The apocalypse is green now: environmentalism and religion in the construction of the new landscape of the end of the world

Abstract

This project aims to study the impact on the Catholic religion of a particular apocalyptic conception of environmentalist origin. The discursive competence for the production of the legitimate eschatological knowledge has been historically a specific topic of the religion. Not anymore. At least since Hiroshima. In modernity, a growing number of non-religious actors and social institutions offer narratives about what should happen in the end of the world - and a portion of the so-called "environmentalists" are included here. Faced with this, in danger of losing his post as the producer of one more salvation good (as has already happened in social assistance, psychological orientation, in philosophical formation, artistic culture etc. - which forms part of a process of secularization), the Church seeks to respond. That can happen through the refutation of environmentalist and secular discourse not based on the Catholic prophetic and doctrinal roots, or through its incorporation, seeking to reinterpret or translate this discourse in religious terms. Since Catholicism is a religion that writes, that is, that keeps a body of experts who discuss, record and publish the contentions in which they engage, their answers and questions to the environmental apocalyptic discourses can be submitted to sociological analysis by this project. Yet, beyond the understanding of the internal dynamics and transformations that Catholic doctrine must face in this debate, this project also aims to contribute, in a second plane, for the polemic discussion of the theory of secularization and its relevance to the contemporary Sociology of Religion. (AU)