Our Mother Earth: A Review

Our Mother Earth by Pope Francis (OSV, 2019)

Regardless of how you practice Christianity, when you’re studying the intersection of ecology and theology, it’s helpful to pay attention to the words of one who has the ear of over one billion Christians worldwide. So the second book I read about the Christian’s relationship to environmentalism is a collection of writings and discourses by the head of the Catholic Church, Pope Francis.

In 2015, the Pope published his encyclical on the environment titled Laudato si’. (An encyclical is a papal letter sent to the bishops of the Roman Catholic Church.) Our Mother Earth, on the other hand, is a short book that gathers some of his printed and spoken words about the environment and weaves them together to “set forth a Christian vision of ecology.”

What is this vision? A few key ideas emerge as you work your way through the book.

Over and again, the Pope calls Christians to a lifestyle of simplicity, solidarity, and farsightedness. To elaborate, he espouses simplicity over “compulsive consumerism” (p. 88); solidarity because “we live . . . in communion with all that surrounds us” (p. 54); and farsightedness because living for ourselves and for today has proved to be a damaging approach to the earth’s resources (see p. 26).

Another key idea is that what we know needs to become what we do: “An awareness of the gravity of today’s cultural and ecological crisis must be translated into new habits” (pp. 31–32).

But the most eye-opening concept of this book for me was the connection the Pope made between environmental degradation and injustice—particularly injustice toward the poor. What does how we treat creation have to do with how we treat people? This was a question I had while reading, and it’s a question I’m still wrestling to answer. But Our Mother Earth challenged me—and made me squirm a little bit, if I’m honest—to consider whether Pope Francis might be right:

“A Church that forgets to pray for the natural environment is a Church that refuses to offer food and drink to suffering humanity.”

Whoa. If this is true, then this is something I need to spend way more time considering, especially in light of passages like Matthew 25:31–46. And, friend, if you’re like me and connections like these are new, then you might squirm if you read this book too. But it isn’t long, it’s fairly easy to digest, and I found it to be a necessary challenge to my comfortable mindset and an important launching point for further study. 💛

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Our Mother Earth by Pope Francis