Catholic Ecology Mindset amongst Youth: Laudato Si’ and Laudate Deum’s Impact in Higher Education

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Dear Colleague,

 

I read your article with great interest, and I find the educational intervention you conducted in the baccalaureate level concerning questioning the relation between theology and ecology to be inspiring.

Please find below my suggestions to make your article more valuable.

Line 95: A dot should be inserted at the end of the sentence, after the reference.

Line 109: The paragraph in the encyclical Laudation Si that speaks of interconnectivity must be mentioned.

Line 113: `Pope Francis, 2015` is cited, but this citation does not appear in the reference list.

Line 130: The complete name of the author should be included in the citation, `Ramos-Gomez, 2017`.

Line 185: It is necessary to indicate exactly where in his encyclical Pope Francis emphasizes this idea.

Line 296: The student’s response to the third question seems to be incomplete, or I could not see the entire response in the document I received.

Line 527: The name of the journal and the pages of the articles must be inserted.

Line 404: The author’s first name should be removed from the citation. 

Line 535: The name of the publishing house and the place of publication must be inserted.

Line 539: A dot should be inserted after author’s middle name.

Line 550: The number of the journal and the pages of the article must be inserted.

 I wish you all the best with your research!

Author Response

I would like to express my gratitude for all of the insightful comments and the considerable time and effort that has been dedicated to my research. 

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

This article is a successful attempt to show the relationship between the teaching of the Catholic Church and contemporary ecological trends based on greater awareness of human impact on the environment and its changes. The text does not raise any doubts from the methodological point of view, both in terms of the theoretical and research parts. The structure is clear and logical, the conclusions correspond to the assumptions and adopted hypotheses.

An attempt to compare the Catholic vision of ecology with ecofeminism does not seem entirely accurate; perhaps this part of the text would require clarification to more clearly show both common points and differences. For example, when writing about the difference that has its source in the anthropocentrism of the Catholic vision of ecology, it should be mentioned that it is a renewed perspective of anthropocentrism, assuming human responsibility for the environment and also pointing to the moral dimension of respecting or not respecting the created world. In short, it can be said that it is anthropocentrism of responsibility, not anthropocentrism of domination.

There are also several inaccuracies in the text that require correction:

- the "Catholic Christian faith" was indicated as the "author" of both encyclicals discussed (l. 5-6), while these documents have a clearly indicated author - Pope Francis. Of course, they are the official teaching of the Catholic Church, hence it is also possible, by expanding the perspective of the authorship of these documents, to indicate the Catholic Church as their author;

- titles of encyclicals (l. 30-31) forming a separate sentence should probably be a further part of the previous sentence;

- when writing about the Church's involvement in interreligious dialogue (aged 38), it is worth distinguishing between interdenominational (ecumenical) and interreligious dialogue;

- the authors write about examining the relationship between climate change and Catholicism, while the essence concerns rather the relationship between counteracting climate change and Catholicism;

- the authors use the phrase "publication of the encyclical" (l. 78, 85-86, 178, 1790-180), in the case of Church documents it is customary to talk about their announcement, proclamation, or writing;

- the authors write about the work undertaken by Catholic social teaching (l. 79-80), since it is a certain trend of thought with a social dimension, it is better to talk about the work undertaken in the mainstream of this teaching, in accordance with it or in accordance with its instructions.

Let me raise two more general doubts:

- the issue of the title - does the scope of the research really justify the thesis about the impact of ecological encyclicals on education? Perhaps it would be more appropriate to talk about the impact on high school students?

- a matter of conclusions - based on the research conducted, the authors come to correct conclusions about the impact of the teaching of the Catholic Church on the ecological awareness of students. However, one could reasonably ask whether this influence is unidirectional? Does not the undertaken experiment also contribute to the appreciation of the role of religion in human life by showing it as dealing with current and important problems for society and the environment? Such conclusions can be drawn from the quoted statements of students. It is possible that this is a topic for another article based on the research conducted, but it is worth at least signaling this mutual, mutual relationship between ecology and the teaching of the Catholic Church.

Author Response

I would like to express my gratitude for all of the insightful comments and the considerable time and effort that has been dedicated to my research.