ScholarWorks@중앙대학교

초록

Since Pope Francis announced the ecological encyclicals ‘Laudato si’(2015), eight statements were published annually by the Korean Catholic Church on the Day of ‘Prayer for the Protection of Creatures’. In this paper I examined the Catholic Church's perception and response to environmental issues through the text structure and keywords. The main contents discussed are summarized below. First, eight statements begin with a single sentence representing the subject. In addition, many words and metaphorical expressions were used by quoting the papal encyclicals. Secondly, nature and humans are regarded as creatures made by God. As a result, protecting nature and the poor is a task that humans must do since god ordered so. Also it is recognized as a human sin to destroy nature and protecting them is the task of believers. Third, the structure of the statements consists of ‘the background of the presentation-situation-solution-request’. With the onset of climate action in 2019 and the outbreak of COVID-19 in 2020, it has been confirmed that solutions to environmental problems have changed from personal solutions (repentance, moderation, lifestyle changes, etc.) to active participation in government policies. This is the result of recognizing that environmental problems are social, political, and economic problems. I tried to take a critical approach to what kind of awareness and effort religion needs, to realistically solve environmental problems. It will have to constantly consider new countermeasures because education and appeals to believers to participate have clear limitations in changing society as a whole.

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