Laudato Si / Praised Be

A very sensible and thorough discourse of climate change and sustainability in the context of Catholic Christian faith. It is however disappointing that this book, published in 2015 has not been more influential. In this area the world needs leadership and Pope Francis has a great opportunity to address the world's Catholics as a cohort that, together could be highly influential in influencing and encouraging greater progress. It's still not too late!

— David Sprott

No one could ever dispute the environmental or ecological credentials of Fr Sean McDonagh. The Irish Columban has been speaking out on these issues for many years, and has offered a steady stream of well-written and well-received books over the years. In fact he published a commentary on Laudato Si’ only last year. Nine contributors, all with equally impressive credentials, offer essays and Fr McDonagh provides an introduction. This introduction is a broad and enlightening summary of the issue of climate change and environmental destruction. He begins with some of the previous papal teaching, citing in particular Rerum Novarum (1891), Pacem in Terris (1963), and Populorum Progressio (1967). He give an explanation of Genesis and how it was understood from the sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries; he discusses the Conference on Climate Change organised by the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace and finally offers some suggestions for future directions. Fr Dermot Lane offers some anthropological and theological reflection in his usual clear, insightful manner. John Feehan begins his essay on biodiversity with a quotation from the Martyrolohy of Oengus and a reference to the death of St Molua, ‘Mo Lua, son of Ocha, has died, And that is what the living things bewail him, for he never killed a living thing, great nor small’ (p. 55). Would that it could be said of any of us today! Michael Punch reflects on the meaning of the encyclical for the urban context. Lorna Gold of Trocaire sums up the encyclical by saying that ‘it doesn’t seek to overturn established scientific fact … rather it casts light on what science and life experience is already saying’ (p. 94). Sr Brigid Reynolds and Fr Seán Healy study the document from a social justice perspective and Peader Kirby looks at the encyclical in the context of power and the current global order. John Sweeney offers an essay on the science and how climate change is a current reality. Fr Donal Dorr puts Laudato Si’ in the

— Fr John-Paul Sheridan