Speaking to ciNews following the publication of his new book, Fukushima: The Death Knell for Nuclear Energy?, the Columban missionary said he would like to have seen the theme incorporate, Union with Christ, Each Other and All Creation.
“After all, we use the gifts of creation, bread and wine, in the Eucharist,” he said and added that a chapter of his book , Greening the Christian Millennium, is devoted to ecology and the Eucharist.
Speaking about his newest publication, Fr McDonagh explained that it challenges much of what the nuclear industry says about itself.
Described as a timely examination of the case for nuclear power in the aftermath of the tsunami that resulted in the Fukushima disaster in March 2011, Fr Sean McDonagh looks at the responses and reactions to the Japanese disaster.
He assesses the implications it has had for the world's nuclear powers, the reaction of the Church to the nuclear industry, and the implications for the growing pro-nuclear lobby in Ireland.
“Nuclear power is not cheap and it will become much more expensive when companies are forced to incorporate the lessons learned from the Fukushima accident into the design of nuclear reactors,” he said.
He also warned that nuclear power plants are vulnerable from seismic activity and geography.
“Sea levels are rising significantly as a result of global warming; melting ice on Greenland and the Antarctic. Most nuclear power plants are built at sea level. A significant rise in the level of the oceans will put pressure on them especially when there are storm surges,” he said.
In the book, the missionary, who spent decades serving the Church and people of the Philippines, writes, “Although nuclear plants have been supplying energy in the context of peaceful use to society until now, they have also released an enormous amount of radioactive waste such as plutonium."
He warns that society is, "placing the custodial responsibility of these dangerous wastes on future generations for centuries to come. We must consider this matter to be an ethical issue.”
Separately, Fr McDonagh has paid tribute to the abiding legacy of marine biologist, Rachel Carson, who published the ground-breaking book, Silent Spring fifty years ago this autumn.
In his tribute, Fr McDonagh remarked, “In the Catholic world, 2012 marks the 50th anniversary of the opening of the Second Vatican Council which transformed our understanding of what it means to be a Catholic in the 20th century. The Council changed the ways Catholics viewed many aspects of Church life and practice."
However, in tandem with this seminal moment was another more low-key but just as influential occurrence.
“Another revolutionary event happened in September 1962. The book, Silent Spring by Rachel Carson, was published." Like Vatican II, this book has had an enormous impact he suggested, explaining that many people argue that the modern environmental movement owes it origins to it.
"Silent Spring, describes the impact of synthetic chemicals, especially organo-chlorines, such as DDT, on the natural world,” Fr McDonagh said.
He told ciNews that much of the data and case studies used by Carson in Silent Spring were already known to the scientific community. What Carson did in her book was to assemble the data in such a way as to make it understandable to ordinary citizens who might have little scientific training, and then draw stark and far-reaching conclusions from the data.
“By doing this, Rachel Carson spawned a revolution and encouraged others to attempt similar feats in other places where pollution was threatening the natural world. She popularised modern ecology and opened up the discourse to non-scientists who were passionate about protecting the natural world.”
According to Fr McDonagh, Rachel Carson, though not an overtly religious person, incorporated a moral argument into her arsenal of scientific knowledge.
“She believed that human beings did not have the right to poison other creatures nor did she believe that nature was there to serve only humans.”
Silent Spring went on to sell more than two million copies. It made a powerful case for the idea that if humankind poisoned nature, nature would in turn poison humankind.
In June 1964, Carson testified before a US Senate subcommittee on pesticides. She told the Senators, “Our heedless and destructive acts enter into the vast cycles of the earth and in time return to bring hazard to ourselves.”
She gave her testimony though she herself was dying of cancer.
According to Fr McDonagh, “No single work has had the impact of Silent Spring.”
He added that it was not that environmentalists have not attempted in every way possible to convince the public about the importance of addressing issues such as climate change and the extinction of species before serious and permanent damage is done to the fabric of life on earth.
“Despite all of the widely disseminated information huge swathes of US public opinion does not believe in climate change. Climate change, which is probably to blame for the unprecedented drought in the US this summer barely surfaced in the 2012 presidential election,” he commented.