The Roman Catholic Tradition in Conversation with Thomas Berry’s Fourfold Wisdom
Journal Title: Religions - Year 2015, Vol 6, Issue 3
Abstract
Taking the threatening anthropogenic global environmental destruction—the anthropocene—as a starting point, this paper examines the Catholic tradition, which has remained relatively indifferent to this looming crisis, asking what might help it to change its focus from a decided human ecology to one that counts the human as an integral part of the larger natural ecology. Thomas Berry, whose teachings underlie this work, suggests that since the tradition has grown out of a cosmological perspective that places the human being at the center of ethical deliberations and separate from the natural world, it needs to rely on other Earth-centered and ecological expressions to help Catholics to discover more harmonious avenues of being on Earth, which he describes as a fourfold wisdom—the wisdoms of indigenous peoples, classical traditions, women, and science. Through a critical weaving of these wisdoms into a conversation with the Catholic tradition, this article examines the efficacy of the fourfold wisdom to transform the tradition into a more Earth-honoring expression. While this work concludes that the fourfold wisdom is effecting change where engaged, it also reflects on the challenges and opportunities this engagement faces in light of current realities within the Catholic tradition.
Authors and Affiliations
Simon Appolloni
Keywords
Related Articles
- EP ID EP25458
- DOI https://doi.org/10.3390/rel6030794
- Views 282
- Downloads 9
Religion and Depression in South Korea: A Comparison between Buddhism, Protestantism, and Roman Catholicism
Over the past few years, the occurrence of depression in South Korea has significantly increased. Even though Buddhism was the main religion in historical South Korea, Christianity has recently emerged as a dominant fa...
Producing High Priests and Princesses: The Father-Daughter Relationship in the Christian Sexual Purity Movement
This article describes and analyzes father-daughter purity balls in the context of the contemporary U.S. American conservative Christian sexual purity movement, with an emphasis on taking the self-understanding of thos...
The Concept of Periphery in Pope Francis’ Discourse: A Religious Alternative to Globalization?
Since the beginning of his mandate, Pope Francis has used the concept of periphery as a metaphor of social marginality. However, the notion of periphery also seems to target the asymmetries generated by the liberal ver...
The Invisible Path of Karma in a Himalayan Purificatory Rite
Indic rites of purification aim to negate the law of karma by removing the residues of malignant past actions from their patrons. This principle is exemplified in the Kahika Mela, a rarely studied religious festival of...
Religions and Psychotherapies—Special Issue
The birth of modern psychotherapies—along with the birth of psychology as a science on one side and with psychoanalysis, other depth-psychological treatments and behavioral therapies in addition to medical treatments o...