Last week’s post examined restorative justice and sexual abuse. Today’s post explores restorative justice in the context of the harm inflicted on the earth. While restorative justice here is not explicitly linked to canon law, it demonstrates how the restorative justice approach has broadened to issues beyond the penal justice system and is integrated into the Church’s social teaching on justice.
Understanding the dominion mandate is essential for understanding the integration of restorative justice into the Church’s social teaching. The dominion mandate is a concept rooted in the creation account in Genesis. God created humans in His own image and likeness and gave them the mandate to fill the earth, subdue it, and have dominion over all living creatures (Genesis 1:26-28; cf. Genesis 9:1-5 and Matthew 28:18-20). Although the dominion mandate creates a moral imperative for the stewardship of creation and a responsibility to care for the earth, it has been largely misconstrued as an invitation to exploit, abuse, and destroy creation, leading to the ecological crisis.
As a recap, restorative justice is based on three pillars: harms and needs, obligations, and engagement.
The popes have acknowledged the harm that humans have inflicted on creation and called for the need to care for the earth.
Pope John Paul II maintains that human “exploitation of the earth not only for industrial but also for military purposes and the uncontrolled development of technology outside the framework of a long-range authentically humanistic plan often bring with them a threat to man’s natural environment, alienate him in his relations with nature and remove him from nature” (Redemptor hominis, 15).
In his 2008 address to the clergy of Bolzano-Bressannone, Pope Benedict XVI affirms: “The brutal consumption of creation begins where God is not, where matter is henceforth only material for us, where we ourselves are the ultimate demand, where the whole is merely our property and we consume it for ourselves alone. And the wasting of creation begins when we no longer recognise any need superior to our own, but see only ourselves. It begins when there is no longer any concept of life beyond death, where in this life we must grab hold of everything and possess life as intensely as possible, where we must possess all that is possible to possess.”
No other pope has been as proactive on environmental matters as Pope Francis, who dedicated an entire encyclical, Laudato Si’, ‘On Care for our Common Home’. Pope Francis argues that the earth “now cries out to us because of the harm we have inflicted on her by our irresponsible use and abuse of the goods with which God has endowed her. We have come to see ourselves as her lords and masters, entitled to plunder her at will. The violence present in our hearts, wounded by sin, is also reflected in the symptoms of sickness evident in the soil, in the water, in the air and in all forms of life” (Laudato Si’, 2).
The encyclical is also a clear symbol of ecumenical environmentalism, as Pope Francis dedicates three paragraphs to reflections on the environment provided by Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew, the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople, the first among equals (primus inter pares) among the various leaders of the Eastern Orthodox Church. Patriarch Bartholomew establishes the relationship between the destruction of our environment and sin, arguing that to commit a crime against the natural world is a sin against ourselves and a sin against God” (Laudato Si’, 8). Pope Francis continues the discussion on sin when he affirms that sin ruptured human life’s three basic and closely interconnected relationships with God, our neighbour, and the earth. Thus, he offers some ways to address the harm caused to creation.
In line with the second pillar of restorative justice (obligations), he emphasises that God’s command is an invitation to stewardship, a responsibility for the earth that requires that humans “must respect the laws of nature and the delicate equilibria existing between the creatures of this world” (Laudato Si’, 68). Second, he encourages us to emulate Christ, who “lived in full harmony with creation” and “sanctified human labour and endowed it with a special significance for our development” (Laudato Si’, 98). Third, against “a misguided anthropocentrism”, he calls for a renewal of humanity, which leads to the renewal of the relationship between humans and nature. In his words, “there can be no ecology without an adequate anthropology” (Laudato Si’, 118).
Fourth, he recommends improving interpersonal relationships as a way of healing our relationship with nature and the environment (Laudato Si’, 119). Fifth, he calls for a proper understanding of work, focusing on the relationship underpinning what is other than ourselves(Laudato Si’, 124-126). Finally, he encourages promoting small-scale food production systems that use a modest amount of land and produce less waste (Laudato Si’, 129).
In order to achieve these, he recommends five types of dialogue: Dialogue on the environment in the international community (Laudato Si’,164-175), dialogue for new national and local policies (Laudato Si’, 176-181), dialogue and transparency in decision-making (Laudato Si’, 182-188), politics and economy in dialogue for human fulfilment (Laudato Si’, 189-198), and religions in dialogue with science (Laudato Si’, 199-201). The pope also recommends ecological education and spirituality (Laudato Si’, 202-246). This corresponds with the third pillar of restorative justice, namely, engagement.
Eli McCarthy summarises restorative justice in Laudato Si’. In his words, “Pope Francis draws deeply on a restorative justice approach in Laudato Si’. He offers three general lines of thought to set the restorative orientation: who we are as humans, the value of all living beings and creation as a whole, and entering into dialogue with all people. He also attends to key components of restorative justice, such as focusing on harm as a violation to persons and relationships more so than to laws, learning obligations and responsibilities through attending to the needs of all parties, including all stakeholders in the process, and identifying how to heal the harm done to relationships more so than determining punishments.”
May God continue to help us🙏🏾
K’ọdị🙋🏾♂️
