February 2007 Message

Got Snow?

While we may enjoy the unseasonable weather this winter, low 70’s at new years, yard work in January, trees blooming and birds chirping, there just may be something serious going on.   No one remembers a winter in New England without snow storms, bone chilling wind or freezing sleet.  We hear more and more of ‘global warming’, el Niño and ‘dramatic changes’ in weather patterns.  The consensus is pretty clear that whether there is snow in Los Angeles at Christmas or apple blossoms in Boston in January manmade changes to the natural environment have a large role to play in these abnormalities.   The scientific documentary ‘An Inconvenient Truth’ lays out a convincing case for manmade pollution of the environment resulting in drastic climate change coupled with dramatic long term negative social and economic consequences.   The argument around ‘global warming’, ecology and environmentalism is often seen as a secular discussion in which the Church has no voice; nothing could be further from the truth.  

The Church has a prominent voice in and a respected position on these and other global concerns.  For at least the last fifteen years, the Orthodox Church has struggled to stir the conscious of the world about the growing ecological crisis.  The ‘greening’ of the Church took on new significance with the ministry of the current Patriarch of Constantinople, Bartholomew I.  At the beginning of his ministry, he convened a conference of theologians, scientists and environmentalists to examine the long term effects of manmade pollution on the future of the planet. The conference continues to convene regularly and its several committees are active in global policy concerns.  Known as the ‘Green Patriarch’ for the leadership he has demonstrated in this area, he has encouraged the Church to take an active role in instituting measures to ensure the conservation of nature and the planet.  The Patriarch has equated deliberate attacks on the environment with conscious sin.  He has urged Christians to act “as priests of creation in order to reverse the descending spiral of ecological degradation”.   Through his ministry as Ecumenical Patriarch of the Orthodox Church, Bartholomew argues and the Church teaches that we “are to practice a voluntary self limitation of food and natural resources.  Each of us is called to make a crucial distinction between what we want and what we need.  Only through such self-denial, through our willingness to forgo and to say ‘no’ or ‘enough’ will we discover our true human place in the universe.”  Recently the Patriarch has found a strong and able ally in his environmental campaign in the person of Benedict XVI the Pope of Rome.  In their Common Declaration of Istanbul of 30 November 2006, the two men stated “In face of the great threats to the natural environment, we want to express our concern at the negative consequences for humanity and for the whole of creation which can result from economic and technical progress that knows no limits.  As religious leaders, we consider it our responsibility to encourage and to support all efforts made to protect and preserve God’s creation”.  The shared concern of both Pope and Patriarch reflects a deep theological and Biblical stream that links the two churches through there shared sacramental, liturgical and Eucharistic understanding of the sanctity of creation and mandating our responsibility as conscientious stewards of this Earth.

Speaking for nearly 1.5 billion Catholic and Orthodox believers, over a quarter of the earths population, the Pope and the Patriarch have demonstrated in the clearest possible terms that the Church has taken center stage in the environmental dialogue.  Perhaps, if the powers that be heed their words, birds will migrate, flowers will bloom and snow will fall when and where it always has.