Bishop Davies: Catholic teachers have key role in countering 'practical relativism' highlighted in Laudato si

Catholic teachers have a key role in countering the "deadly threat" of practical relativism highlighted by Pope Francis in his new encyclical letter on the environment, the Bishop of Shrewsbury has said.

In his first public comments on Laudato si, the Rt Rev Mark Davies said the letter published last week shed light on the vital role of the Catholic teachers in sharing with new generations the wisdom of God's plan in Creation.

Among these were the restoration of the sense of a created order in which each human being has a purpose, a vocation, he said during a homily at a Mass for Catholic teachers of the Diocese of Shrewsbury.

The task was urgent because of the spread through western societies of "practical relativism", which was identified by Pope Francis in Laudato si.

"The Holy Father in his 180-page letter has not followed trends or theories, as headlines have suggested, but offers a vision of humanity as part of a created order," Bishop Davies said at the Mass at Chester Catholic High School on Wednesday.

"The world is not a meaningless result of blind chance, as many of our young people are being taught today, it is the result of a thought in the mind of God and that is true of every one of us. We have a place in God's plan."

"When human beings fail to find their true place in this world, Pope Francis says, they misunderstand themselves and they end up acting against themselves," the Bishop said, adding that the Catechism of the Catholic Church also warned the faithful of the danger of disregarding man's wounded nature resulting from Original Sin, particularly in the field of education.

"We misunderstand the world if we do not see ourselves as part of a created order based on wisdom and goodness," he said.

"This plan and purpose has been disturbed by sin but is still recognisable in the natural law written into our very nature. God has not abandoned us but in Christ has restored humanity," he said.

Bishop Davies continued: "We have experienced in recent years what Pope Benedict and Pope Francis have called 'the dictatorship of relativism', an ideology which simultaneously insists that every claim must be recognised as somehow being equally true so in the end nothing can be held to be true!

"Pope Francis warns us in his recent letter on the ecological crisis of something even more deadly to humanity, he says, than this intellectual relativism. He calls it practical relativism in our age."

Bishop Davies said that such relativism drove people to "take advantage of each other, especially the most vulnerable, and to treat each other as mere objects because nothing ultimately matters".

Bishop Davies said: "So the goal of the Catholic teacher is always to serve a connection, a patient reconnection for each new generational, to see how all parts of created reality hold together in harmony and coherence of God's plan revealed in Christ.

"This applies across the whole field of education - as the Humanities understand the human person and how Sciences and the Arts understand our dignity. This is the light we bring to every discipline, everything is related and in how in Jesus Christ, truly God and truly man, all things hold together.

"In this way each generation is able to recognise what Pope Francis calls their 'true place in the world' and to understand both themselves and their vocation."

The Bishop referred to marriage, consecrated life and the priesthood as "the great states of Christian life".

But he explained that the vocation of the Catholic teacher was not simply a career but a call from God to serve in the Church's mission

"The high calling that Catholic educationalists share is not something that passes away with time and circumstance, it is a task we always share as part of the saving mission of Christ and His Church," Bishop Davies said.

"And if those increasingly shrill voices opposed to the very existence of Church schools should prevail be assured that it is a mission which will always continue, a divine vocation shared by the Church and represented by each of you who are ready to dedicate your professional lives in living this great vision of Catholic education."

The remarks of the Bishop came in an annual Mass of Thanksgiving for Catholic education organised by the Department of Education of the Diocese of Shrewsbury.

Pope Francis first condemned the phenomenon of practical relativism in his 2013 Apostolic Exhortation Evangelii Gaudium but returned to the theme in Laudato si.

The Holy Father said practical relativism was a "misguided anthropocentrism" that led to a "misguided lifestyle".

"When human beings place themselves at the centre, they give absolute priority to immediate convenience and all else becomes relative," the Pope wrote. "Hence we should not be surprised to find ... the rise of a relativism which sees everything as irrelevant unless it serves one's own immediate interests."

Such relativism, the Pope argued, led to the exploitation of children by people traffickers and the abandonment of the elderly in the affluent West, among other evils.