The Catholic Church: 50 years of doctrinal positioning
The Catholic Church, accused by Lynn White (1967) of being involved in global environmental crises, gradually built a philosophical and spiritual response to respect for creation by remobilizing the ancient tensions between the two main Christian traditions of nature, anthropocentrism and theocentrism. With the papal encyclical of François Laudato si (2015), the Catholic Church now preaches sobriety, reduction of consumption and commits believers all over the world to adopt environmentally more virtuous behaviours. This doctrinal trajectory is here analysed: after a culmination of 50 years of religious thought on environment, Christian ecology is confronted with the recent history of ecology and especially that of political ecology. Belonging to the city, the Church has built her discourse in three major stages according to the currents of thought (including Anthropocene) that cross civil society, major environmental disasters (Chernobyl, climate change) and large political scenes like the Earth Summits of Rio 1992 and 2012.