Journal #6: Spirituality and the Planetary Crisis

 (Continuation of the "Journal" series: July, 1993)

     Religious spirituality does have an irreplaceable role to play in the transformation of Western
civilization to a more biosphere-centred consciousness. It is possible, though by no means obvious, that religion itself, religious institutions, could play a positive role....
     It may be true to say that we need to find a whole different rleigious foundation. Perhaps, however, as Bernard Lonergan said,  this means that there is need for a "change of horizon." All the traditional elements might still be there afterwards but in an entirely different setting of inter-relationships.
     Horizon changes usually come about when some new but unintelligible element is serious added to a consistent pictukre. Because it cannot be integrated into the old order, the whole begins to come apart, come to chaos. Out of that chaos comes a new ordeer. One of the new elements in the picture of the latter part of this (20th) century is that of the "finite planet."  Taking seriously the finite character of our planet - which we have yet to do -  makes the whole consumer enterprise collapse. It also puts some serious questions to our Christian tradition.
     While belief that God created the universe, that God cares for it, that God is revealed in all the universe are important elements of our Christian tradition. But, I am not so sure that the specific finite character of our planet in its capacity to sustain human life had ever been addressed. (At most we can say that we were directed to care for the earth.)  ....

Hildegard of Bingen Liber Divinorum Operum

     Hugh of St. Victor, in the 13th century, tried to find the relationship between the microcosm of the human and the macrocosm of the universe. The search for an integrating relationship with the earth was part of the journey of St. Francis of Assisi. Perhaps we could learn something from those ventures.
     Certainly we need to acknolwedge the serious contribution of modern science, of physics, chemistry and biology, to a reformulation of the questions. What is important in the questions raised by both religious spirituality and science today ultimately are the subjects. It is not science that will ultimately pose the questions or find the answers but rather subjects: the scientists. Scientists and theologians can begin asking the same questions and finding common ground, not just because of what theology and science are but rather, among most importantly, because they are both subjects and, as such, can ask both theological and scientific questions.
     The gift of modern science has been its extraordinarily creative and effective method. The problem with the development of science is that sometimes it has thought it could provide all the answers to all the questions including the theological questions. (Even art, theatre, literature have been relegated at times to a purely private "aesthetic" experience that has no public relevance. We forget that the experience of art is public and has very public implications.) .... Some of the worst horrors of our century are due to the conflusion (between the various methods by which a question can be addressed by the subject who poses it. Economics is an example. It attempts to address a question about  experiential and political relationships with methodological tools of mathematical science.)