Ban Ki-Moon's address to Vatican workshop on climate change: reflections on policy, science and the religions

On Tuesday of this week, the Pontifical Academy of Science and the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences co-hosted a workshop entitled Protect the Earth, Dignify Humanity: The Moral Dimensions of Climate Change and Sustainable Humanity. As one of the organisers of the workshop recognised, the workshop engaged the three fields of science, of morality (and therefore of the religions) and of policy.

The General Secretary of the United Nations, Ban Ki-moon gave a keynote address to the workshop. Two texts are available, a fuller text at he website of the United Nations and shorter text at the website of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences whose premises hosted the workshop.

From the point of view of science, I think it is fair to say that Ban Ki-moon spoke as if the science on climate change is one single, monolithic body of work:

Together, we must clearly communicate that the science of climate change is deep, sound and not in doubt.

Climate change is occurring – now -- and human activities are the principal cause.

According to this report, however, Martin Rees, a leading UK scientist, did acknowledge elements of uncertainty, or perhaps pluralism, in the science of climate change, though without in any sense advocating a climate change sceptic position. There is a danger that, in discussing the science of climate change as if it is a single entity rather than a phenomenon of multiple dimensions, it becomes an ideology that is imposed rather than a truth that is embraced. [I am no expert on the science of climate change, but it is generally of the nature of science that, even in areas of consensus, there will be different dimensions that make up the whole.]

From the point of view of religion and science, one wonders whether Ban Ki-moon, as a policy maker, reached beyond his competence when he said:

[Climate change] is a moral issue. It is an issue of social justice, human rights and fundamental ethics.

We have a profound responsibility to protect the fragile web of life on this Earth, and to this generation and those that will follow.

That is why it is so important that the world’s faith groups are clear on this issue – and in harmony with science.

Science and religion are not at odds on climate change. Indeed, they are fully aligned.

Whilst one would expect that the exercise of human reason that is the science of climate change does align with the exercise of faith that is religious belief, whether or not there is an alignment in terms of practical measures to respond to climate change - an implication of Ban Ki-moon's statement - is another question altogether. And in any case, the judgement of an alignment in terms of science and faith lies within the competence of scientists and believers, not a policy maker like Ban Ki-moon.

And with my third observation, I may be betraying an over-sensitivity to a philosophical nicety. I think there is only one point in the whole address where Ban Ki-moon refers to the human person, and that is when he quotes Pope Francis:

As His Holiness Pope Francis has said, "We need to see, with the eyes of faith … the link between the natural environment and the dignity of the human person."

 And where he might have made a second reference to the human person, he instead chose to speak of the individual:

The United Nations, too, champions the disadvantaged and the vulnerable.

We share a belief in the inherent dignity of all individuals and the sacred duty to care for and wisely manage our natural capital.

Is the dignity of the "individual" the same thing as the dignity of the "person"?  Is our moral orientation with regard to an "individual" the same as our moral orientation towards a "person"?

No to scientism, yes to science: Fr Cantalamessa's first Advent reflection

ZENIT have posted the full text of Fr Cantalamessa's first Advent reflection, given in the presence of Pope Benedict XVI and members of the Roman Curia. In his three reflections this year Fr Cantalamessa is going to address three challenges that are faced by the project of the "new evangelisation" in the cultures of the developed nations. Scientism is the subject of this first reflection, secularism and rationalism will be the subjects of the following reflections.

It isn't really possible to do justice to Fr Cantalamessa's reflection by citing highlights, so you must read the whole to see where the following sections fit in.

Firstly, Fr Cantalamessa's quotation of Blessed John Henry Newman, in the section of his sermon entitled "No to scientism, yes to science":

The new Blessed John Henry Newman has given us a luminous example of an open and constructive attitude to science. Nine years after the publication of Darwin's work on the evolution of species, when not a few spirits around him were disturbed and perplexed, he reassured them, expressing a judgment that anticipated the Church's present one on the compatibility of such a theory with biblical faith. It is worthwhile to listen again to key passages of his letter to canon J. Walker, which still retain much of their validity: "I do not fear the theory [of Darwin] […] It does not seem to me to follow that creation is denied because the Creator, millions of years ago, gave laws to matter. He first created matter and then he created laws for it –laws which should construct it into its present wonderful beauty, and accurate adjustment and harmony of parts gradually. We do not deny or circumscribe the Creator, because we hold he has created the self acting originating human mind, which has almost a creative gift; much less then do we deny or circumscribe His power, if we hold that He gave matter such laws as by their blind instrumentality moulded and constructed through innumerable ages the world as we see it […]. Mr Darwin’s theory need not then be atheistical, be it true or not; it may simply be suggesting a larger idea of Divine Prescience and Skill […]. At first sight I do not see that ‘the accidental evolution or organic beings’ is inconsistent with divine design –It is accidental to us, not to God.”[5 - reference cites a letter of Newman to a correspondent]

Newman's great faith allowed him to look with great serenity at present and future scientific discoveries. "When a deluge of facts, ascertained or presumed, are showered on us, while an infinite number of others already begin to be delineated, all believers, whether or not Catholics, feel called to examine the meaning that such facts have."[6 - reference cites the Apologia pro vita sua] He saw in such discoveries "an indirect relation with religious opinions." An example of this relation, I think, is precisely the fact that in the same years in which Darwin elaborated the theory of evolution of the species, he enunciated, independently, his doctrine of the "development of Christian doctrine." Referring to the analogy, on this point, between the natural and physical order and the moral order, he wrote: "As the Creator rested on the seventh day after completed his work, and yet he still operates,' so he communicated once and for all the Creed at the origin, yet still favors its development and provides for its development."[7 - reference cites the Essay on Development ..]

The section of the reflection entitled "Man for the cosmos or the cosmos for man?", in which Fr Cantalamessa argues that atheistic scientism gives to man a position of complete insignificance in the universe and contrasts it to the position that man has in Christian thought, is for me the most interesting section.

This vision of man also has practical reflections at the level of culture and mentality. Thus are explained certain excesses of ecologism which tend to equate the rights of animals and even of plants with those of man. It is well-known that there are animals that are looked after and fed much better than millions of children. The influence is perceived also in the religious field. There are widespread forms of religiosity in which contact and syntony with the energies of the cosmos has taken the place of contact with God as way of salvation. What Paul said of God: "In Him we live and move and have our being" (Acts 17:28), is said of the material cosmos....

The creation of man in the image of God has implications on the concept of man that the present debate drives us to bring to light. All is based on the revelation of the Trinity brought by Christ. Man is created in the image of God, which means that he participates in the intimate essence of God which is a relationship of love between Father, Son and Holy Spirit. It is obvious that there is an ontological gap between God and the creature. However, through grace (never forget this specification!) this gap is filled, so much so that it is less profound than the one that exists between man and the rest of creation.

Only man, in fact, in as much as person capable of relations, participates in the personal and relational dimension of God, he is His image. Which means that he, in his essence, even though at a creaturely level, is that which, at the uncreated level, are the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, in their essence. The created person is "person" precisely because of this rational nucleus that renders it capable to receive the relationship that God wishes to establish with it and at the same time becomes generator of relations towards others and towards the world.

Young Fogeys cites a less academic, but perhaps more pastoral section, of the reflection.

Physics World: May 2009

Edwin Cartlidge, a regular writer for Physics World, has a two page spread about the Pontifical Academy of Sciences in the May issue. An idea of the work of the Pontifical Academy can be gained by visiting this page at the Vatican website.

The Physics World article is useful in that it communicates in some way that the Catholic Church does engage with scientific thought. One paragraph tells the story of how work undertaken by the Pontifical Academy on the dangers of nuclear weaponry was subsequently presented to the United Nations in the name of Pope John Paul II. But it is unhelpful in making some rather silly statements.

It is unlikely, though, that the academy is entirely independent of the Pope as it is ultimately there to serve him.

The Academy certainly exists to be of assistance to the Holy See and to the Church as a whole, but to characterise this by the word "serve" is rather strange.

The Pontifical Academy of Sciences is therefore the only institution within the Church not made up exclusively of Catholics.

I expect that there are other Ponitical Academies that have non-Catholic members; and certainly one of the features of many of the new movements (I think of Focolare and Mothers Prayers as I write this) is their ecumenical engagement.

.. as scientists celebrate the 400th anniversary of Galileo's use of the telescope to do astronomy, the mere existence of the academy shows just how much the Catholic Church's attitude towards science has changed over the centuries.

The Physics World article, only two paragraphs further on, describes the origins of the Pontifical Academy in the Accademia dei Lincei, of which one Galileo was a member. Arthur Koestler's book The Sleepwalkers contains an account of the engagement of the Jesuits at the Roman College in the scientific work arising from the telescope, and Cardinal Robert Bellarmine's familiarity with and understanding of that work. Rather than the Church having an oppositional attitude to the new discoveries of Galileo, she was instead in the thick of the debates and research surrounding them. The Pope received Galileo in audience, and the Roman College gave him an enthusiastic welcome, during a visit to Rome in 1610.

The Physics World article is unfortunate in presenting the work of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences within a hermeneutic of "the Church was anti-scientific and is now struggling to accept science", a hermeneutic that is not supported by historical scholarship.