The most significant thing about this book, perhaps, is that it exists at all. It consists of extracts from talks, sermons and letters given by Benedict XVI during his pontificate which concern the goodness and the use of the created world, in particular in the light of the ecological crisis and the iniquitous distribution of the world's resources. The three parts of the book are entitled ‘Creation and Nature’, ‘The Environment, Science and Technology’, and ‘Hunger, Poverty and the Earth's Resources’. Within these sections, the extracts are arranged chronologically.
Protection of the environment has been a regular theme of papal teaching since it first appeared in Paul VI's Octagesima Adveniens in 1971. John Paul II emphasised it strongly, and Francis spoke of it in his inaugural homily. But it is Benedict who has returned to the theme with insistent regularity. This collection shows just how far he made it an essential ingredient of his ordinary teaching, whether he was speaking to new ambassadors or assembled ski instructors, to school pupils or the Director of the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation, at Easter, by satellite to the crew of a space station, or in St Peter's square during his regular Angelus message. The Vatican was the first, and is doubtless still the only, carbon-neutral state in the world. In Benedict, the papacy has been preaching what it practices.
The texts return repeatedly to a set of basic themes, many of them familiar from Benedict's encyclicals. (Indeed, a substantial extract from Caritas in Veritate is included here.) The ordered goodness of creation is a reflection of the creative goodness of its Creator. Consequently, on the one hand, the experience of nature is religiously inspiring; on the other, the abandonment of God tends to lead to the destruction of his creation. A favourite example, here and elsewhere, is technology: unless human ambition is restrained by faith, the powerful will abuse this in ways that harm both poor human beings and the environment. Justice, on the other hand, requires us to use our political and technical skill and ingenuity to help the hungry and preserve resources for future generations. For these reasons, Benedict insists forcibly that we need ‘an effective shift in mentality that can lead to the adoption of new lifestyles’ (Caritas in Veritate 51).
The final section of the book, which concentrates on the question of food, consists mainly of addresses to international bodies with responsibilities in this area. Here the Pope particularly emphasises the need to support the development of rural communities in a way that allows local economies and traditional lifestyles to flourish.
The most distinctive element in Benedict's approach is his insistence that what he calls ‘environmental ecology’ and ‘human ecology’ are inseparable. In other words, there is a mutual dependence between beliefs, attitudes and behaviour that preserve the vulnerable elements of our natural environment and those that protect human beings, especially the poor and weak, from conception to death. The idea is important and intriguing, but it needs a fuller articulation and defence than it receives in the passing references to it in these pages.
In general, as is perhaps inevitable with a book of this format, the lack of development in the discussion of ecology is likely to disappoint the reader. An editorial policy of minimal annotation also deprives the reader of a context for the passages, and the translations are not always easy to follow. It is very encouraging to be reassured that ‘green’ themes are now an integrated part of Catholic moral and social teaching. However, this volume goes little beyond the well-known encyclicals in explaining exactly what that means.
