ROME (OSV News): The International Theological Commission published a new document on September 2 calling for ecological conversion due to “sin against creation and the Creator.”
The more than 29,000 word text, titled, “Caring for Our Common Home: A Responsible and Fraternal Response to the Triune God”, was approved by a majority of the commission’s members in a July vote and authorised for release by Víctor Manuel Cardinal Fernández, Prefect of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, after being presented to Pope Leo XIV.
More than a decade after the release of Pope Francis’s landmark encyclical, Laudato Si’, the theological commission goes beyond the late pope’s use of the phrase “ecological sin” by proposing what it describes as more precise terminology: “sin against creation and the Creator.”
“As Pope Leo XIV emphasised, we believe it is appropriate to favour a formulation that simultaneously implies both the harm inflicted on nature and the failure to recognise, or even the rejection, of the Creator’s plan, which entails entrusting to human beings the stewardship and care of our common home,” the document says.
“We propose understanding this sin against our Common Home as a ‘sin against creation and against the Creator,’ insofar as it violates the meaning of creation intended by God the Creator.”
Challenges of ‘ecological turning point’
The commission explained that by failing to care for “our Common Home” with sufficient wisdom and long-term vision, “we not only fail to respect God’s plan and mistreat creation, but we also harm our neighbours, especially the poorest and future generations.”
It says, “Sin against creation, therefore, concerns our relationship with God the Creator, with our neighbours, and with creation itself, distorting the three relationships that define us.”
The document—published in Italian—is divided into three chapters, describing a “threefold transformation” in culture’s relationship to nature since the 16th century: the loss of the perception of nature as God’s creation; the emergence of an increasingly anthropocentric and predatory vision in the relationship between humanity and Creation; and the spread of an ecological crisis on a planetary level.
Monsignor Piero Coda, the secretary general of the International Theological Commission, said that the document’s “proposal to ‘understand sin against the environment in a similar way to how the notions of social sin and structures of sin have progressively consolidated’ is of particular importance.”
Monsignor Coda wrote in a commentary published by Vatican News: “This underscores the profound seriousness of the ‘ecological turning point’ that challenges our conscience today, calling for a conversion that—in order to be fully effective on the cultural, social, economic, and political levels—must first and foremost find expression on the spiritual and religious levels.”
