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INTEGRAL ECOLOGY: Becoming Synodal Communities after Laudato Si’ (4)

INTEGRAL ECOLOGY column mindaviews

Fourth of 5 parts

(Third Talk delivered at the annual holy retreat of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines held at the Monastery of the Transfiguration in Malaybalay City on the theme “Synod Spirituality: Embracing Ecology in the Light of Laudato Si’ and Laudate deum” on July 2-4, 2024)

7. Inclusive Community as Image of the Relational Triune God

How inclusive should be an inclusive community? One may say: an inclusive community should include all the marginalized and the excluded human beings. Yes, on the level of human community, but it is not yet a fully inclusive community if the creatures other than humans are still excluded. In the words of Elizabeth A. Johnson, after going through a series of turns to the marginalized and excluded human beings, we have to make “one more turn, a fully inclusive turn to the heavens and the earth … in order to restore fullness of vision.”[1] In light of Laudato Si’, this ecological turn to “all the creatures of this earth” may be seen as a divine imperative, “for not one of them is forgotten in [God’s] sight” (LS 246).

7.1 Ecological Community Includes Human Persons

In the language of natural sciences, an “ecological community” may be defined as “a collection of species living contemporaneously in the same place and comprising populations of individuals that are spatially interspersed and among which direct and indirect interactions can potentially take place.”[2] This can be appropriated as a working definition of an ecological community.

Are human beings included in ecological community? There is a need to overcome the problematic human/non-human dualism promoted by anthropocentric perspective. This can be done by turning to ecological sciences that repeatedly emphasize human species as equally subject to the same ecological laws that govern the community of creatures in the ecological systems. American ecologist Eugene Odum (1913-2002), for instance, unambiguously declared that “[human being] is considered to be a dependent part of ecological systems.”[3] The ecosystem is a community of life and serves as the life-support system of human beings. As “species among species,”[4] human species are members of the animal kingdom, where they also fully depend on and are intimately related to other levels of trophic structure (or food web) in the sharing of energy and in the cycling of materials available in the finite environment.

Although the term “ecological community” cannot be found in the pages of Laudato Si,’ it is presumably implied in the recurring phrase “everything is interrelated” (LS  16, 70, 91, 92, 117, 120, 138, 142, 240). To understand its dynamism, let us turn to St. Thomas Aquinas’ metaphysics of creation which offers rich ecological insights on how relationality operates in nature.[5] Relationality may be observed in two equally important dynamic acts of created being: first, when a creature enriches itself by receiving the communicated perfections from fellow creatures; second, when a creature generously communicates itself by giving its perfection to fellow creatures around it. This dynamic act of giving and receiving creates a web of intricate relationships and systems of interaction among creatures. In effect, they naturally form a community of creation. This relational property of all creatures is more fully developed in personal beings.

If we wish to know ultimately why all creatures naturally tend to interrelate with their Creator and fellow creatures, the Christian faith in the Triune God, as Creator of all things, offers an illuminating answer. As Pope Francis explains, “The divine Persons are subsistent relations, and the world, created according to the divine model, is a web of relationships” (LS 240). Creatures spontaneously strive to imitate the relationality of the triune Creator as they “make their own that trinitarian dynamism which God imprinted in them when they were created” (LS 240). Thus, for Christians, the eternally existing communion in the trinitarian life of the Divine Persons serves as the source and pattern of any creaturely relationship and community life manifested in both human and nonhuman creatures.

From evolutionary perspective, the formation of the community of nonhuman creatures precedes the existence of human community. As latecomers in the stage of an evolving universe, human creatures are new members of the pre-existing ecological community of creation. As creatures with more developed capacities, human life was not just inserted as a finished product in the geological history but also emerged as “part of the world” in the evolving history of life. Laudate Deum teaches that, as integral part of nature, “human life, intelligence and freedom are elements of the nature that enriches our planet, part of its internal workings and its equilibrium” (LD 26). Thus, without human beings,  the ecological community of creation in the world would be deprived of those human perfections.

04bukidnon
Contemplating on the peaceful life of indigenous people’s community (Higaonon tribe) at sitio Mantaboo of barangay Sil-ipon in Libona, Bukidnon reminds the beholder of what a basic ecological community looks like. Photo courtesy of FR. REYNALDO D. RALUTO

7.2 Human Community Includes Other Creatures

As image of the Triune God whose being is essentially relational, human beings naturally form a community. It would be against their relational nature if they live in isolation. Walter Brueggemann emphatically explains: “Only in the community of humankind is God reflected. God is … not mirrored as individual but as a community.”[6] Along this line, Jürgen Moltmann strongly affirmed: “It is not the human being as a solitary determining subject who is God’s image on earth; it is the true human community.”[7]

It is imperative to go beyond the prevailing sociological and ecclesiological meaning of community. Anthropocentric perspective has rightly been questioned for restricting the meaning of community only to the human community. “Why do we restrict our understanding of […] community only to the human community? Do not the communities we live in include the myriad other living things with whom we share the Earth, with whom we have entwined destinies? We are all bound up together. So why should only humans count?”[8]

As we have affirmed, the ecological community of nonhuman creatures precedes the existence of human community. In reality, human community emerged out of the primordial community of nonhuman creatures. Human community is deeply imbedded in the larger ecological community of creation. Thus, apart from the ecological community, no human community could survive since human life itself is intricately interwoven in the very fabric of the life-sustaining elements provided by ecosystem.

The intimate relation between human and nonhuman creatures is poetically expressed by Talaandig tribal Datu Megketay (Mr. Victorino Saway): “the earth is our flesh, the water is our blood, the trees are our bones, the vines are our veins, the sun is our torch and sight, the air is our breath and strength, the sound is our language, the cosmic energy and the spirits are our soul.”[9]

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One of the stations of the Cosmic Walk that depicts the emergence of human beings in the scene of the Universe Story. This cosmic image was painted by Umajamnon tribe artist Jessie Lahindao. Photo courtesy of St. John Vianney Theological Seminary.

To emphasize the inclusive and non-anthropocentric perspective on human community, we need the ecological insights of Jürgen Moltmann who strongly affirmed that “It is not individual parts of creation which reflect his wisdom and his beauty; it is the community of creation as a whole.”[10] He boldly asserted that “Human beings will only fulfil their special task as ‘the image of God’ if they recognize the community of creation in which and from which and with which they live.”[11]

Along this line, Berry proposed that “we can recognize ourselves not simply as a human community, but as genetically related to the entire community of living beings, since all species are descended from a single origin.”[12] The religious intuition of St. Francis that we are all brothers and sisters in the One Father of all clearly affirms the existing kinship with creation and the non-anthropocentric perspective of community.

Significantly, American ecologist Aldo Leopold (1887-1948) also proposed to enlarge “the boundaries of the community to include soils, waters, plants, and animals, or collectively: the land.”[13] Building on Leopold’s Land Ethic, Eugene Odum formulated a description of community that includes not only human beings but all of the populations and groups of individuals of any kind of organism of a given area. The Final Document of the Asian Continental Assembly on Synodality is moving towards this direction when it affirms that we need “to widen our experiences and enlarge the tent” (no. 47). Arguably, this will be significantly advanced by embracing the ecological perspective of community.

The foregoing inclusive and non-anthropocentric perspective of community of creation serves as a horizon of meaning to understand deeply Pope Francis’ affirmation of human beings’ embeddedness in the larger community of creation: “our body itself establishes us in a direct relationship with the environment and with other living beings” (LS 155); “we are not disconnected from the rest of creatures, but joined in a splendid universal communion” (LS 220); “the human person grows more, matures more and is sanctified more to the extent that he or she enters into relationships, going out from themselves to live in communion with God, with others and with all creatures” (LS 240).

TOMORROW: Towards a Synodal Church that Embraces Both Human and Ecological Communities

——————–

(Fr. Reynaldo D. Raluto has been serving as parish priest of Jesus Nazareno Parish in Libona, Bukidnon since 2021 and has been leading the Integral Ecology Ministry of the Diocese of Malaybalay since 2022. From 2011 to 2021, he served as Academic Dean of St. John Vianney Theological Seminary in Cagayan de Oro where he also teaches fundamental/systematic theology and Catholic social teaching. Among his ecological advocacies are planting/growing Philippine native trees, mountain climbing, and active participation in the cultural and ecological activities of the Indigenous People Apostolate  of the Diocese).


[1] Elizabeth Johnson, “Turn to the Heavens and the Earth: Retrieval of the Cosmos in Theology,” CTSA Proceedings 51 (1996): 1-14, on p. 5.

[2] Ichiro Aoki, “Ecological Communities,” in Entropy Principle for the Development of Complex Biotic Systems, 2012; https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/earth-and-planetary-sciences/ecological-community.

[3] Eugene Odum, Ecology: The Link Between the Natural and the Social Sciences, vi; see Betty Jean Craige, Eugene Odum: Ecosystem Ecologist and Environmentalist (Athens: The University of Georgia, 2001), 113-14. 

[4] Thomas Berry, The Dream of the Earth (San Francisco: Sierra Club Books, 1988), 21.

[5] See William Norris Clarke, Person and Being (Milwaukee: Marquette University Press, 1993), 88.

[6] Walter Brueggemann, Genesis Interpretation: A Bible Commentary for Teaching and Preaching (Atlanta, Georgia: John Knox Press, 1982), 34.

[7] Jürgen Moltmann, Ethics of Hope, translated by Margaret Kohl(Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2012), 62.

[8] Light and Rolston III, “Introduction: Ethics and Environmental Ethics,” 7.

[9] Quoted in the power point presentation of Albert Alejo, SJ “Pakigduyog sa mga Lumad: Identity and Solidarity of Indigenous Peoples in Mindanao,” (Theological Forum at St. John Vianney Theological Seminary, September 27, 2012).

[10] Moltmann, Ethics of Hope, 68.

[11] Moltmann, Ethics of Hope, 62.

[12] Berry, The Dream of the Earth, 21.

[13] Aldo Leopold, “The Land Ethic” in Andrew Light and Holmes Rolston III, eds., Environmental Ethics, 39.

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