“If in so many parts of the world there are children who have nothing to eat that's not news. It seems normal. It must not be this way! … On the other hand, a drop of ten points on the stock exchange constitutes a tragedy. If someone dies that isn't news but a ten point drop in the markets is a tragedy! Thus people are discarded, as if they were garbage.”
This strong statement was made by Pope Francis last Wednesday, June 5, marking the World Environment Day promoted by the United Nations.
The Argentinian Pope has been lately delivering very good speeches about the centrality of the human person in economic activity, rightly pointing out that the economy is for humans and not the other way round. The same, he said on Wednesday, applies both to physical and human ecology. As the centrality of the human person is not being respected we are living in a time of crisis. “We see it in the environment but above all we see it in humanity.”
The solution is not just one at the level of the economy. It goes deeper. It urges us to ask what underpins our economic and environmental decisions. This is why first and foremost this is a question of ethics and anthropology.
The relativist and constructivist philosophy that dominates current culture foments a mentality that considers the human person as the measure and master of all things; the lord of all. This mentality leads only to disaster.
Pope Francis rightly says that “we [are] thinking and living 'horizontally'; we are drawing away from God; we are not reading his signs.”
“Instead, we are often guided by the arrogance of dominating, possessing, manipulating, and exploiting. We don't 'take care' of it [environment]; we don't respect it; we don't consider it as a freely-given gift to be cared for. We are losing the attitude of wonder, of contemplation, of listening to creation. Thus we are no longer able to read in it what Benedict XVI called 'the rhythm of the story of God's love for humanity’.”
Instead of aggressively lording over creation we should try to understand its logic and rhythm in order to nurture a culture of caring for creation.
Pope Francis then shows that this lack of culture of caring for creation negatively affects the human race itself.
“What is in charge today isn't the human person but money. Money is in command. And God our Father has given us the task of caring for the earth not for the money, but for us: for men and women. This is our charge. Instead, men and women are sacrificed to the idols of profit and consumption. It is a 'culture of waste'.”
Within the context of this position Pope Francis delivered the quote opining this commentary.
He continued:
“.. the person, is no longer felt to be the primary value to respect and care for … This culture of waste has also made us insensitive to a squandering and wastefulness of food … Consumerism has caused us to get used to the daily excess and waste of food, which we are no longer capable of seeing for its true worth, which goes well beyond mere economic parameters. Remember, however, that the food that is thrown away is as if we had stolen it from the table of the poor, from those who are hungry!”
If we ignore his concluding appeal we will do so at our own peril.
“I invite you all to reflect on the problem of the loss and the waste of food … Let us all make the serious commitment to respect and care for creation, to be attentive to every person, to oppose the culture of wastefulness and waste, and to promote a culture of solidarity and encounter.”