Bishop Arnold: Laudate Deum will be a firm call for action for creation

By Lisa Zengarini

On October 4, the Feast of St Francis of Assisi concluding the annual Season of Creation, Pope Francis will release “Laudate Deum” (“Praise God”), a new document intended to update his Encyclical Letter ‘Laudato Si’ on Care for Our Common Home.’

According to Bishop John Arnold, Lead Bishop for Environmental Issues of the Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales (CBCEW), the follow-up of the landmark 2015 document on the protection of the environment and the dangers of climate change, “will be strong and will give an urgent warning” for immediate action.

In a video interview published on the CBCEW website ahead of the release of “Laudate Deum”, the Bishop of Salford explains why the time for renewed action for the environment is now.

Eight years on targets haven't been achieved

“The unfortunate thing is that eight years on, several COP meetings later, we really have not been achieving the targets that those COP meetings have agreed, and the damage is not being reduced. In fact, in some ways, it’s increasing”, Bishop Arnold says. “Some of the predictions of the environmentalists about what will be happening to the climate are proving to have been, in a way, simplified, and they’re actually accelerating faster now than those environmentalists were thinking”.

Bishop Arnold remarks that there are many reasons for action now: “Every continent now has been struck and even in this country, we’ve seen droughts and we’ve seen unseasonal weather. It’s affecting our crops”, he says.  

Scientific evidence on man-related climate change irrefutable

As for those who have a more sceptical view on the relation between climate change and human activity, Bishop Arnold notes that “the evidence presented to us by people who really do understand the environment is irrefutable, that we are clearly going downhill rapidly.”

We are stewards of creation

Echoing Pope Francis’ words, the English bishop therefore reiterates, that “each and every one of us has our part to play” to address the crisis: “They may seem to be trivial measures that we take in order to save electricity, save water, eat less red meat, all these sorts of things, all small in themselves. But if we put them together, then they do make a big difference,” he remarks. “What we’ve got to look to is system change and the ending of fossil fuels – because they really are the most dangerous element in global climate change – we’ve got to learn to live without fossil fuels.”

A Christian duty

From a Christian perspective, Bishop Arnold recalls that we can’t take the most important commandments seriously unless we include nature and the environment: “If we’re really going to love our neighbour, we’ve got to look after the world in which we live because too many people are suffering through climate change and we’ve plundered other nations for our profit, and that’s got to change”.

In this same perspective, the Catholic Church too can do more for the environment, also in the field of education. “We’ve got to press ahead and make sure that we are a voice – a voice to our democratic nation that says we must change our policies and our life as a nation”, Bishop Arnold concludes.

Source: https://www.cbcew.org.uk/