Pope and patriarch both speak out on environment

When Pope Benedict XVI and Patriarch Bartholomew I of Constantinople met recently, the encounter was spun in a variety of ways: as an effort to reunite Eastern and Western Christianity; as an attempt to forge a united Christian front vis-a-vis Islam; even as a bid to pool resources to combat runaway secularism in Europe.

What the meeting was not generally seen as--though it easily could have been--was an encounter between two outspoken environmentalists struggling to stir the conscience of the world about a mounting ecological crisis.

While environmentalism has long been a cause more associated with the secular left, the increasingly intense engagement of both the patriarch and the pope, who cannot by any stretch of the imagination be seen as avant-garde figures, suggests a broad "greening" of institutional Christianity.

Bartholomew I has become known as "the Green Patriarch" for his environmental leadership. More than a decade ago, Bartholomew first announced on an island in the Aegean Sea that attacks on the environment should be considered sins.

In a widely quoted Venice address in 2002, Bartholomew I urged Christians "to act as priests of creation in order to reverse the descending spiral of ecological degradation." Toward that end, he did not mince words.

"We are to practice a voluntary self-limitation in our consumption of food and natural resources," he said. "Each of us is called to make the crucial distinction between what we want and what we need. Only through such self-denial, through our willingness sometimes to forgo and to say 'no' or 'enough,' will we rediscover our true human place in the universe."

Less noticed, but arguably even more consequential in the long run, is the fashion in which Benedict XVI has likewise been finding his voice.

Last July, Benedict sent a message to Bartholomew in which the pope urged a new awareness of "the intrinsic link between development, human needs and the safeguarding of creation."

During a Sunday Angelus address last August, ahead of the Catholic church's "Defense of Creation" day, the pope's rhetoric became even sharper. Slamming problems such as smog, pollution, deforestation and the greenhouse effect, Benedict said such environmental degradation is unsustainable and takes a special toll on "the poor of the earth."

Picking up the new tone, L'Osservatore Romano, the official Vatican newspaper, carried an editorial that asserted that ecological crises pose "a bigger global threat than terrorism."

"Unless effective action is taken, the Earth will inexorably head toward death," L'Osservatore warned, adding that "thousands of people are already dying each day" because of environmental problems such as unhygienic living conditions and a widespread lack of drinking water.

Just this week, the Vatican released Benedict XVI's message for the World Day of Peace, marked each year on Jan. 1. Environmental concerns figured prominently. "Humanity, if it truly desires peace, must be increasingly conscious of the links between natural ecology, or respect for nature, and human ecology," Benedict wrote. He pointed to growing tensions surrounding energy supplies.

Given this growing convergence between pope and patriarch, it's no surprise that the two men addressed environmental concerns in their Nov. 30 Common Declaration in Istanbul.

"In the face of the great threats to the natural environment, we want to express our concern at the negative consequences for humanity and for the whole of creation which can result from economic and technological progress that does not know its limits," Benedict and Bartholomew said. "As religious leaders, we consider it one of our duties to encourage and to support all efforts made to protect God's creation."

Of course, neither man arrived at these convictions ex nihilo; they build upon the teachings of their predecessors and traditions with deep roots in their churches, which in turn reflect the clear Biblical mandate to be good stewards of creation.

Yet not so long ago, Christian theologians and ministers working on ecological issues were looked upon with a certain suspicion. People worried, on the one hand, about a creeping divinization of nature (think Pierre Teilhard de Chardin), on the other about a denial of the unique status of the human person in the order of creation (think philosopher Peter Singer). More generally, there was a cultural gap between the Birkenstocks-wearing, anarchy-inclined ethos of the environmental movement and anything that passed for conventional Christianity.

Today, things are different, with senior churchmen openly speaking the language of environmental activism. At the 2005 Synod of Bishops in Rome, for example, the link between the Eucharist and ecological concern surfaced with surprising frequency.

"As 'fruit of the earth,' the bread and the wine represent the creation which is entrusted to us by our Creator," said Archbishop Pedro Ricardo Barreto Jimeno of Huancayo, Peru, on Oct. 4. "In Huancayo, the air, the ground and the basin of the river Mantaro are seriously affected by contamination. The Eucharist commits us to working so that the bread and wine be fruit of 'a fertile, pure and uncontaminated land.'"