QUESTTION: In many of the discu-ssions on ecological crisis, we speak of ecological conversion. What does it mean? Is there any signi-ficance for it today? – JOE JAISON

• ANSWER : Saji Mathew Kanayankal CST

In his video message on 30 August 2024, Pope Francis speaks on the ailing of the earth and he requested the prayers of Catholics and their commitment to care the creation. “Let us pray that each of us listen with our hearts to the cry of the earth and the victims of environmental disasters and climate change, making a personal commitment to care for the world we inhabit. If we take the planet’s temperature, it will tell us that the earth has a fever and it is sick. We must commit ourselves to … the protection of nature, changing our personal and community habits.” This change of heart and habits can be understood as ecological conversion.

The term ‘ecological conversion’ is formed by combining two terms- ecology and conversion. The words ‘ecological’ derives from the noun ‘ecology’, and ‘conversion’ comes from the Anglo-French word, ‘conversio’ which means a complete change. In Catholic theology, this term was first used by St. John Paul II in the Papal audience on 17 January 2001. While describing the human relationship with nature, he emphasised their responsibility in an era of ecological crisis. Human beings, who are created in the image and likeness of God, are to be more sensitive to the catastrophe to which it has been heading. For him, the goal of such conversion was, returning to the right relationships between God, humans and nature. In his encyclical ‘Laudato Si’, Pope Francis, after presenting the deplorable conditions of our planet, says of the human capacity to make radical changes for the preservation of the earth. What everyone needs, he writes, is an “ecological conversion, whereby the effects of their encounter with Jesus Christ become evident in their relationship with the world around them” (LS 217). The signs around us are enough reason for Pope Francis to request for ta radical change in our lives.

“Ecological sin can be understood as a
rupture of fundamental relationships within creation;
between a human being and another human being,
between the human person and the earth, and
ultimately between the human person and
God, the creator.”

In general, ‘ecological conversion’ implies a change in how we look at, interact, and behave for the care of our common home. In his book ‘The Ten Green Commandments of Laudato Si’, Joshtrom Kureethadam, head of Ecological and Creation Office, Vatican, writes that an “ecological conversion calls for a return to the Creator,” a turning to God in the humble and genuine spirit of repentance, acknowledging God as the creator and source of all things, and repairing the broken relationship with God and each other. Bernard Lonergan speaks of conversion in terms of transformation of the subject and his world. “It is as if one’s eyes were opened and one’s former world faded and fell away …. Conversion is existential, intensely personal, utterly intimate. But it is not so private as to be solitary. It can happen to many, and they can form a community to sustain one another in their self-transformation” (Method in Theology, 130–131). Considering all these dimensions, ecological conversion should be understood primarily as our transformation towards God, the creator. It includes the changes we make in our day-to-day life that have impacts on ourselves and the entire neighbourhood including the environment. It is a change and transformation we make willingly for the improvement of creation and all creatures. It is a new way of looking at the reality around us.

• Ecological Crisis, Human Responsibility and Conversion

The first step towards conversion is accepting our responsibility for the present global ecological crisis. We know that environmental degradation and the deterioration of people’s living conditions have the same root: a development model based on economic growth and consumerism, which causes overexploitation of the planet and polarization of inequalities. We speak it in terms of anthropocentric error. As Pope Francis points out, the root cause of the deep crisis of our suffering is within the human being. This crisis has a human root, in the fundamental orientation not only of the economy or of politics but of life and human action (LS 109). Quoting Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew, he speaks on the need for each of us to repent of the ways we have harmed the planet, for “in as much as we all generate small ecological damage”, we are called to acknowledge “our contribution, smaller or greater, to the disfigurement and destruction of creation” (LS 8).

Based on the IPCC report of 2022, Pope Francis in his encyclical, ‘Laudate Deum’ affirms the human responsibility for climate change and thus ecological crisis. It is evident that during the last two centuries, especially after the Industrial Revolution, emissions began to increase and during the past fifty years, this increase has accelerated significantly. It is also confirmed that “in the last fifty years the temperature has risen at an unprecedented speed, greater than any time over the past two thousand years” (LD 11). After analysing the different scientific data, he asserts that “we can no longer doubt that the reason for the unusual rapidity of these dangerous changes is a fact that cannot be concealed: the enormous novelties that have to do with unchecked human intervention on nature in the past two centuries” (LD 14).

• Conversion through Frame of Ecological Sin

The true meaning of ecological conversion can be traced only through the lens of ecological sin. Traditionally, sin has been viewed in an individualistic sense – as something limited to the personal sphere, which is exclusively related to one’s relationship with God. Though we had some development of it in relation to the social realm, it has not included human being’s relationship with the cosmos. In Pope Francis’ view, sin is the rupture of fundamental relationships in life which should be seen within a planetary perspective. After analysing the Genesis account of creation, he relates human life grounded in the closely intertwined relationships with God, with oneself, with one’s fellow human beings, and with the whole creation. Sin is precisely the rupture of “these three vital relationships” outwardly and within us. “The violence present in our hearts, wounded by sin, is also reflected in the symptoms of sickness evident in the soil, in the water, in the air and in all forms of life” (LS 2). Thus, ecological sin can be understood as a rupture of fundamental relationships within creation; between a human being and another human being, between the human person and the earth, and ultimately between the human person and God, the creator.

“If ecological sin has resulted from our controvertere (turning away)
from fundamental relationships that sustain the web of life,
what we need today is convertere (turning back)
towards the creator, our fellow human beings,
ourselves, and the rest of creation.”

Both, ecological sin and ecological conversion should be understood integrally in terms of relationality. Pope Francis gives high respect to the significant contribution of the Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew, who “has repeatedly stated firmly and persuasively, challenging us to acknowledge our sins against creation” (LS 8). Quoting Patriarch Bartholomew, Pope states that, “for human beings… to destroy the biological diversity of God’s creation; for human beings to degrade the integrity of the earth by causing changes in its climate, by stripping the earth of its natural forests or destroying its wetlands; for human beings to contaminate the earth’s waters, its land, its air, and its life – these are sins” (LS, 8).

Though ecological sin is not defined in Laudato Si, in Amazon synod it is defined as “as an action or omission against God, against our neighbour, the community and the environment. It is a sin against the future generations and is manifested in acts and habits of contamination and destruction of the harmony of the environment, a transgression of the principle of inter-dependence and rupture of the solidarity networks between creatures and against the virtue of justice” (Document of Amazon Synod, 82). For Pope Francis, “the massive contamination of air, land and water resources, the large-scale destruction of flora and fauna, and any action capable of producing an ecological disaster or destroying an ecosystem can be considered as “ecocide’. He also invited the international community to recognise ecocide as a “fifth category of crime against peace.” In this regard, any abuse of creation on the part of humanity is a sin against humanity and the creator.

• Dimensions of Ecological Conversion

If ecological sin has resulted from our controvertere (turning away) from fundamental relationships that sustain the web of life, what we need today is convertere (turning back) towards the creator, our fellow human beings, ourselves, and the rest of creation.  It inevitably requests us to be genuine in our thoughts, ways and behaviour. First, ecological conversion calls for a return to the creator. To live in harmony with the natural world, one must be in harmony and equilibrium with heaven, and ultimately with the source and origin of all things. In Laudato Si’, Pope Francis narrates how various convictions of Christian faith enriches and deepens our ecological conversion. These include the awareness that each creature reflects something of God and has a message to convey to us, and the security that Christ has taken unto himself this material world and now, risen, is intimately present to each being, surrounding it with his affection and penetrating it with his light. Then too, there is the recognition that God created the world, writing into it an order and a dynamism that human beings have no right to ignore (LS, 221).

In the second place, ecological conversion calls for a ‘turning’ to the creation itself. As Pope Francis points out in Laudato Si’, recalling the example of St Francis of Assisi, “a healthy relationship with creation is one dimension of overall personal conversion” (LS 218). A penitent and humble return to the earth is at the core of a genuine ecological conversion.  Thirdly, ecological conversion is also a sincere return to our fellow human beings, recognising and accepting them as brothers and sisters, as members of the common household that inhabit in one common home. This is highlighted in terms of integral ecology, wherein one tries to regain his/her entire relationships. It also stresses the need to acknowledge the interconnectedness between the cry of the earth and the cry of the poor, between economics, politics, and ecology; between our daily life and our culture; between the dignity of each human being and the common good; and between intra and inter-generational justice.

Above all, ecological conversion invites us to turn to ourselves, a genuine thoughtfulness on our own life and existence. It is an invitation to enter a deep contemplation wherein we regain our authentic self. It calls our attention to the retrieval and regaining of relationships by balancing both the material and spiritual benefits. The different sorts of disconnections and fragmentations urge the need for a ‘re-connection,’ a re-search into our own life and reality, an immersing into our interior selves, by which we regain our relationship with ourselves, with God, with our fellow human beings and finally with the entire creation. In this process of reconnection, we try to look within ourselves and search into our hearts as the source of happiness and joy, and try to see things differently so that we may develop a vision that supports us in transforming ourselves and our relationships from normative to trans-normative and from metaphysical to trans-metaphysical milieu. It is the rediscovery of our ‘self’ and our ‘place’ in quietness and contemplation. At the deepest level, integral ecological conversion is about re-establishing peace within ourselves. The crisis of our common home is, in fact, only an externalization of a deeper inner malaise. As Pope Benedict XVI had pointed out in the homily at the inaugural mass of his pontificate in 2005, “the external deserts in the world are growing, because the internal deserts have become so vast”.

Pope Francis trusts in the inalienable capacity of human beings to change and make progress towards future learning from past experiences. He writes in Laudato Si, “the creator does not abandon us; he never forsakes his loving plan or repents of having created us. Humanity still has the ability to work together in building our common home” (LS, 13). Such a vision gives us hope, not that earth will be spared the conflagration that seems surely to be coming, but that God will be with us in it, just as God was with Jesus in his suffering and death.