The Virtue of Sobriety: Integral Ecology in Its Full Flourishing Jennifer E. Miller Notre Dame Seminary New Orleans, Louisiana

Introduction

Pope Francis's 2015 social encyclical entitled Laudato Si' (LS) introduces a new term into Catholic social teaching, "integral ecology," and with it, gives an impetus to the further development of theologically based virtue ethics, or virtuous morality, as found in the virtue of sobriety. In order to understand the term "integral ecology" and its implications in sobriety properly, it is necessary to situate it within the context of earlier social encyclicals. Thus, I will first review the social encyclicals to show how integral human development forms the background for integral ecology. Then I will further investigate the meaning of integral ecology by following the pontiff 's Scriptural exposition of the natural moral law. Finally, I will conclude by demonstrating how the praxis of integral ecology, rooted within the natural moral law, comes to maturity in the virtue of sobriety. Although there has been a suggestion that proportionalist moral reasoning might be one way of understanding the moral implications of integral ecology,¹ through careful examination of the text, Pope Francis's call for integral ecology can then be understand as the summons to a full flourishing of the natural moral law in the virtue of sobriety, needed by society especially to realize this broadened idea of integral human development within the context of all of Creation.

The Context of Integral Ecology

"Integral human development,"² meaning "the context within which … an adequate approach to ecology can be conceived,"³ was first introduced by Blessed Pope Paul VI in 1967, two years after the close of the Second Vatican Council.⁴ In contrast to earlier methodology: "[Paul VI] did not take the current conception of economic development as a starting point and then modify it. Instead, he laid down certain basic criteria by which we can measure to what extent any changes brought about in society deserve to be called authentic human development, … [thus providing] a heuristic notion of development, a framework or anticipation of the 'shape' of genuine development."⁵ This framework of genuine development, christened by the Pontiff "integral human development," insisted upon promoting the good of every man and of the whole man⁶ in the "transition from less human conditions to those which are more human."⁷ In order to ensure the integral nature of such development, it enumerated four aspects of progress that required respect and promotion: economic, social, cultural, and spiritual.⁸ Paul VI saw the elaboration of these four interrelated aspects of human development as constitutive of the Church's contribution to society: "The Church, … which 'seeks but … to carry forward the work of Christ himself under the lead of the befriending Spirit,' … wishes to help [men] to obtain their full flowering and that is why she offers [them] what she possesses as her characteristic attribute: a global vision of man and of the human race."⁹

This global vision of the development of the human person, emphasizing the relationship of the various aspects of integral human development, as well as that between the development of each individual person and that of society as a whole, became a constant reference point elaborated in later encyclicals. St. John Paul II's 1987 social encyclical Sollicitudo Rei Socialis (SRS), written to coincide with the twentieth anniversary of Populorum Progressio (PP),¹⁰ begins by stating that "the aim of the present reflection is to emphasize, through a theological investigation of the present world, the need for a fuller and more nuanced concept of development."¹¹ The idea of integral human development here becomes more Scripturally, and thus more theologically, rooted. It emphasizes the revelation of the "specific nature of man"¹² in the Creation story of Genesis and reveals and establishes the importance of the virtue of solidarity in having and being for such development.¹³ Caritas in Veritate, Pope Benedict XVI's 2009 social encyclical, also written to commemorate PP, continues to insist that "progress of a merely economic and technological kind is insufficient."¹⁴ He highlights the importance of civil...