Environmentalism Critiqued: Pope Benedict’s Use of ‘Human Ecology’ to Meet the Challenge of Environmentalism as a Collectivist ‘Political Religion’ for a New World Order

D. Brian Scarnecchia

doi:10.21697/CSP.2024.28.1.07

Published: 2024-11-25

No. 28 (2024)

Environmentalism Critiqued: Pope Benedict’s Use of ‘Human Ecology’ to Meet the Challenge of Environmentalism as a Collectivist ‘Political Religion’ for a New World Order

D. Brian Scarnecchia

Christianity-World-Politics

Section: Articles

https://doi.org/10.21697/CSP.2024.28.1.07

Abstract

The environmental movement has been a blessing and a curse: a blessing in so far as it highlights the need to respect the balance of nature which implies acknowledging nature’s normativity; but a curse in that it conceals an agenda to create a collectivist political/civic religion as part of a new world order. Part One, “Green Camouflage,” tracks the ways and means an international club of the powerful have used the laudable goals of conserving nature and providing for a “sustainable development” to lever the transfer of national sovereignty away from nation states beginning with those in the Developing World to regional and international venues so that these powerful networks may more easily manage and exploit the Developing World and eventually the whole world. Part Two shows how Pope Benedict XVI has helped to demystify this agenda hidden in a cloak of green by reinvigorating natural law jurisprudence transposing it into a new key as “human ecology” in tune with the new evangelization while at the same time calling those of Catholic inspiration to work together to protect and promote human ecology, correctly understood.

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Scarnecchia, D. B. (2024). Environmentalism Critiqued: Pope Benedict’s Use of ‘Human Ecology’ to Meet the Challenge of Environmentalism as a Collectivist ‘Political Religion’ for a New World Order. Christianity-World-Politics, (28), 111–131. https://doi.org/10.21697/CSP.2024.28.1.07

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