Laudato Si’ and the Renewal of Theologies of Creation

Laudato Si’ stands as one of the great innovative social encyclicals.1 If the ecological crisis is to be addressed effectively it has to be seen as symptomatic of a much deeper crisis of a rapaciously exploitive economic and social system. Laudato Si’ not only offers new conceptual resources, but asks for an intellectual, moral, social and spiritual conversion. The encyclical goes much further than calling for environmental, economic, technological and political reform. The encyclical’s central insight of an ‘integral ecology’ is the organizing and integrating principle.2 It allows for the whole interplay of the social, political, economic, human and natural dimensions to be treated in their interrelationships.The fact that a theology of creation is underplayed is, of course, a deliberate strategy of the encyclical not to overload the proposal of an integral ecology with theological considerations which could detract or distract from universal appeal of its analysis and argument.4 Although this produces a moral, even prophetic power, it risks sacrificing its theological sources. If we fail to recognize these, the moral vision and urgency of Laudato Si’ may too easily be reduced to a political exercise (chapter five) or the ‘integral’ becomes a purely procedural methodology. If the theological foundations of an ‘integral ecology’ remain hidden, or under developed, then the significant epistemological, affective and moral conversions the encyclical advocates can be read more as epideictic exhortation than the expression of a profound, critical and creative ontology.