Le Duc - Christian Humanism, Anthropocentrism, and the Contemporary Ecological Crisis

Introduction

Environmental degradation and the impending ecological crisis is one of the greatest concerns of the Catholic Church. Nowadays, speaking out about and acting to raise environmental awareness, promote ecological sustainability, and advocate species conservation are no longer considered activities belonging to the so-called “hippy tree-hugging vegetarian liberal” but the preoccupation of modern society in general as well as all parts of the Catholic Church in particular. Church leaders and theologians over the decades have tried hard to put forth an environmentalism solidly based on Biblical scholarship and Church teachings, especially ever since Lynn White Jr. described in his seminal essay five decades ago that the Judeo-Christian tradition was the most anthropocentric religion that ever existed and blamed it for the ecological crisis.1 This charge, whether reasonable or not, was a blow for Christianity because White’s position was readily accepted by many environmental ethicists and repeated by generations of activists. Even now it is still difficult for Christianity to completely shake off this characterization. Misperceptions of the Catholic Church’s teachings on the ecology persist in part due to widespread actions of Catholics themselves that go against these very teachings. However, there is also a fundamental problem of misunderstanding the Catholic ecological stance that bases itself on the tradition of Christian humanism, which recent generations of popes have continually reiterated in various Church documents that refer to social concerns, ecology being one of them. The purpose of this essay is to shed light on Catholic environmentalism in context of the Catholic humanistic outlook. It will demonstrate that Catholic environmentalism based on Christian humanism neither fits the characterization of anthropocentrism as understood by White nor agrees with the positions that call for non-anthropocentric environmentalisms such as Deep Ecology and biocentrism. Rather, Catholic environmentalism is derived from a humanism that highlights the noble calling of the human person to strive towards a life of virtue and to be agents who not only live in but work towards achieving harmony within humanity and with the entire cosmos.