Panel: INTERRELIGIOUS APPROACHES TO ECO-JUSTICE AND "WCC" PROPHETIC CALL: SHARED RESPONSES TO ENVIRONMENTAL CHALLENGES AND INEQUALITIES.



214.4 - CULTIVATING AN INTERFAITH INTEGRAL ECOLOGY

AUTHORS:
Durante C. (Saint Peter's University ~ Jersey City, New Jersey ~ United States of America)
Text:
This presentation will argue that ecological injustices persist because the values of the neoliberal ethos have become so ingrained in our system over the course of the past few generations that for most people today, it is the values of this economic paradigm, rather than the values of their faith traditions, that are predominant in governing their social lives and molding their daily lifestyles. For instance, E.F. Schumacher's Buddhist economics (1973) shares much in common with Catholic Social Teaching and many of the ideas he espoused foreshadow those expressed in Laudato Si' (2015), in which Pope Francis adopted the concept of "environmental sin," first expressed in 1997 by Patriarch Bartholomew of the Orthodox Christian tradition, and promotes an Integral Ecology in which the social, economic, cultural and ecological dimensions of reality are understood holistically as inter-related aspects of life on planet earth. Placing Christianity in dialogue with Judaism, Islam and Buddhism, it will be suggested that a good economy ought to be designed in such a way as to provide all members of society with a sufficient degree of well-being and livelihoods that do not cause harm to others and which promote service to the public good of the local communities in which they live. I will suggest that the Catholic Social principle of subsidiarity, which maintains that local communities ought to have authority to manage their own affairs; the Buddhist principle of right livelihood, which asserts that performing certain types of work can be inherently unethical; and prohibitions of usury, or charging interest in money-lending, that are part and parcel of Islamic economics and banking (and which were once upheld by Jews and Christians as well), serve as foundational principles of this new Interfaith Integral Ecology.