Italy, Germany, Comece

Italy: message of the bishopsThe environmental impact of so-called consumer society “is becoming insupportable for the planet and for the human population that inhabits it. It imposes on man the need for a radical rethink”. That’s the gist of the Message that the Italian Bishops’ Conference (CEI) has issued to mark the third Day for the Safeguard of the Creation (1st September 2008). The theme this year is: “A new sobriety for inhabiting the earth”. “Today – urge the bishops – the Earth is threatened by environmental degradation on a vast scale, in which the excessive exploitation of essential resources” is inextricably bound up “with various forms of pollution”. What emerges from the “environmental question” is “a threefold need for justice: towards future generations, towards the poor, and towards the world as a whole”. The bishops therefore make a “strong appeal”: only “by adopting a sober lifestyle”, as exhorted by the Pope at Epiphany this year, “will it be possible to establish a just and sustainable order”. Here, according to the Italian Church, “important scope is opened up for the commitment of the ecclesial communities: the educational dimension, which has always characterized their action, must now be expressed also in their capacity to form people in sustainable lifestyles”, by reducing inessential consumption, by learning “to satisfy essential needs in a reasonable way”, and by fostering “in new forms this tradition of essentiality that characterises so many religious communities”. What’s needed, fundamentally, is an “ecological conversion”, which, in the CEI’s view, consists in “promoting awareness of all those mechanisms for the reduction of environmental impact placed at our disposal by science and technology, in such fields as mobility, heating and lighting”, and in the “exploitation of renewable and clean energy sources”.Germany: responsibility for the creation”Today climate change undoubtedly represents the greatest risk for the life of present and future generations”, declares the Archbishop of Munich, the Most Rev. Reinhard Marx, in presenting a programme for the protection of the environment being implemented by the German Catholic Church. Since climate change “poses so serious a challenge for responsibility for the creation and for justice – he explains -, in September 2006 the German bishops asked a group of experts to draft a document on ‘Climate change: central element of global, inter-generational and ecological justice”. The document, since published by the German bishops, evaluates – Archbishop Marx continues – the phenomenon of climate change and its consequences “from the global and long-term point of view, in the perspective of Christian ethics on sustainability”. Central to the issue is the “co-responsibility of the Churches”, because, as Archbishop Marx underlines, “Christian witness regards not only the level of ethical reflection, but also that of shared commitment to justice, expressed also by personally putting into practice measures for the protection of the climate”. In the view of the Archbishop of Munich, this co-responsibility is born “from the Church’s mission to proclaim the Gospel to every created being”. The Church, concludes the archbishop, “aims at man’s integral salvation, body and soul. So commitment to the creation is based on a precise theological foundation”.COMECE: working group on climateA Christian reflection on the policies of the European Union in terms of climate change: that is the aim of a working group specially created by COMECE (Commission of the Bishops’ Conferences of the European Community). The group recently met for the first time in Brussels under the chairmanship of Franz Fischler, former European Commissioner for Agriculture. “In March 2007 – says a statement put out by COMECE – the EU committed itself to reach by 2020 a 20% reduction of its greenhouse gas emissions. The recent agreement reached at the Bali Conference enabled the implementation of the new global goals for the post-Kyoto period”. The Bishops of the European Community thus “hope that Christians will assume their responsibility in facing this fundamental challenge for humanity”. And “to contribute to this reflection, they officially decided on 23 November to set up an ad hoc Working Group on ‘EU climate change policies and Christian lifestyle'”. The group, which consists of ten European personalities from politics and science, will pursue three main objectives: first, “presenting the COMECE Bishops with an overview of the role of the EU in fighting climate change in Europe as well as in international negotiations”; second, “identifying the possible consequences on citizens’ daily life, if the necessary policy instruments are implemented”; and third, “evaluating from a Christian point of view the opportunities which could emerge from a different and more environment-friendly lifestyle”. The working group will deliver its report to the bishops of COMECE next autumn. In the meantime a mid-term report is expected to be submitted to the bishops in March, on the occasion of their plenary assembly.