that poor nations continue to destroy vital rain forests and displace indigenous peoples to make room for the meat industry and single-species farming; or that developed nations are adding significant quantities of pollutants to the planet’s atmosphere because of the way we produce and use fossil fuels; or that human consumption is causing a sharp, unparalleled rise in the extinction of species. All of these issues, and many more, are real and dangerous, and they all stem from a hunger that cannot be filled by cheeseburgers, smart phones, rare-wood furnishings, or any other material good.

As St. Augustine knew well, our hearts are restless for God alone. Without this truth preached and heard and lived through the grace of the sacraments, humanity’s pleasure-seeking consumption and levels of waste will escalate far beyond what ecosystems can absorb. The solution to hyper-consumption is not increased government regulations, free contraception, or forced abortions. Rather, the way to protect all life is to orient the human person to its natural state and reason for existence.

In his 2011 message for World Food Day, the Holy Father considered the problems of food scarcity throughout much of the globe. He offered this solution, which is remarkably similar to his words in Caritas in Veritate and his speech at the German parliament: “[I]t is a question of adopting an inner attitude of responsibility, able to inspire a different lifestyle, with the necessary modest behavior and consumption, in order thereby: to promote the good of future generations in sustainable terms; the safeguard of the goods of creation; the distribution of resources and above all, the concrete commitment to the development of entire peoples and nations.”
These are the words of no mere secular ecologist. These exhortations to temper consumption through adopting an inner attitude of responsibility are the prophetic proclamations of the Catholic view of ecology: one rooted in faith as well as reason; one concerned not just for the good of the natural world, but also for the common good of the fallen human race; one that seeks to offer the laws of life to a world reveling in death; and one that presupposes that before you or I can consider saving the world, we must first seek to save souls.

William L. Patenaude M.A. is a columnist for the Rhode Island Catholic and serves on the Diocese of Providence's Committee for Evangelization. He also writes at Catholic Ecology and has appeared in other local and national publications. He is currently writing a book titled, Catholic Ecology: Its place in Orthodoxy and the New Evangelization.

The Church, exceeding its competency as usual, simply assumes that (a) climate change is happening; (b) that climate change is bad; (c) that climate change is caused by human beings; and (d) that climate change can be "reversed" through human activity. None of these have been proven true, and most of them are demonstrably false.

To a certain degree, belief in anthropomorphic climate change and the ability of man to reverse it, is a breathtaking display of hubris. The climate has been changing since God created the earth, from long before man came upon the scene. Climate has changed throughout human history, sometimes in a remarkably short timeframe, often much more dramatically than what is claimed for today. In all those examples of climate change, mankind was numerically too small and technologically too primitive to have made a dent one way or the other.

Since climate simply changes, and will continue to change, attempting to stop it is as foolish as King Canute (or Knut, if you are Danish) trying to hold back the tide. The forces of nature work at God's command, not our own, and we are impotent to stop them. Ironic, then, that the Church would adopt wholesale the central premise of radical secularists. But I guess that's what happens when the Church constantly seeks to make itself "relevant" in worldly rather than transcendent terms.

Amen, Stuart!

Though Ascesis is always good I don't see much connection between it and man made climate change or in any panic over it. Good for this Godly man in advising Ascesis. But he gets no points for his climatic comments.

Heavy smoking did not contribute to my aunt Marie's lung cancer and untimely death. People have always been dying and we needn't take measures to enhance the quality of life, do we? Come on, Stuart. I find your point-of-view beyond contempt and as silly as "birthers" and the flat earth society.

A better way to put it is nobody forced your aunt to smoke three packs a day, but that is neither here nor there.

Your analogy is flawed, as is your understanding of the science involved here. I find it ironic that Church leaders, from the comfort of their air conditioned offices, with access to electricity, clean water and sanitation facilities, want to adopt policies that will condemn the one billion plus people in the world who live in squalor on less than a dollar a day, and who, because they live in squalor, have neither the time nor resources to be good stewards of the earth.

Because--and here is the dirty little secret--ecology is the indulgent hobby of rich people in rich countries. We have ours, now we can focus on quality of life issues because we can afford to do so. But our poor brethren in Africa, India, Asia and Latin America are living a subsistence existence. Their concern is not the survival of the rain forest, or air quality, or the impact of a .10 degree centigrade increase in median temperature or a one foot or three foot rise in mean sea level over the next century--it's more on where the next meal is coming from, where to get wood, or charcoal or animal dung to burn for heat and fuel. It's not about whether water is clean, but whether there is water at all. And they aren't fixated on organic food, or genetically modified seeds--they'll be happy with whatever food they can get, whatever seeds are going to grow in their depleted soil.

Which is why, if the Church got out of its politically correct ivory tower and thought about unintended consequences for once, it would recognize that the best thing for both the poor and the environment would be getting the bottom billion out of poverty, and that the quickest way to do that would be through electrification and industrialization. Once these people have enough food, clean water, sanitation, access to medicine, and--above all--surplus income, then and only then will they become concerned about deforestation (without access to electricity,the forest is just a source of wood) or air pollution (hmmm--emphysema in twenty or thirty years, or freeze tonight), or any of the other things that concern Western countries.

Best way to do that is building lots of cheap, effective and relatively clean coal electrical plants throughout the third world (you could substitute oil or natural gas plants, if those fuels are cheaper and more readily available), so as to bootstrap these countries out of their hole. Instead, we get inane plans to build solar-electric or wind turbine farms in the third world, when we can't even get these things to work in the first world. That shows a certain detachment from reality.

I find your willingness to accept politicized science to condemn billions of people to suffering a premature death beyond contempt. I do scientific and policy analysis for a living. I get paid to cut through the BS. I don't have the time or patience to listen to people who can't understand the argument in the first place. I'm comfortable, having reviewed as much of the data as is publicly available, that I am correct, and you are not.

Lacking the desire to study the data, I'm an agnostic on the question of the extent to which current climate change is related to human behavior. Furthermore, I often disagree with Stuart, but this is one of the most sensible posts I've ever read on this Forum.

Our automobiles are safer, more efficient and less polluting today largely because people like Ralph Nader fought the auto industry to make them so. Many thought him a fool, (I know, Stuart, many still do) but he was right. Stuart missed the point of my analogy. My point was that the tobacco industry fought tooth-and-nail to disprove the "false science" that showed the link between heavy smoking and lung disease among other things. We are free to "buckle-up",too, but if we don't, our heads will make a significant mark on the windshield even in a minor accident. One finds seat belts in all vehicles today, based on sensible science. It's not a question of knowing all the data, or having all the facts, and it's not about being rich or poor. Stuart is probably too young to remember how bad air quality used to be. After coming in from Heathrow Airport in 1979 on the underground to London, I remember stepping into the streets from Charing Cross station. It created for me an instant "smell" memory of when I was a small boy with my mother in downtown Boston in 1946. The air reeked of heavy exhaust. It is rare to smell that today, because steps have been taken to reduce smog and pollution. It matters little whether our behavior contributes to climate change or not. It contributes to a safer, cleaner world from which all, rich, poor and the piddlings like me, benefit. The Abolitionists, not the Church or the churches, that led the fight against American slavery in the middle of the 19th century. Friar Las Casas was a lone voice in the 16th century decrying the exploitation of indigenous Caribbeans and black slaves by the Conquistadors. Rather than taking the lead, it seems the bishops often lag behind on the important issues of the day, and when they do "catch up", are often ignored or deemed irrelevant, because they spoke too late or spoke too weakly.

There are other people who get paid to cut through BS, and to do scientific and policy analysis, but come up with quite different conclusions than Stuart. If he politicizes the issue anymore than he has, I'm afraid they'll have to move this thread to "Town Hall".

How far do you extend this logic, Stuart?

The current fires in New Mexico/Colorado were started by lightning -- as lightning has been striking the earth from the beginning of time. Some would call it an act of God. Do we let them burn, whether or not people's houses are at risk?

What about diseases? The viruses and bacteria that cause smallpox, polio, diptheria, cholera -- those are all God's creations. They've been around forever. Should we interfere with God's plan for them? Should we presume to eradicate them? Should we have the hubris to think that because we CAN prevent those diseases we should? In fact, isn't modern medical research a first-world luxury? "a hobby of rich people in rich countries," something "we can focus on ... because we can afford to do so"?

Obviously, I am throwing out ridiculous questions. But where do you draw the line? At what point should human research stop trying to understand the workings of the world we live in? Stop intervening in the workings of the world as we learn more about it?

How far do you carry your dismissal of the things that we are learning, have learned, have yet to learn? Is it really okay to build coal plants in third world countries, even though we know that they poison the air and the water? Is that really okay?

I'm not arguing one way or the other on climate change and global warming, but I find your approach disturbing and ethically flawed.

Come on now ... don't pick on Stuart - he is a stalwart contributor to the discussions and ... makes us think

I for one - spent a lot of time defending Serbia (as people not the evil regime which dominated it) ... then I saw a movie about Bosnia - and I had to examine if I would be willing to kill people in a war - especially a war like that si I'm seeing things Stuarts position.
I'm still a little pissed that he lumps all orthodox serbian into the same category of Milosevic and his government but what can I do.

ascetical living may be coming our way faster than you think.
Store food, burn wood, buy cheap, buy used, downsize

You will have to anyway when hyperinflation hits the U.S.

Hopefully people will start praying for the good times when electricity was cheap and gas was readily available -
I for one LOVE air conditioned cars and homes and could not imagine living without gasoline and lots of it.

I travel 150 miles to go to church (one way)

Scientific research to save lives --- I say go all the way - rebuild parts if you have to (or should I say regrow)
but do not use aborted fetuses or abort fetuses to harvest stem cells.

I take medicines that keep me active - and I believe an active Christian is better than not - medicines unavailable to my parents to their detriment.

I love the idea of fasting, living under you means just your needs but CAPITALISM is what improves the lives of the poor far more than any measly almsgiving I am capable of.

Look at Haiti - U.S. is pouring billions into that country -
The earthquake efforts - show once again the generosity of the US
But examine the situation closely - once again Government officials have absconded with the majority of the $$$

Did we help? Where is the money? Why are they still poor?

I find it constantly distressing to read Stuart's posts. It is obvious that he is a strident Capitalist and defender of the corporate status quo. He even sounds like Rush Limbaugh in the way he speaks of that with which he disagrees.

Here is an article on the SUCESS of solar energy:

http://knowledgetoday.wharton.upenn.edu/2012/05/sunspots-germany-proves-solar-energy-is-no-mirage/

You know, Stuart, maybe the reason that solar energy doesn't work in this country is the same reason that banks and Wall Street didn't work in 2008 -- rampant greed, dishonesty, and corruption.

Oh, and BTW -- it's a well known fact that all the "think tanks" such as the Heritage Foundation, who deny climate change, are well funded by Exxon Mobil Corporation. Asking their "scientists" to come up with an honest answer regarding global warming is akin to asking Hitler for a nice recommendation on the Jewish Race. Ain't gonna happen. Only stupid people bite the hand that feeds them.

You should talk with James Hansen. He might have a few things to say to you, seeing that he is a NASA PhD scientist. He's had a few things to say about the climate and they are not good. Instead of trashing the search for cleaner and better energy in this country, you should be supporting such.

The fires are out of control because of a deliberate government policy (a) not to allow natural fires to burn off the underbrush; and (b) not to allow people to clear out the underbrush that grew because of policy (a). When all that tinder piles up, it's gonna burn, and it's gonna burn too hot to handle. So, the problem here is not that we don't interfere with nature, but that we interfered with nature, thinking we could make it do our bidding.

Other than that, the analogy is flawed. Understanding the causes of wildfire and how to deal with it is simplicity itself as compared to trying to understand the factors that drive climate and then devising stratagems to "change" climate. For one thing, there is the matter of scale. Blowing up all the nuclear weapons in the world simultaneously would not unleash all the energy to be found in just one good sized hurricane. Man, like it or not, is a puny being compared to the forces of nature.

That is not to say we should not try to understand the natural world. I'm just saying that, right now, we don't know squat about how climate works, and real climatologists are quite honest about that. They know that none of the climatological models currently in use can explain past climate change, let alone predict change in the future.

And therefore, it is foolhardy in the extreme to base long-term economic and social policies that will affect the lives of billions of people (mostly for the worse) on the basis of output from models that are wrong, especially when those who advocate those policies admit that they will yield no more than a vernier decrease in the putative temperature rise (assuming there is an ongoing temperature rise).

As to using coal plants to electrify the third world, the first thing to understand is, dirty as coal plants can be, they are infinitely less harmful to the environment than burning wood or dung. The net result would be cleaner, not dirtier air and water. And, if people stopped chopping down trees for fuel, the desertification of Africa would cease, which would definitely have an impact on climate trends, not to mention all the particulate pollution unleashed by the massive dust storms that regularly sweep across the South Atlantic from Africa to Brazil.

A good book to read on this subject is Bjorn Lomborg's The Skeptical Environmentalist . Lomborg, an economist and long-time member of Greenpeace, decided to take an objective, analytical look at the state of the environment and determined that, by almost every measure, it's better than it has been in centuries and getting better. He also looked at what was then called "global warming" (note the hedging in calling it "climate change"), and determined that, while global temperatures might be rising, (a) the rise wasn't nearly as dramatic as alarmists were indicating; (b) that, throughout history, more people have died because of prolonged cold than heat; (c) that there may be environmental advantages to climate warming; (d) that attempts to reduce global warming by controlling the emission of carbon dioxide were probably ineffective and a gross waste of resources.

Instead, Lomborg advocates just what I have--since most of the harm to the environment is being done in the Third World by people living at subsistence level, raising them out of poverty is the fastest way to improve the environment and help them deal with the consequences of any climate change that may be occurring.

For his trouble, Lomborg was ostracized and then vilified by his former friends and associates in the environmental movement, which, truly, is nothing more than a secular religion, a kind of Gaistic pan-theism of a remarkably intolerant kind. I know of only two organized religions today that kill people for heresy and apostasy: Islam, and Environmentalism.

Capitalism is good.

Money is good.

Lifting the masses of poor third world starving diseased peoples out of poverty is a good thing. If they had money and education they really would start having no smoking restaurants and emission controls like the USA.

The Amazon is being deforested by native people doing slash and burn agriculture at a far greater rate than commercial development.

By the way - I read an article about the Yucatan penisula - and it was nearly clear cut by the Mayans of old (according to the article ) = the jungles that are there now - were cut down by the Mayans and had massive population (on the order of Mexico City or LA today) - The earth not only healed itself - it covered and toppled most of the cities that are still being uncovered today.

And Volcanic activity on the planet far exceeds (dwarfs) human emissions and effects the earth far more than fossil fuels.

Conservation and moderation are things to be embraced.

It is a shame he had to go an mention global warming... oh wait, it's not actually warming?... make that "climate change".

An otherwise worthwhile statement clouded by the introduction of a corrupt fairy tale.