Synodality won’t be relevant to younger generations unless our ‘walking together’ addresses the issue that will soon have the greatest impact upon their lives.
That was Columban ecologist Fr Sean McDonagh‘s stark warning to a Zoom gathering of over 160 people on Thursday 27th January.
Organised by the Association of Catholics in Ireland (ACI) and supported by the ACP (Association of Catholic Priests), the event drew the largest attendance so far in ACI’s Zoomed series of Synodality discussions.
Resisting the tendency to look to clergy to lead the charge on climate awareness, Fr McDonagh argued that instead those with knowledge of and expertise in climate science and ecology should be invited into parish discussions, and even to give homilies that relate the Gospels to those concerns. Clergy generally do not have the necessary training.
Necessary adaptation such as the retrofitting of homes and the radical reduction of agricultural methane emissions and other lifestyle changes will require local discussion and action. Practical issues such as the heating and lighting of church buildings will also need to be discussed.
All of these matters are suitable for discussion in the very different church culture that synodality will oblige us to build at parish level.
This should also be an ecumenical effort, he insisted, because an effective response to the climate challenge will involve entire local communities. For everyone the climate crisis will involve lifestyle change which is called for by the Gospel also.
According to Fr McDonagh, Ireland’s record on climate change is also in dire need of improvement and the country appears bent on maintaining methane-intensive animal farming at the expense of the plant-based emphasis that ecologists and human health experts now advise. Incredibly, Ireland also unnecessarily imports vast quantities of vegetables and fruit that could be home-grown.
He warns that the Government needs to limit the building of data centres in Ireland which provide few jobs but consume so much energy that Ireland’s power grid could be in danger of collapse.
Parish Climate Committees are needed, according to Fr Sean. Their remit could include the retrofitting of churches to make them less dependent upon fossil fuels for heating – e.g. by installing solar panels linked to the electricity grid on church roofs. Church lighting could also be funded in the same way, in theory.
Visit Sean McDonagh’s blog: http://earthcaremission.wordpress.com
Fr Sean’s Powerpoint presentation: 2022 January 17 powerpoint on book chapter 1
