The Scales Integral to Ecology: Hierarchies in Laudato Si’ and Christian Ecological Ethics
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
I cannot recommend publication.
The essay is fundamentally flawed in several respects. It does offer some potential if rewritten, which I will outline momentarily.
The 2015 encyclical Laudato Si’ by Pope Francis is being taken out of its intended context, which is of an exhortation and teaching for the faithful, and instead considered as a discourse within Christian ethics more generally. This is fine, but then the author criticizes the encyclical for, in effect, being bound to Catholic tradition rather than open to other discourses outside that tradition. It is thus a strawman argument: the Pope is being criticized for being too Catholic when viewed from the perspective of, for example, feminist eco-theologies.
The encyclical must be viewed, first and foremost, within its intended context as a continuation of Catholic teachings drawing from the Hebrew scriptures, the New Testament, the Doctors of the Faith, the teachings of the saints throughout history, and contemporary Catholic teachings on social justice and moral theology. Only secondarily may it be asked how it resonates with outsiders to that tradition, such as in ecumenical and inter-faith dialogues, and lastly, with secular environmental ethics in general.
Yet even then, Laudato Si’ is and remains an exhortation to Catholics. How it appears to outsiders may be an interesting question, but it is very much secondary to the primary consideration of faithfulness to Catholic tradition itself. Here it must be acknowledged that no Pontiff ever “innovates” upon tradition but sees his role as faithful transmission of received tradition in light of new questions—for example, climate change. The criticism that the Pope is not innovative with respect to discourses outside Catholic tradition is not particularly fair.
Accordingly, more fruitful line of engagement would be to challenge its anthropocentrism and hierarchies of domination within tradition itself, drawing on the writings of Maximus Confessor, for example, and/or from Orthodox tradition, which the Pope does acknowledge with his recognition of the “Green Patriarch” Bartholomew I in sections 8 and 9.
The author does make mention of liberation theology which does have its origin in Latin American Catholicism. It remains, however, largely outside the mainstream of Catholic thought. Yet its presence is revealed throughout the encyclical, owing perhaps to the Pontiff’s Argentinian heritage, with the strong criticisms of free market capitalism. For example, consider this passage (No.123) from the encyclical:
“The culture of relativism is the same disorder which drives one person to take advantage of another, to treat others as mere objects, imposing forced labour on them or enslaving them to pay their debts. The same kind of thinking leads to the sexual exploitation of children and abandonment of the elderly who no longer serve our interests. It is also the mindset of those who say: Let us allow the invisible forces of the market to regulate the economy, and consider their impact on society and nature as collateral damage. In the absence of objective truths or sound principles other than the satisfaction of our own desires and immediate needs, what limits can be placed on human trafficking, organized crime, the drug trade, commerce in blood diamonds and the fur of endangered species? Is it not the same relativistic logic which justifies buying the organs of the poor for resale or use in experimentation, or eliminating children because they are not what their parents wanted? This same “use and throw away” logic generates so much waste, because of the disordered desire to consume more than what is really necessary. We should not think that political efforts or the force of law will be sufficient to prevent actions which affect the environment because, when the culture itself is corrupt and objective truth and universally valid principles are no longer upheld, then laws can only be seen as arbitrary impositions or obstacles to be avoided.”
This brings me to the next criticism. The author claims that the Pontiff is not adequately appreciative of scales of ethical consideration, which the cited passage clearly disproves. More engagement with the actual words of the encyclical would be helpful with any possible rewrites of the essay.
The author also introduces what appears to be a neologism, the “scalar,” which is not clear nor particularly helpful. It is used to bridge discourses in ethics with ecology. It attempts to describe the effects of scales of consideration (e.g., individual, local, regional, and global perspectives) from ecology, with added meaning of embedded hierarchy and the social constructedness from ethical analysis—for example, viewing public policy from the perspective of “the good of the nation” versus disproportionate impacts to the disenfranchised poor within that nation. But the concepts of scale and questions about its application are not the same in ecology and ethics, beyond the simplistic local vs. global perspectives. Moreover, constructedness in science is only an acknowledgement of the mathematical limitations of any theoretical model—not about social power or anything similar (unless the author is drawing on Latour who considers science itself as social construction only and not empiriral in nature. If so, Latour would not make for a good opening for discourses with actual scientists).
The proposed bridging term “scalar” therefore does not work here; the ethical implications of the proposed “scalar” concept are no more than the familiar ethical questions such as species vs. individual members of that species debates in environmental ethics. The neologism is therefore not illuminative of anything new or helpful. It seems introduced simply to make the essay seem novel.
Author Response
The reviewer’s comments have been useful in three ways:
This analysis helped me to clarify the methodology and better explain that this is a theological and ethical analysis and critique of how Laudato Si’ deals with hierarchies. The critique of “scalar” as a “neologism” helped me to more fully identify the literature from which I am drawing this concept, and to define the moral implications of scalar thinking as a discussion I am learning from rather than creating from scratch. The reviewer’s insight that the Pope’s discussion of relativism is another example of scalar thinking in the encyclical helped me to clarify my argument.
However, I disagree with the reviewer’s premise, that the essay takes Laudato Si’ out of it’s intended context. I understand that the encyclical is a product of the Catholic Church and Catholic hierarchy, but I see it as very explicitly working to engage a broader conversation. This essay takes that seriously and attempts to engage just such a conversation.
Reviewer 2 Report
See my comments about ways to reframe this manuscript in a more satisfying way - I think that's the path forward for this paper. Well written already, and many good arguments here, but the structure of the argument seems off, and the use of scalar/ecological principles to set this all up don't actually seem to vital (at least not given the feminist arguments that lie at the heart of your critique) - but again, see more comments below. I think if the paper is reframed as suggested below, it will make a valuable contribution to the literature. I really enjoyed dialoguing with the ideas here.
line 89: "suggests"
lines 114-116: I agree in part, but not entirely. Language/literature doesn't just work in a simple hierarchical way - there are allusions to previous sections, arguments can build in a linear way, but also circle back around, and a certain balance of framing elements that one starts with can be critical to return to to give a manuscript coherence. A fair amount of the best writing isn't what I'd call hierarchical at all - it's much more akin to a story that unfolds. On the other hand, a good deal of scientific writing is indeed more or less hierarchical, but most scientific writing is also poor writing on the whole. People don't read scientific writing because it communicates well or is enjoyable to read - we just tend to only publish things that communicate well enough in these technical formats. If we want to read something for the sake of reading good writing and the various pleasures of reading, rarely would we reach for a scientific journal. The description you've provided here makes writing seem like a reductive process. I think that's mostly something that we find in scientific writing, and it doesn't yield good literature, generally.
line 120-122: I would suspect that the standards and customs of the journal you are submitting to have much to do with the choices you'd make in this manuscript, rather than just a free authorial choice for the sake of the best argument possible.
line 134-136: I quite agree with this claim, but it doesn't change my point from lines 114-116 above.
line 150-151: I don't know that there is some "perfect" understanding or claim that we should imagine that would be capable of giving us perfect understanding of all levels of reality about any thing in the universe. It's our own human understanding that is limited, likely in capacity, evolutionarily (what advantage would most species have from being able to understand all things all at once? Most things of value to survival are much less universal in their expression, for instance: "this predator is trying to eat me, I should run away!" - contrast that with the philosophically-minded human who wants some perfect understanding of the situation ("a predator is stalking me, as part of its evolutionary tendency, and I am feeling fear as per my own, and meanwhile, the cosmos is swirling along writ large, and my minute existence is just a tiny <<>>...")). I guess my point is that all human understanding is limited. It's not a knock against it that it's not perfect or universal. So the point here, to my mind, has false force.
line 158: "the full complexity of the natural world" is mentioned here as though it is indeed something someone might fully understand. Here again, is it a rationalistic/reductionistic bias to think that the ultimate form of understanding is some perfect/total/complete understanding from which all lesser amounts of knowledge can be derived? The argument you are building seems to need to assume something like that, which itself is just one choice among many for how one might understand reality. What are the reasons for choosing that option?
line 175-187: good discussion here. It's in part based on the likes of Schumacher's concept that I've made my comment about line 158 above
line 227-230: I really like the basic idea of this sentence, though I am skeptical of the hope that we can "transcend" our limitations as the author hopes. I do think that careful attention to these different scales is the sort of thought it takes to solve complex problems. I do not think that's an innovation, though. It's what philosophers and thinkers do. on the whole, I think what I disagree with, so far as I understand the author's argument, is the apparent idea that we can insert scalar distinctions that work in the physical universe, such as those developed by ecologists, and that such a transfer will clear up confusions in the ethical realm. If ethics were as physically causal as (Newtonian) physics, I might agree with this, but I don't think our observations of ethics and morality can support such a belief.
line 229: I think "work out" or "work through our differences" sound more realistic to me than "transcend" - by embracing and facing our limits, bumping up against them, we can apply our thoughts and hopes to perhaps find some solutions, limited as we are...and we can keep enjoying the messy process as humans always have, on into the future...never achieving any perfect state, though, would be my guess. I don't suspect the author and I have big differences in thought on this point (a slight shift in implication here would address my concerns).
line 267-268: similar to line 158 - I don't find this comment very persuasive. All perspectives are limited, including that of the author, so I don't see some "better way" emerging from what the author is arguing. It doesn't seem to me that the fault of such thoughts is that they are constructions - is any human thinking somehow not a construction? We might as well give up on all that we think, or cast it as "lesser" as these lines seem to do. Perhaps a more philosophical explanation of why the author's preferences are reasonable would help. What seems to be the force of these lines (that I don't find persuasive) is a force that maybe only is convincing to some viewpoints. Would a realist find this persuasive? Would an idealist? Would a positivist? Perhaps attending to those differences would help ground these claims with more force. (And again: "will never capture the full complexity"... I think only a rationalist buoyed by a belief in the limitlessness of human intelligence (and its ability to perfect the world) would cast such a possibility as a criticism, especially where human morality is the target).
line 278-284: The author is turning here and making a claim that I am much more persuaded by...so I wonder if it's mainly the language of the lines I've reacted to above that is bothering me...or maybe this paragraph seems inconsistent with what's been argued or implied above.
line 293-301: This is a curious approach. Laudato Si' is quite obviously a papal encyclical. As such, I wouldn't think a scholar would necessarily say it 'speaks with authority via the church as God's instrument in the world'...I would think we'd view this more like indicated in lines 289-290 - as an authoritative teaching for Roman Catholics...but then also by its own admission, a teaching that intends to engage a much larger dialogue - one with all people, in fact, as Francis repeats multiple times. I don't think Laudato Si' aspires to be or to make, per se, a "scholarly argument" or much cares if it generates attention in the peer reviewed literature. I do think Pope Francis hoped to generate dialogue and solidarity, though. So, back to my wariness of the scholarly/rationalist approach that has bothered me in comments above, it's not clear to me why a scholarly analysis is the highest form of response to Laudato Si'. I suspect the author is quite genuine, as a scholar, in showing scholarly respect for Laudato Si' by treating it in this way, but I think I see this more as something like: "the highest form of respect I can grant Laudato Si' as a scholar is to critique it as a scholar, but I realize that may miss the point of much of what Laudato Si' was written for. Nonetheless, I think Laudato Si' provides enough intellectual and scholarly substance to merit scholarly criticism, offered here respectfully." A statement like that would seem more fitting to the scale and intent of Laudato Si'.
line 304-305: I agree that "integral ecology" is the central concept of the encyclical, but I don't know that the most important argument is that human and natural environments deteriorate together. That seems like a standard point that environmentalists would make, and might be of even more interest to an eco-centric or biocentric thinker as central to their ethos. But I'd think that Francis's call for ecological conversion, and for a conversation of everyone, are more pivotal calls in Laudato Si' than such a standard ecological idea.
line 310-316: I agree with the points here, though I don't know that I'd emphasize "integration" itself as though it's the key to environmental solutions (it's certainly important, but things like "reconciliation" and solidarity and humility might arguably have a more critical role to play). Just a thought.
line 328-329: good point, and well said
line 341-350: good description here
line 385-402: I find this a relatively weak argument. It's the Roman Catholic church. Francis is much more egalitarian than most of his predecessors. No big news here. If Laudato Si' was claiming to be a universal document with the highest truth for everyone offered therein...then go ahead and critique it on these grounds. But Francis is apologetic about even talking theology (in his intro to chapter 2), and he explicitly says the church is not the authority on all things. So these lines might as well just be a generic criticism of the Catholic Church - they are less effective as a particular critique of the encyclical. Does the author suppose some final, correct view that we're working towards, like the modernist/rationalist perspective might? All views are flawed, including the feminist views that work to make the Roman Catholic church more egalitarian. I don't suspect a critique of Laudato Si' on ecological scalar grounds is the best place to do what the author seems to want to do here. Or at least I should say I'm not excited about the frame here. I am willing to be convinced otherwise by the remainder of the manuscript, but the framing is not promising.
line 403-429: similarly, I don't find these arguments all that compelling. Why not just write an argument designed to show that the Catholic view is wrong, and some other is correct about how animals and humans and God are related? From THAT superior view, Francis' perspective is off-target, but from the perspective the author has seemed to want to establish - that we need to consider all manner of scales - I would think the parallel move would be to appreciate the co-existence of many views about humans, creation, and God, and not assume that one correct view should supplant all others. Rather, wouldn't we want to solve a global challenge like ecological integrity by considering the values of all peoples, and working through the differences and allegiances among those views? The lines between who is allowed to colonize ideas (Catholics are not, but feminists are?) seem to get blurred here. I'm not saying I disagree with criticisms of the Catholic church regarding gender, for example, but I don't find this line of critique all that helpful or useful.
line 430-439: I don't disagree, but in terms of emphasis, I think this just shows the difference in theological views of Francis versus these critics. Perhaps this paper should be framed as a feminist critique of the encyclical, rather than as a commentary about scale?
line 440: I don't think "unquestioned" is justified here. Search the encyclical for apologies related to these points.
line 452-465: This paragraph seems to be the "in a nutshell" argument of the manuscript. A couple of points: I'm not sure I believe that the author isn't trying to imply that ecological ethics would be better served by different scalar assumptions. The arguments I've found unimpressive above seem to be just such arguments. If so, the apology here that this paper is just intended to call attention to the different options (line 459-461) doesn't seem to be genuine, or perhaps misses its own point.
line 453: indeed - it's not necessarily a criticism, and not necessarily all that interesting unless one thinks that there are better alternatives...or that some particular consideration of some range of views yields a demonstrably better outcome. Perhaps this paper would be better framed, as I've already implied above, as a contribution to the "discussion of everyone" that Francis calls for. He puts a lot of framing effort into that idea, and to say something like: "yes, I agree, we need more voices in this conversation, and what this paper seeks to do is raise up the voice of feminist critics who would emphasize different perspectives than Francis" would be a pretty direct way to re-frame this paper without seeming to miss the point of Laudato Si' in this regard. Francis seems much more like an ally to the author's arguments than an opponent, so I think the manuscript would be more successful framed as a response to the encyclical designed to widen the conversation and to put more emphasis on feminist thinking and theology than Francis does, because that might make the conversation better than what just Laudato Si' has created. Framed as such, this paper would have more force, I think.
line 472-473: I don't think the concepts of ecological scale have really been the point of this manuscript. They seem relevant, and can be a framing device for introducing some important arguments for feminist theology and eco-ethics, but it sort of feels like the scalar frame was never really needed for what seems to be the point of this paper.
line 489-491: I think familiarity with Catholic theology provides plenty of explanation for the assumptions encountered in Laudato Si', and I think Francis quite intentionally apologized for that, which provides critics and dialogue partners with a wide avenue for response. I just don't think Laudato Si' is framed as though it's a scientific or peer reviewed work, which thus supposes itself to stand on some certain foundation of truth (ala modern science and the remaining baggage of positivism in scholarly thinking) - rather it's a very thoughtful view offered to Catholics and beyond that explicitly and forcefully invites more dialogue partners. So a reframing of this paper to take up that invitation would seem to me a much more direct and satisfying way to develop the feminist critique points (and develop them even further, I'd think) than what the current manuscript has done.
line 495-496: I think Laudato Si' nicely recognizes its limits, and speaks within its bounds to spark more dialogue. It somewhat startlingly apologizes for being theological in the first place (is this a papal encyclical??) at the start of chapter 2, and from that humble posture invites more dialogue (Francis simply says, given that not everyone believes in God, that he thinks Catholic tradition offers some helpful ideas -- thus, critiquing Catholic tradition for not being as progressive as feminist critics would like is to miss how Francis framed Laudato Si' so as to invite dialogue). A good reply to this, for this manuscript, would be to add that not every Catholic (or Christian, for that matter) takes as hierarchical a view as Francis, and bingo, that's a good way to serve up the feminist ideas that could open up the ideas in Laudato Si' even further.
line 517: you might consider rather than emphasizing that "Francis asserts" this point...that Francis is simply speaking for his tradition, without feeling the need to apologize for everything. That's the benefit of a tradition - you can build on it and draw from it, which he said is what he was doing. Rather than fault him for speaking for a tradition that you'd like to stretch and critique and make more egalitarian, thank him for opening up the invitation to wider dialogue, and offer these critiques as ways to make Catholic theology more appealing (or as a way to more strongly emphasize the liberation elements of Catholic theology), and the arguments of Laudato Si' more helpful, as you believe, to ecological ethics. I'm not sure you can really strongly argue that your correctives would make Laudato Si' better for ecological ethics than it already is (speaking as it does for a very global and complicated religious community, and to all people, even), but you can certainly offer your important insights as precisely the sort of wider dialogue and deeper consideration that Francis himself calls for in Laudato Si'.
line 523-527: I really like the closing sentiment.
another note: re: Norton's three levels, those are the three basic levels that sociologists attend to - individual, community, polity.
Author Response
This is a very helpful and thoughtful review, and I appreciate the time the reviewer put in and the insights shared. This review helped me to clarify that the paper is fundamentally a critique of Laudato Si’ rather than a paper about moral scale that happens to engage Laudato Si’, and also helped me to see that I was mixing two distinct arguments without clarifying their connections.
I have clarified the text so that it does not suggest a “perfect” access to the real world, but instead uses the inevitability of limitation as the way to critique unquestioned hierarchies. I have worked to more fully embrace the force of the argument rather than qualifying it, and to better locate the critique as well as the encyclical’s own logic in Catholic tradition.
This reviewer’s comments have much improved my thinking and the clarity of my expression. Much appreciated!
Reviewer 3 Report
This is a good paper, decent, good, but not outstanding. It is as good as many articles already in print.
The main themes are “scales” and “constructions” social constructions, in both science and ethics. I don’t think the author says anything about “scales” that many others have not already said. I think the author overreaches with his/her account of “constructions.” Details follow.
The author tries to be fair, even generous to those he/she is going to criticize and summarizes their positions fairly. There is a decent list of references cited. The paper is of reasonable length, likely to be read, or at least browsed, from start to finish.
lines 117-119
“hierarchical levels are constructions: I could have organized a paper with the same argument differently by discussing ethics before scientific theory or by structuring the entire paper as a dialogue with Laudato Si’ instead of only the second half.”
lines 125-127
Simon Levin writes, “there is no natural level of description,” and insists that the task of a researcher is “not to choose the correct scale of description, but rather to recognize that change is taking place on many scales at the same time.”
The hierarchical levels may be constructions, but they mostly were there before ecologists, even humans, came on the scene. Humans do a better or worse job as they construct an ecological science capable of discovering what nature, natural history, has constructed. In that sense there are natural levels of description.
lines 138-140
“The concepts “ecosystem,” “species,” and “biome” may be based on the real natural world, but these are constructed names. There are no simplistic or clear boundaries between these levels.”
Of course the names scientists and naturalists invent are constructions in human language. Before humans came to North America, the continent had no such name, as “North America,” and the name “bison” was nowhere to be found there, nor was Bison bison. But there were billions of these big horned animals roaming around and eating grass on the prairies, with an effect and interrelationship with the communities of life with which they interacted. Something was really already there.
“Species” is a concept that scientists have constructed, if you like. There are different accounts of what a species is. Occasionally a biologist will say that a species is nothing but a construction made by biologists. But the vast majority of taxonomists also are convinced that a species is a dynamic ongoing form of life, an interbreeding natural population with an adapted fit in an ecosystem, reproducing itself over time. Species are "discrete entities in time as well as space." Niles Eldredge and Joel Cracraft. Phylogenetic Patterns and the Evolutionary Process. Columbia University Press, 1980. New York. p. 92. Sure, species evolve into other species over time. But for centuries, for thousands of years, bison make more bison, tigers make more tigers, woodpeckers make a new generation of woodpeckers. Lions are a natural kind that all peoples of all cultures must recognize because this kind is found ready-made in nature.
Earth generates a “biosphere” at its surface, with evolving life in its oceans, on land, in the soil, and in the skies, parts of which may be called a “biome.” The terminology used to discuss this by scientists is constructed, but that does not mean the biosphere is socially constructed. Scientists can to some degree and with increasing sophistication describe what is going on here on Earth, objectively and specifically in Earthbound organisms and ecosystems. If they can’t conservation is a futile pipe dream.
Every theory is a human construction. The bison constructed no scientific theories. But a scientist constructs a theory and then hopes to find empirical evidence out there in nature that tends to justify or at least not to falsify the theory. Later, on the basis of such evidence, the theory may be revised, hopefully to be nearer a truer account.
lines 155-157
“such levels of organization—and any scalar measurement—are social constructions that should never be confused with the full complexity of the real world.”
Some single scalar measurement is not the full complexity of the real world--and I don’t know anybody who has ever said that. But the measurement must have some approximation to the actual researched bison population and their grazing effects, or the measurement is worthless.
lines 169-171
Leopold “proposed that people learn to “think like a mountain” in order to consider broader temporal and spatial scales than those that come naturally at the human scale.”
“Thinking like a mountain” is a socially constructed metaphor by Leopold, but he meant that humans, scientists, indeed could construct scales more adequate to the facts of the matter about how wolves and deer on mountains interrelate. He was urging discovering more accurate accounts of causal food chains.
Likewise Schumacher’s small scale is a social construction, but intended to be a recommended lifestyle more adequate to an adapted fit on an actual inhabited landscape.
lines 190-194
“there are moral implications to ecological scale. Moral scale matters, too; the ways people pay spatial and temporal attention to the world shapes our ability to care about and act on behalf of endangered neighbors, communities, ecosystems, and the planet as a whole.” True and perhaps worth saying. Keep your moral thinking in context-local, community and global. But I don’t know anybody who would deny it.
lines 220-221
“Environmental ethics: “the field has yet to delve deeply into the third lesson, that scalar attention is always constructed and therefore limited.
lines 245-248
The author praises the work of a Native American who finds that there was “longstanding commitment to adaptation among the indigenous peoples of the Great Plains in North America. Because they have spent millenia (sic) in a place with variable weather patterns, indigenous communities deeply understand “the concept that society must be organized to constantly adapt to environmental change.”
I suppose. Bring them in if you can. But now the concept of scale begins to work against the author. Maybe Native Americans lived a long time on the plains but they didn’t even know they were on a planet, much less could they do anything to jeopardize the global ecosystem. This a section on the recognition of limits. It seems rather unlikely that anything in their wisdom will be particularly relevant to the needed scale of changing human behaviors, such as burning fossil fuels or making capitalism sustainable, in ways that might save the Earth.
pp. 319-324
There is praise for Pope Francis. He is in a position to think globally.
“Pope Francis’s integral ecology includes the integration of scales, calling for conversion at the personal, community, and global levels. His most prevalent emphasis is on the need to scale upward, to think more broadly, contrasting the “risk of rampant individualism” in our modern world with “a new and universal solidarity” through which all human beings can “work together in building our common home.” This global emphasis is signaled at the very beginning of the document...”
lines 337-340.
Roman Catholics have a principle of “subsidiarity,” dating from 1931: “that which can be accomplished at a small scale of human organization should be, and larger scale organizations—communities, nations, international collectives—should take responsibility only for what cannot be handled at smaller scales.”
The Pope is pretty good at balancing these scales.
pp. 364-368:
“Francis also insightfully connects temporal and spatial scales to emphasize his integrative argument, asserting that “our inability to think seriously about future generations is linked to our inability to broaden the scope of our present interests and to give consideration to those who remain excluded from development.”“
pp. 371-379:
“The document uses scalar levels to develop its moral arguments and to offer a nuanced argument to “every person living on this planet” while also focusing attention enough to distinguish between the rich and powerful who have overwhelmingly caused environmental problems and the poor and marginalized who overwhelmingly suffer the consequences.” “Christian ecological ethicists have much to learn from the integral, scalar approach modeled by Pope Francis.”
But!!!
lines 378-381:
“... like the literature in environmental ethics, the encyclical has little to say about the constructedness of scalar perspectives, and this calls for further work.”
The pope deals inadequately with hierarchies: between male and female, between humans and animals, and between God and the world. (lines 282-383) The pope is not feminist enough, male priests still govern the church. The pope doesn’t realize how he and his church are socially constructing all this. The Pope still thinks that humans are more advanced and valuable than animals. The pope still thinks that human beings are “God’s stewards of other creatures.” (line 413). “The encyclical ultimately maintains a hierarchy of human beings over other creatures on earth” (lines 416-417).
This author does think of himself/herself as being Christian and doing Christian environmental ethics, and might well recognize that in the Genesis stories humans are entrusted with caring for the creation as none of the other creatures is. Humans are placed in a different hierarchy. Why not call them “stewards of the other creatures on Earth”?
The pope still thinks that God transcends the created world, stars and Earth, and that is the worst hierarchy of all. Catholics ought to have respect for the “Father” who is the ultimate authority over all. This is well-established Catholic theology, but it is not the only option.” (lines 428-430). There are views celebrating God’s immanence over God’s transcendence. Think of God as small, as a mother rather than a father.
Well, doesn’t classical theology fully celebrate the immanence of God? God comes to earth in the flesh of the man Jesus, the Christ, born of the woman Mary. Jesus’ central concern is for redemption; he teaches caring for the poor. Doesn’t the pope know that? Isn’t this at the center of Catholic concern? Doesn’t that transcend hierarchies?
lines 453-458
“It would be another step, beyond the scope of this paper, to suggest that Christian ecological ethics will be better served by different scalar assumptions about the relationships between people, between people and animals, and between God and creation.”
So it seems that the author doesn’t want here to go to a Christian ethics envisioned with a correctly limited Jesus that is more immanentist, more feminist, more animal. Whether the author can do that in any convincing way remains to be seen. All we know so far is that we have got the wrong scales and made the wrong constructions. At least maybe we recognize our limitations.
lines 523-525:
“Christian ecological ethics will ultimately be most powerful the more it reflects reality, and ecological theory clearly teaches that the best reflection of reality involves a humble awareness of our own limits.”
We haven’t been given much chance to ”reflect reality” in this paper, at least not to mirror it accurately. Mostly we are told to reflect how everything is our twisting and short-sighted construction.
The author might take a look at:
For Our Common Home: Process-Relational Responses to Laudato si', eds. John B. Cobb, Jr., and Ignacio Castuera. (Anoka, MN: Process Century Press, 2015). Should be available online.
So, in short, the paper can be published as is. It will get some critical approval by a limited set of readers. It will get a lot of critical flak, at least in the minds of readers but they may not think it worth the trouble of replying to. So far as they do, the discussion will be taken a little further forward. If it is published in this form, I doubt that I will think it necessary to recommend it to many scholars in the field. If I do, I will tell them is is good but not outstanding.
Author Response
I’m glad the reviewer found the paper “decent, good” and have tried to use suggestions to make it at least slightly better.
I very much appreciate the push back on my arguments about the social construction of scales. While I suspect the reviewer and I simply disagree on first principles here, the comments have helped me to clarify my argument and to better acknowledge what I am arguing against.
I also appreciate the suggestion to appeal more directly to immanentist theology. This is a really helpful idea, and better mapping Christologies in scalar terms would be a really fascinating project. This is beyond the scope of the present essay, but a worthwhile project I'm taking seriously for future work.
Round 2
Reviewer 2 Report
I think the author has keenly tended to the prior shortcomings of the paper, and has succeeded in a very satisfactory revision, one which reframes the paper clearly, and adds good force to the author's main points. I think these revisions succeed in making this paper a great dialogue partner to challenge Laudato Si' and invite further thoughtful reflection and collaborative thinking.
I found myself nodding in agreement several times early in the paper as I read through the new text. A few quick corrections:
389: delete "a" before "thinking"
392: "carefully"
400: bravo - great point
427: "complementarity"
475: "as" (not "s")
510: well said
I think my only remaining pause comes from the lines starting at 487, since I think that there is probably more attention and encouragement towards God's "immanence" in the encyclical than the author allows. But I would levy that comment as a response, based on a desire to join the fruitful engagement generated by this article, and I don't know that it needs revision to publish this paper.
Author Response
Many thanks to the reviewer for re-reading the paper, for the careful corrections, and for the affirmation that this is an argument worth engaging. Much appreciated!
