WITH the emergence of an increasing interest in environmental issues during the 1970s, Thomas Berry - a Passionist priest, cultural historian and professor of world religions - adjusted his research to include this new concern.
His years of studying the transformations of cultures had taught him to identify fundamental traits within societies that predisposed them for significant shifts in their history.
He discerned that Western industrial society had fashioned a story of itself, its worldview or cosmology, that both separated the human from the rest of life on Earth and rejected the inherent sacredness of all of creation.
He concluded that if society was going to successfully navigate the ever-increasing environmental challenges, it needed a new story, a new cosmology, that acknowledged the interdependence between humans and the rest of creation and respected the sacredness of creation.
In short, humanity needed a worldview that would encourage it to act in ways that were mutually enhancing for it and the rest of creation.
He eventually described these assertions in his article, The New Story, in the inaugural issue of Teilhard Studies in 1978.
For the next 30 years, he would continue to develop these ideas and share them through articles, books, and talks that were delivered around the world.
Six years after Berry's death in 2009, Pope Francis would release his encyclical, Laudato Si': On Care for Our Common Home.
In that ground-breaking document, the Pope would champion many of the ideas that had been central to Berry's work.
Thomas Berry argued that humanity, and indeed the entire Earth community, had reached a critical juncture.
Challenging the dominant worldview that prompted humans to act in ways that brought about the destruction of the planet and subsequently themselves, Berry argued in Befriending the Earth (1991) that humanity and the rest of the natural world would move into the future as a single sacred community, or they would both perish.
This change would only come about through a radical shift in human culture on the magnitude of the problem itself.
Central to this shift was adopting a new understanding of humanity's relationship with the rest of creation.
With Berry's works in one hand, and Pope Francis's encyclical Laudato Si': Care for Our Common Home in the other, we can trace earlier scholarship that supports the theological, ecological and cultural positions taken by the current Pope
Although by the mid-1970s most Westerners had accepted the notion that we lived in an evolutionary universe, societies were still operating with the pre-Copernican notion that Earth (and therefore, humanity) was at the centre of the universe, as if everything revolved around us and our desires.
We had not yet fully embraced the implications of being part of Earth's irreversible evolutionary processes, including our inherent interdependence on and inseparable connection with those processes.
We still held that destruction of the planet that both brought about our emergence through evolutionary processes and sustained our existence with its air, water and land was justified and even necessary if it brought about economic gain for at least part of human society.
As Berry would charge, we had failed to realise that it was not possible to have healthy humans on a sick planet; we still saw ourselves as separate from the rest of creation.
Berry pondered how being one of countless players in the evolutionary universe story informed our understanding of ourselves, of the rest of creation, of the sacred, and of God.
Although previous Popes had acknowledged the validity of evolution as a theory, Pope Francis was the first Pope to write from within an evolutionary understanding of creation.
For him, evolution was no longer merely another idea or content to be added to our traditional understanding of the universe; rather, adopting an evolutionary worldview provided him with a new context that offered a significantly new perspective.
Such a shift in perspective allowed for a radical rethinking of our state of affairs. As Pope Francis notes, "A strategy for real change calls for rethinking processes in their entirety, for it is not enough to include a few superficial ecological considerations while failing to question the logic which underlies present-day culture" (Laudato Si', 197).
Rejecting anthropocentrism or an unrestrained priority awarded to the human, Berry wrote about the profound intercommunion among the Divine, humanity, and the rest of creation.
Christians readily and regularly (and rightly) read scripture to arrive at a fuller and deeper understanding of God and God's expectations for us and the rest of creation. Less often do Christians 'read' creation as a book of revelation
Resulting from 13.8 billion years of cosmic creativity, humans were deeply dependent on the evolutionary processes that had created the conditions for humanity's emergence.
We are not only players in the universe story, we result from and remain extremely dependent on the continuing unfolding of that story.
More than four decades ago, Berry wrote about the ways every player in the universe's history was integral with every other member. Similarly, Pope Francis would reject "a tyrannical anthropocentrism unconcerned for other creatures", noting that "a misguided anthropocentrism leads to a misguided lifestyle" (LS, 68, 122).
The pontiff reminds us that "human life is grounded in three fundamental and closely intertwined relationships: with God, with our neighbour and with the earth itself" (LS, 66).
Indeed, it is through living these relationships in the ways intended by God that we become more fully what God has wished for us (LS, 240).
We become part of "a sublime communion which fills us with a sacred, affectionate and humble respect" (LS, 89).
For both Berry and Pope Francis, awakening to our true place within the universe story is also to awaken to the sacredness of creation.
Both reference the prologue of John's Gospel (John 1:1-8) and Paul's Letter to the Colossians (Colossians 1:15-20) to remind us that Christ, through whom all was created, has been part of cosmic history since the beginning of time.
As Pope Francis declares, "The universe unfolds in God, who fills it completely. Hence, there is a mystical meaning to be found in a leaf, in a mountain... Discover God in all things" (LS, 233).
Christianity has tended to focus on the redemptive dimension of Christ to the virtual exclusion on his creative dimension, to focus on a historical presence 2,000 years ago at the expense of a cosmic dimension for the past 13.8 billion years
For Berry, writing in The Dream of the Earth (1991), evolutionary time is sacred time.
Christianity has tended to focus on the redemptive dimension of Christ to the virtual exclusion on his creative dimension, to focus on a historical presence 2,000 years ago at the expense of a cosmic dimension for the past 13.8 billion years.
When we become more conscious of this latter dimension, our understanding of creation and our relationship with it can be transformed.
We can realise that each part and player of the universe story has had and continues to have a sacred dimension.
To destroy a part of creation is no longer merely to dispose of an inanimate object of no worth; rather, it is to desecrate a presence of the Divine and a way to know God.
Both Berry and Pope Francis also remind us that the Christian tradition teaches that there are two books of revelation: scripture and creation.
Christians readily and regularly (and rightly) read scripture to arrive at a fuller and deeper understanding of God and God's expectations for us and the rest of creation. Less often do Christians "read" creation as a book of revelation.
Nevertheless, the numinous and pervasive presence of God throughout all of creation through all time provides guidance to creation and to humanity (Romans 1:19-20).
As the Word, the Logos, the principle of intelligibility within creation, Christ instructs and inspires.
As Thomas Berry would charge, we had failed to realise that it was not possible to have healthy humans on a sick planet; we still saw ourselves as separate from the rest of creation
Pope Francis, echoing the work of St Francis, "invites us to see nature as a magnificent book in which God speaks to us and grants us a glimpse of his infinite beauty and goodness. 'Through the greatness and the beauty of creatures one comes to know by analogy their maker' (Wisdom 13.5)"(LS, 12, 99).
Similarly, Berry admonishes us to reacquire the ability to read creation as a book of revelation, to tell and study the evolutionary history of the universe not only through its physical attributes but also through its spiritual and ethical importance.
When writing about An Ecologically Sensitive Spirituality (Teilhard Perspective, 1997), Berry stated: "We need to move from a spirituality of alienation from the natural world to a spirituality of intimacy with the natural world, from a spirituality of the divine as revealed in verbal revelation to a spirituality of the divine as revealed in the visible world about us.
"From a spirituality concerned with justice merely to humans to a spirituality of justice to the devastated Earth community...
"The sacred community must now be considered the integral community of the entire universe, more immediately the integral community of the planet Earth."
Drawing on this cosmic presence of the Divine and linking the creative and redemptive dimensions of Christ, Pope Francis declares: "The Lord, in the culmination of the mystery of the Incarnation, chose to reach our intimate depths through a fragment of matter.
"He comes not from above, but from within, he comes that we might find him in this world of ours" (LS, 236).
Thus, Pope Francis and Berry agree that our faith necessarily leads us to an appreciation for the sacredness of creation and an ecological ethic that respects the integral communion among the Divine, humanity and the rest of creation.
That ethic includes an acknowledgement that each part of creation, each player in the entire 13.8-billion-year history of the creation story, has intrinsic value.
That is, each part is inherently valuable because each contributes, in its own unique way, to the unfolding of God's universe and salvation history.
Its value is not determined by its usefulness to humanity; it's valuable because it is loved by God.
Pope Francis observes that "different creatures... have an intrinsic value independent of their usefulness. Each organism, as a creature of God, is good and admirable in itself..." (LS, 140).
Therefore, "the entire material universe speaks of God's love... Soil, water, mountains: everything is, as it were, a caress of God" (LS, 84).
Similarly, in his essay Wonderworld as Wasteworld from 1985, Berry recalls that "St Thomas [Aquinas] dedicated his efforts in great part to defending the reality and goodness and efficacy intrinsic to the natural world.
"The natural world is not simply object, a usable thing, an inert mode of being awaiting its destiny to be exploited by humans.
"It is subject as well as object, the maternal source whence we emerge into being as earthlings.
"It is the life-giving nourishment of our physical, emotional, aesthetic, moral and religious existence; indeed, it is the larger sacred community to which we belong.
"To be alienated from this community is to become destitute in all that makes us human; to damage this community is to diminish our own existence."
With Berry's works in one hand, and Pope Francis's encyclical Laudato Si': On Care for Our Common Home in the other, we can trace earlier scholarship that supports the theological, ecological and cultural positions taken by the current Pope.
Each set of works can help us to appreciate more deeply and thoroughly the insights offered by the other.
Both in Laudato Si' and in his other documents and addresses, Pope Francis has emphasised the need for creative, thoughtful and respectful dialogue as a means for resolving the crises that confront us.
Particularly for people of faith, updating our theological and spiritual perspectives so that they can better address the "immediacy and urgency of the challenges we face" allows us to contribute in a more meaningful way to the work before us (LS, 15).
Dr Dennis Patrick O'Hara is a leading expert in ecological theology and ethics.
He retired last summer from the Elliott Allen Institute for Theology and Ecology at the University of St Michael's College at the University of Toronto, where he was director for 18 years.
The Tobar Mhuire Summer Institute, which had been due to take place this month until the Covid-19 crisis intervened, had planned to explore the themes around Pope Francis's encyclical Laudato Si': On Care for Our Common Home.
The Passionists at Crossgar hope to resume their programme of retreats and conferences when coronavirus restrictions have eased and in line with public health advice.
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