engleski

Religion and Ecology in Croatia

In solving the ecological crisis of mankind, that was caused by progress and modern technology of the modernism, the moral crisis of the individual and the society, and poverty in the second half of the past century, along with scientific, social, cultural and economic institutions, religion got actively involved as well. And as for the activity of the Catholic Church in Croatia with respect to deliberation on ecology, two periods can be discerned: the first one until 1990, when the Catholic Church, as well as other religious communities, did not have the right of public activity, and the second, which has been under way since 1990, as of establishing of the democratic Croatian state. In that period, the theoretical ecological-religious and bioethical speech was emphasized on the one side, and, on the other side, minor empirical research that examined the complex connection of ecological topics with religious ones. In the first period until 1990, regarding the appearance of the phenomenon of the ecological crisis in 1972, at the Stockholm "Conference on the Human Environment", when the ecological crisis actually became the world crisis, which fell under the care of the United Nations, the Catholic Church, as well as other religious communities in Croatia, could not participate in the discussion even at the theoretical level, because, in the totalitarian communist regimes, they were not accredited. In those years, however, there were attempts in affirmation of civil citizens' associations, but without significant results, while, in 1961, the Croatian Ecological Society (Hrvatsko društvo ekologa) was founded, which cooperated in the naturalistic and ecological magazine "Nature" ("Priroda"). After establishing of the Croatian state and democratization of the society in 90's of the past century, religious institutes arose, as well as civil departments at faculties, that initiated courses on ecology and scientific magazines that focused their attention on environment preservation, sustainable development and relationship of the society and ecology. Catholic faculties organized religious scientific and professional symposiums, developed educational and instructive projects on ecology, published studies and numerous papers on ecological ethics, on sustainable development (referring to Brundtland - report from 1987 entitled "Our Common Future"), and social ecology. In the new pluralistic atmosphere, various associations of the civil society appeared, among which, the religious movements for ecology as well. The religious scientific public in Croatia particularly monitored, took as a theme and, as possible, implemented the ecological guidelines of the documents from the United Nation's Conference on Environment and Development in Rio de Janeiro in 1992, from the summit on sustainable development in Johannesburg, RIO+10 from 2002 and the UN Conference on sustainable development RIO+20 from 2012. In the religion / Christian approach, in which theocentrism and anthropocentrism is advocated, and biocentrism and ecocentrism are criticized, the dialog of religion, science and ecology is particularly emphasized. Religious deliberation is focused on God, nature and man, with reference being made to the Biblical tradition (Genesis 1:28 and Genesis 2:15), to the church Christian tradition and to the actual teaching on ecology in Papal documents from the end of the 20th and the beginning of the 21st century. The starting point is that a believer, aware of his sinfulness, actively and responsibly advocates healthy environment, because he believes in God the creator of man, nature and the whole universe, while man and the whole world was redeemed by Christ. Man is in the center of creation, while the earth is given to him by God to cultivate and protect it responsibly, because the world and everything created have their ultimate goal in God. The earth is not man's private ownership, but the earth is res omnia – the heritage of humanity, and man's duty, on the other hand, is to care for nature and steward it responsibly, and to assure that every thing in nature achieves its own purpose.

Religion, Ecology, Croatia

nije evidentirano