Laudato Si’ A Benedictine Encyclical?

Laudato Si'A Benedictine Encyclical? Lucas Briola (bio) As its tenth anniversary approaches, Laudato si': On Care for Our Common Home remains the most quoted encyclical ever written.1 Still, this broad appeal does not come at the expense of distinctively Catholic moorings. Written by a Jesuit pope, Laudato si' is unmistakably Ignatian as readers are asked to choose between the standards of either the "technocratic paradigm" or the "gospel of creation," analogous to the "two standards" in the second week of the Spiritual Exercises.2 Written by a man who took St. Francis of Assisi as his papal namesake, Laudato si'—words taken from the saint—is unmistakably Franciscan in its harmonious, sacramental vision of the poor and nature alike.3 Yet, I've become convinced that Laudato si' is also unmistakably Benedictine in character. After all, as Pope Francis writes in the encyclical: We can also look to the great tradition of monasticism. Originally, it was a kind of flight from the world, an escape from the decadence of the cities. The monks sought the desert, convinced that it was the best place for encountering the presence of God. Later, Saint Benedict of Norcia proposed that his monks live in community, combining prayer and spiritual reading with manual labor (ora et labora). Seeing manual labor as spiritually meaningful proved revolutionary. Personal growth and sanctification came to be sought in the interplay of recollection and work. This way of experiencing work makes [End Page 120] us more protective and respectful of the environment; it imbues our relationship to the world with a healthy sobriety.4 Admittedly, this Benedictine strain remains more subtle than either the Ignatian or Franciscan motifs running through the encyclical. This passage is the only explicit reference to Benedictines in the text. It begs for further development, work that the tenth anniversary of Laudato si' can and should precipitate.5 In Laudete Deum, his recent apostolic exhortation that serves as something like a "sequel" to Laudato si', Pope Francis bemoans that responses to the encyclical since its release "have not been adequate."6 Thus, this work of Benedictine retrieval remains all the more pressing. Care for creation is by no means foreign to the Benedictine tradition.7 St. Gregory's Life of Benedict relays several stories that illustrate St. Benedict's closeness with the natural world. His time in the Subiaco cave, his friendship with the raven, and his mystical vision of the cosmos toward the end of his life all illustrate as much.8 The Benedictine monk was, as Lynn White famously observed, "the first intellectual to get dirt under his fingernails."9 That phrase describes the founder of Benedictines in the United States, Boniface Wimmer, well. As Jerome Oetgen recounts, the abbot "was never above tucking the pectoral cross into his scapular and joining his monks for a day's works in the fields. In Rome he had been called, somewhat disparagingly, 'the farmer-abbot.' He gloried in the name. Along with prayer, work was the second pillar upon which a monk built his life and farmers, he said, were 'the backbone of the nation.'"10 Since [End Page 121] then, Benedictines in the United States—especially women—have deepened this legacy.11 Pope Francis wrote Laudato si' to address the environmental crisis; more enduringly, though, the encyclical diagnoses a broader cultural crisis and proposes an integrated, truly catholic vision of the created order in response. A term that lies at the heart of Laudato si', "integral ecology," names this intention (LS chap. 4). To understand that term is to understand the encyclical. Integral ecology names the ways in which "everything is interconnected": how one's relationship with God, neighbor, and creation are all intertwined, as well as how the environmental crisis connects to a range of crises, from a broken economic system to attacks on human life in all its stages to a spiritual malaise.12 For their part, Benedictines witness to an integrated vision of life, directing all of life toward the following of Christ. Moreover, in a way that Laudato si' invites, the Benedictine community, as a "school for the Lord's service," instills a set of practical habits and dispositions...