An Important Inter-Religious Dialogue

It has been well observed that we should wage war not against the natural world, which has been created  by God, but against those movements and energies of the essential powers within us which are disordered and unnatural and hostile to the natural world.  — St Maximus the Confessor

The Artic: Mirror of Life demonstrates how religious leaders can come together and work for the common good. Realizing the significance of the melting artic ice, His Ecumenical Holiness Bartholomew, the Patriarch of Constantinople, requested that the seventh RSE (Religion, Science and the Environment Movement) symposium take place at Ilulissat Icefjord, Greenland because what can be observed there “most accurately mirrors our global predicament.”

Katerina has already provided for us a quote from Pope Benedict’s words to the symposium. I thought it would be good to indicate some of the symposium’s other highlights: 

• Sept 7, Silent Prayer — Religious Leaders prayed “in their own traditions for the future of the planet in the face of the damage mankind is doing to God’s creation on Earth”
• Sept 7, Keynote Speech by Metropolitan John of Pergamon
• Sept 8, Plenary on “Impacts on the Artic and its People”
• Sept 9, Plenary on “Overcoming our Addiction to Fossil Fuels”
• Sept 10, Plenary on “Alternative Reflections on the Mirror of Life”
• Sept 11, Panel discussion on “Military in the Artic”
• Sept 12, Prayer Service by His Holiness Patriarch Bartholomew
• Sept 12, Dialogue Between Religion and Science by Metropolitan John of Pergamon and Dr Antonio Nobre, chaired by Bruce Clark. 

This symposium has had and continues to have significance for the Catholic Church. In the previous Adriatic Sea Symposium (2002), Patriarch Bartholomew and Pope John Paul II signed the Common Declaration on Environmental Ethics, where they proclaimed:

Respect for creation stems from respect for human life and dignity. It is on the basis of our recognition that the world is created by God that we can discern an objective moral order within which to articulate a code of environmental ethics. In this perspective, Christians and all other believers have a specific role to play in proclaiming moral values and in educating people in ecological awareness, which is none other than responsibility towards self, towards others, towards creation.

What is required is an act of repentance on our part and a renewed attempt to view ourselves, one another, and the world around us within the perspective of the divine design for creation. The problem is not simply economic and technological; it is moral and spiritual. A solution at the economic and technological level can be found only if we undergo, in the most radical way, an inner change of heart, which can lead to a change in lifestyle and of unsustainable patterns of consumption and production. A genuine conversion in Christ will enable us to change the way we think and act.