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POLITICS & SOCIETY BRIEFING PAPER A successful provocation for a pluralistic global society The encyclical Laudato Si’ – A Magna Carta of integral ecology as a reaction to humanity’s self-destructive course Christoph Bals A successful provocation for a pluralistic global society GERMANWATCH Brief Summary This background paper explores the potential relevance within a pluralistic society of the important encyclical Laudato Si’ issued by Pope Francis in June 2015. It considers whether the encyclical documents a reflected faith that accepts the primacy of science in secular knowledge as well as the primacy of democratically elected governments, human dignity, and human rights in the political sphere. Laudato Si’ presents a paradigm shift from the im- age of the dominion of mankind over the rest of creation to universal fraternity with even weak and marginalised people as well as fellow beings threatened with mass extinction. The Pope carefully double codes the paradigm shift in scientific and theological terms. On this basis, the background paper explores whether this encyclical could provide new stimuli with- in a pluralistic society. The Pope presents it as a counter-strategy to strictly utilitarian ap- proaches, in which people experiencing social exclusion – the weak members of the ecologi- cal environment – are threaten to slip through the net. The encyclical therefore calls for the protection of common goods such as the environment and the climate and insists on finan- cial commitment for those affected by climate change. The background paper concludes with a discussion of whether religion can help to motivate the necessary collaborative action in a pluralistic society or what functional equivalents for this task might look like. Imprint Author: Christoph Bals Layout: Daniela Baum Publisher: Germanwatch e.V. Bonn Office: Berlin Office: Kaiserstr. 201 Stresemannstr. 72 D-53113 Bonn D-10963 Berlin, Germany Phone +49 (0)228/60 492-0, Fax: -19 Phone +49 (0)30/28 88 356-0, Fax -1 Internet: www.germanwatch.org E-mail: [email protected] August 2016 Purchase order number: 16-9-01e This publication can be downloaded at: www.germanwatch.org/en/12697 This publication is financially supported by MISEREOR and Bread for the World – Protestant Development Service. Germanwatch is responsible for the content of this publication. 2 A successful provocation for a pluralistic global society GERMANWATCH Content Preface ................................................................................................................................. 4 Summary ............................................................................................................................. 7 1 A carefully prepared provocation by the Pope ........................................................... 10 1.1 Starting point: reaction to the “suicidal course of humanity” ...................................................... 11 1.2 Parallels with the nuclear weapons crisis ........................................................................................ 13 2 New stimuli for a pluralistic global society? ............................................................... 15 2.1 What challenges does the encyclical present as a document of a reflected faith? .................. 16 2.1.1 Acceptance of the primacy of science in the double-coded description of the world 17 2.1.2 Acceptance of the secular state and a call for an international political and structural policy to regulate the common good. ................................................................ 27 2.1.3 Acceptance of human dignity and human rights ................................................................ 32 2.2 Is this a monopolizing dialogue or a discourse between equals? ............................................... 34 2.2.1 Non-monopolizing dialogue with other religions ............................................................... 35 2.2.2 The internal and the external– Two perspectives ingrained since the Axial Age to keep the world at a distance .............................................................................................. 36 3 Can the encyclical provide meaningful impulses and inspiring images for a pluralistic global society? .......................................................................................... 39 3.1 Example of the likeness of God .......................................................................................................... 39 3.2 Further impulses from religion? ......................................................................................................... 40 3.3 Translation proviso .............................................................................................................................. 41 3.4 A pluralistic society that is ready to learn? ...................................................................................... 42 4 One picture held us captive: the paradigm shift from rulers of the environment to partaking in universal fraternity in the common home .......................................... 43 4.1 Freedom from outdated paradigms ................................................................................................. 43 4.2 The double-coded rationale .............................................................................................................. 46 4.2.1 Scientific compatibility of the new paradigm ...................................................................... 46 4.2.2 Theological justification of the new paradigm .................................................................... 49 4.3 Consequences of the new paradigm ................................................................................................ 53 4.3.1 The priority of being over that of being useful..................................................................... 53 4.3.2 Common Property .................................................................................................................... 54 5 Additional motivation for action? .............................................................................. 60 5.1 Motivation that cannot be prescribed: Love ................................................................................... 62 5.2 The power of celebration .................................................................................................................... 67 6 Conclusion ................................................................................................................ 69 7 Bibliography ............................................................................................................. 70 3 A successful provocation for a pluralistic global society GERMANWATCH Preface One year after the publication of the encyclical Laudato Si’, we at Mis- ereor acknowledge that Pope Francis has achieved a major success with the encyclical. He has surprised people, both in and outside of the Church and religions, as well as across religious and ideological boundaries by placing on the agenda urgent issues relating to human- ity in politics and social movements. He has also influenced the inter- national political agenda regarding the most important questions for the future: overcoming global poverty in a highly commercialised world, sustainable forms of nutrition, limiting man-made climate change, ensuring a life of dignity in rural areas and in the growing cities. The timing of its publication was deliberately set to precede a number of major international conferences. In September 2015, an agreement to address global challenges was reached with the Agenda 2030, including Sustainable Development Goals (SDG), and the UN Climate Summit of Paris was held in December 2015. A UN conference on living in global cities is scheduled for October 2016. Now it all depends on the large-scale implementation of the agreements and it is unclear as to how successful this will be. How to ensure it succeeds? In Laudato Si’, the Pope assembles what he has experienced across the world and observed on his travels. He has looked and listened in order to discover how things are for the poor and the planet. Religious commitment to the environment and religious social criticism certainly existed before Laudato Si’. Pope Francis casts suspicion on the dominant form of capitalist economics: it kills because it does not respect either humanity or the planet. That is why Laudato Si’ is a social and environmental encyclical that has a cross-cutting theme of justice. It incorporates scientific find- ings, lists the specific threats to humanity and cites episcopal conferences. Backed by these differ- ent analyses, the fundamental beliefs of the Christian faith come into play. Wide-ranging social and environmental change is necessary if all people are to live in dignity and the earth as a whole is to have a future. The earth and that everything lives on it owe their existence to an “Other”. In Christian terms, they are gifts from God. The Pope says that we can only achieve this if we join forces to create a different economy and politics as well as sustainable, modest life styles. The tone of the encyclical is not one of despair and powerlessness, but filled with hope and confidence. The Pope brings together all the process- es for bringing about change in this direction, from the grassroots up to the United Nations. Differ- ent alliances are necessary to break down the prevailing system. It calls for dialogue, dialogue, and more dialogue. But there is also

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