CLIMATE AND THE GREEN
POPE
Respect
for creation is a requirement for a person of faith. You cannot say you are a believer
if you are ignoring the accumulating evidence that our planet, our only home,
is being destroyed by climate change. That seems to be the central message of
Pope Francis’ universal letter, Laudato
Si, Praised be Him, issued on Thursday last, 18 June. Those with a historical
bent will have noticed that that same day was the 200th anniversary
of the Battle of Waterloo and the two events are connected!
Waterloo,
1815, was the final denouement of the challenge Napoleon the Great presented to
Europe. A flawed person but an astonishing leader, for twenty years he fought
to defend the principles of the French Revolution throughout Europe and had dreams
of extending it beyond. The forces of reaction, tradition and “legitimacy”
responded furiously and after seven attempts finally succeeded in crushing him at
Waterloo.
For
two hundred years people have interpreted the events of the “Napoleonic era”
positively and negatively and even today there is no consensus, not even in
France, the land of his triumphs and defeats. But what is indisputable is that
it was a struggle between modernity and conservatism. The latter won and for
decades the lid was kept tight on the boiling pot of liberty. It could not be
held down for ever and exploded in country after country right up to the present.
As
has often been said, you cannot suppress a movement born of an idea whose time
has come. As it was with liberty and respect for human rights so will it be now
with respect for our environment and our planet. Francis has leant his shoulder
to the push we need. Every person of faith, and everyone who may say they have
no faith but they have good will, is called to engage in this new struggle. We
have achieved so much in science and human rights. There is no reason why we
should not succeed in changing the way we view our planet and all the materials
that go into our way of life.
In
the poetry of Job there is a limit to the sea’s encroachments: “Who pent up the
sea behind closed doors and said ‘come thus far and no further?’” The sea
today, as we know, is nibbling away at low lying islands, isolated prey of its “proud
waves.” But we can hold back the sea, just as Jesus once said to it, “Quiet. Be
calm! And the win dropped and all was calm again.”
As
with the struggle for liberty there will be doubters and spoilers. But as with
that struggle there will also be the valiant, the engaged, who change their way
of living in small things and in big, so that we save our planet and lead it
back to the harmony designed for it by the Creator.
21 June 2015 Sunday
12 B
Job 38:1…11 2
Cor 5: 14-17 Mark
4:35-41
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