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Laudato Si’: Now What Does a Catholic Do?
For Catholics who advocate for free markets, Pope Francis has just made life extremely complicated. The Holy Father’s encyclical, Laudato Si’ — which I have only begun to read — contains statements that clearly indicate that the Pope has fallen in with the progressives. Although the encyclical still prohibits birth control, abortion, and euthanasia, Francis seems tone deaf to the constant demands of the left, particularly the environmental left, that the Church abandon her teachings and encourage the use of these prohibited techniques. The Pope also seems to have largely adopted the platform of the American Democratic Party. As a Republican, my stomach is queasy.
So what to do? As a Catholic, I must submit my personal convictions to the authority of the Magisterium– which means to the Pope insofar as he speaks within Church tradition on theological matters. That gives me some weasel room on Francis’s economic views. But not much room. A Catholic’s first duty is obedience, or as my daughter wrote in her new article for Catholic Exchange:
…our lives are not our own. They belong to God and that means a total emptying of self. It is within this framework that we will examine our call to love and submit in obedience to the hierarchical Church. In learning this obedience, we will mature and grow in our faith. Since Christ left us the Church, it is He who calls us to loving submission to the Church.
To be sure, I need not fully endorse Francis’s’ economics. But I must still carefully study what the encyclical says, and look deeply at the factual and scientific themes therein. Most crucially, I must prayerfully consider the totality of the encyclical, especially in light of Church teaching on Human Ecology. George Weigel writes at National Review:
It is probably inevitable that Laudato Si’ will get labeled “the global-warming encyclical” and that the label will stick. This will please some and displease others, and they will have at each other — which is no bad thing if it helps clarify that there is no simple path to meeting the twin goals of environmental protection and the empowerment (through economic development) of the poor. But the label will be misleading, I think, not because there isn’t a lot about climate change in the encyclical, but because that’s, to my mind, the least important part of Francis-the-pastor’s call to a more integral, indeed more humanistic, ecology. Reading Laudato Si’ as if it were a climate-change encyclical, period, is somewhat akin to reading Moby Dick as if it were a treatise on the 19th-century New England whaling industry. The ships and the harpoons are an important part of the story, to be sure; but if they become the whole story, you miss what Melville’s sprawling novel is really about. Ditto with Laudato Si’: If you read it as “the global-warming encyclical,” you will miss the heart and soul of what this sprawling encyclical is about — which is us.
Which is to say that the encyclical is a moral teaching, not a work of science. Francis writes:
“…we must safeguard the moral conditions for an authentic human ecology.”
Sadly, Laudato Si’ will surely become captive to political ideology. That will pit economic conservatives against progressives, not just on the question of global warming, but also free markets versus government solutions. We’re going to hear a lot about where Francis stands. We’re going to hear a lot of interpretation too. Few people will actually read the encyclical, opting instead to cherry pick those portions that seem to support their views. Which reminds me of my high school debate days, when debaters would skim articles to find the juiciest bits to quote, only to be hammered by opponents who’d actual read the thing from beginning to end. However, in our charged political arena, many of us will miss the cherry picking because we have never actually checked the full text.
So what should Catholics do? To begin with, they ought to go to the trouble of reading all 192 pages, and then work to understand what Francis is really getting at. They might also consider researching the history of Catholic social teaching. And if that is too time consuming, there will be many theologians writing on the encyclical who should be consulted—theologians on all sides of the debate.
That, too, is a moral obligation.
Image Credit: giulio napolitano / Shutterstock.com
Published in Religion & Philosophy, Science & Technology
And yet no such injunction was made against the work of Copernicus, and Copernicus’ work was still allowed to be shared (in restricted and conditional fashion yes, but still permitted nonetheless). So what does that say?
You’ve selectively clipped a few sentences. The fact is that the stridency and certainty with which Galileo professed his conclusions, after he had explicitly promised not to do so, is what got him in trouble. What’s more, the “science” that Galileo rested his conclusions on was deeply flawed, actually very wrong in many respects, and known as such by other scientific minds of the time, including Francis Bacon. So calls by the church for humility on Galileo’s part were not without some justification.
But, if I understand how this stuff works, it doesn’t lay out any penalties for those who fail to advocate for these positions. The document doesn’t say, for example, that every Catholic has to confess their environmental/social justice sins in the confessional booth.
As a matter of fact, the decree of the Congregation of the Index banned Copernicus’s De Revolutionibus as well as other heliocentric works. The Inquisition’s injunction did allow Galileo to continue to discuss heliocentrism as a mathematical fiction.
Once again, I have no issue with a church publicly disagreeing with a scientific theory. I do have a problem with any church throwing people in prison (or house arrest, in Galileo’s case) for scientific speech, even in 1616.
Well of course. Ricochet does have a word limit.
The Left ≠ the Roman Catholic Church.
There was talk of denying communion to Catholic politicians who advocated the pro-abortion position back when Kerry was running for president.
Some leaders of The Church think this way. One might presume they thought this way before Francis was elected Pope, and that they’ll continue to think this way after he leaves the office.
Religious people shouldn’t even talk about different options? I’m pretty sure the 1st Amendment states otherwise.
It was banned in the sense that it was not to be made available to the general public. The scholarly community was still allowed to read and use it, and the vatican still kept the work in it’s libraries. What’s more, this all happened 75 years after Copernicus had published De Revolutionibus. Up until Galileo had intentionally elevated the issue to a scandal, the church had been willing to let inquiry and speculation occur. It was the stridency, unmerited certainty, and very public way Galileo raised the issue of heliocentrism in the public eye, again after he had promised not to, that made it a matter that the church had to take a public stand on.
Galileo was far from blameless or even scientifically accurate in the matter.
Jesus said to feed the hungry. Francis opposes the placing of an excessive value on this “Economies of scale, especially in the agricultural sector, end up forcing smallholders to sell their land or to abandon their traditional crops. Their attempts to move to other, more diversified, means of production prove fruitless because of the difficulty of linkage with regional and global markets, or because the infrastructure for sales and transport is geared to larger businesses. Civil authorities have the right and duty to adopt clear and firm measures in support of small producers and differentiated production.”
I’m not saying that Francis’ obsession with power and forced reductions in economic and political inequality are necessarily bad, but they’re not biblical values and cannot honestly be described as efforts to feed the hungry. The most famous successes in improvements in reducing poverty, and hence hunger, in his Latin American home came from improvements in land registration, Hernando De Soto’s efforts in Peru and Chile. Francis seems to take direct aim at these when he says that “In this sense, it is essential to show special care for indigenous communities and their cultural traditions. They are not merely one minority among others, but should be the principal dialogue partners, especially when large projects affecting their land are proposed. For them, land is not a commodity but rather a gift from God and from their ancestors who rest there, a sacred space with which they need to interact if they are to maintain their identity and values.”
In fact, indigenous people are humans like the rest of us, and benefit tremendously from clearly defined property rights. Perhaps you can cite something either from the bible, or from any authority older than you are that suggests that God wants racially defined differences in law, a segregation whereby if you’re white you have a regulated but somewhat free market, but if you’re a Native Bolivian, you should live under a different system.
When he rants endlessly about globalization, he’s protesting against a system that reduces hunger because it is more important to him to promote cultural diversity. Again, perhaps that’s good. It’s not even necessarily opposed to Christianity (there are plenty of good things that aren’t mentioned in the bible or by the Fathers). It’s very hard to argue that they’re supportive of the hunger minimizing approach that Francis occasionally pretends to, though. If you’re concerned about the poorest among us, a leveling effect in which societies with endemic hunger become more like societies without that is a good thing. On the other hand, Francis suggests that it’s a negative thing “A consumerist vision of human beings, encouraged by the mechanisms of today’s globalized economy, has a levelling effect on cultures, diminishing the immense variety which is the heritage of all humanity.”
He recognizes that “no conclusive proof exists that GM cereals may be harmful to human beings, and in some regions their use has brought about economic growth which has helped to resolve problems,” but he advocates against their use because “productive land is concentrated in the hands of a few owners”. When faced with the trade-off, he consistently chooses to prioritize issues of power over the relief of hunger.
Almost everyone who advocates massive central planning of agriculture, even when, as in Mao’s Great Leap Forward, and apparently in the Papal “plan”, the macro plan is to force the widespread use of small plots, says that they’re doing it to relieve hunger and address power distribution issues, but everyone who does it ends up achieving only the latter of those two aims. Now that we’ve repeatedly run that experiment so often with consistent and notorious results, it must be assumed that people who advocate these schemes are intentionally agglomerating power at the expense of human hunger.
Taking a public stand ≠ forcibly confining a man to his home.
At no time have I suggested that he was scientifically or spiritually infallible, but I simply cannot accept that a man must share the blame for his own imprisonment when his crime is limited to speech, even in 1616.
Unless you believe that the Catholic church is the only way to Christian salvation… something even the Catholic church doesn’t teach anymore… then if it looks like you’re in for a long line of liberation theologians, it might just be time to find another church, perhaps one of the traditionalist Catholic rebel churches.
The public stand was the 1616 ruling. Galileo’s arrest didn’t come until almost twenty years later. And the house arrest was a rather comfortable one. He was allowed to stay in a luxurious apartment in the vatican while he was there, a total of 22 days, and then allowed to stay at the homes of his friends very comfortably for the remaining nine years of his elderly life
Galileo wasn’t sentenced to “imprisonment” until 1633. In the intervening 17 years Galileo had openly spoken against the idea of a geocentric world without earning any ire or punishment at all. It wasn’t until he wrote a thinly veiled, contemptuous swipe at the pope championing heliocentrism and ridiculing the teaching of the church, in obvious and direct contravention of his own promise, that he suffered any consequences.
I agree that the church was overly protective of its authority and could have handled Galileo more tolerantly. But one has to also remember this was at the height of the protestant revolt against the authority of the church (Luther denounced heliocentrism as heresy too, BTW) and so it had some reason to be leary of the consequences of open defiance.
That’s wrong. The church teaches that the church is still the instrument of salvation even for those who may become saved despite never officially joining it.
Jamie – as a non-believer you seem to take a great interest in these things Catholic. Why is that? As you no doubt discovered, the Church teaches that the Pope is infallible in matters of faith and morals. It can be easily argued that Francis erred in his facts on AGW and that his understanding of economics is faulty. The morality of the ecology he speaks of is to uphold the dignity of man, created in the image and likeness of God. Do you agree with the infallibility of that?
Where I would question the Holy Father is with his concept of an ‘integral ecology’. To me, the integral ecology is with man and God, not man and Earth – the latter seems to be a Gnostic vision. Therefor, man, in the cosmological sense, is required to care for the Earth as the Creator did – with love, in order to will the good of all men.
As a geologist, let me also say that it is difficult to predict processes that affect and control the earth. As a Catholic, let me say that proposing global solutions to ecological problems seems problematic. The Church teaches subsidiarity and I would like to see the Holy Father encourage local solutions, rather than global approaches to his fears.
And that teaching is proclaimed clearly here in Dominus Iesus.
Well, then I guess if the church goes full Gustavo Guiterrez, you guys are screwed.
Why do people ask, “Do I as a Catholic have to agree with the Encyclical?” Isn’t it clear that the opinions expressed therein are exactly the ones you would expect from someone with the cultural background of this Pope? A Latin American anti-capitalism etc? A revelation from God isn’t necessary to explain his beliefs, which are exactly what you would expect them to be absent any such revelation. It isn’t as if, like Saul of Tarsus, he suddenly and inexplicably began expressing teachings and beliefs that were contrary to everything he had ever believed.
I find all religion fascinating even if I do not share belief. I also believe that religious institutions have an important role to play as a mediating institution in society.
I believe no man is infallible regardless of what position he was elected to. I also find it hard to justify morals based on faulty facts. Now it may be that Francis arrived at a moral truth regarding the dignity of man through faulty facts, but that doesn’t excuse the the grievous error he has made here. And I must also ask: how can one ever be infallible if one gets ones facts wrong?
My questions here were more to discover to what extent Catholics must obey this particular encyclicals apparent demands. Must Catholics believe in CAGW now that the Pope has made it a moral issue?
When it calls for a global “plan” to organize farming such that it’s diverse and sustainable, it seems to me like it’s at least as resistant to experimentation and data as the geocentric guys were. Likewise when he says that poor countries should take advantage of solar power. Urban VIII was going beyond his competency when he condemned heliocentric thinking, but the data proving him wrong was far weaker than the data condemning Francis. I agree that it is even more shameful for figures today to ignore science than it was then, but the suggestion that the sins that matter are those at cocktail parties more than in the data seems to apply at least as strongly today.
Similarly when, in previous publications, Francis denies that anyone has been lifted out of poverty by globalization, he makes Urban VIII appear to be a paragon of scientific integrity, intellectual curiosity, and general decency.
This shouldn’t be too surprising; Urban VIII, along with the vast bulk of Popes, worked successfully to improve the world and promote Christian values. He worked to reduce slavery in the New World, held his patriarchate together during the Thirty Years War, improved Rome with sublimely beautiful art, and generally did the sort of things that one would want a Pope to do. People keep saying that we often get bad Popes, but for the most part, personal vices aside, they’ve been pretty good at their vocation.
Does anyone want to name an equivalently bad pope in the past five hundred years? People sometimes name Clement VII, but Clement had a genuinely difficult hand to play and seems to have made a decent go of it. Bad outcomes aren’t the same thing as being a bad Pope. Most of the people who get tarred with the label, indeed, have been victims of Protestant slander.
You might not want to go there. The Orthodox aren’t the ones who changed the Creed without benefit of an ecumenical council. The Scholastics never struck me as being particularly Petrine, either. Peter was a humble man, made wise by the Holy Spirit, not a wannabe sophist.
From what I’ve read, that’s so. My understanding is that Galileo fell afoul of the Church mainly for being a jerk. (I usually use a stronger term, but this is Ricochet.)
I’d find this superstition-filled encyclical laughable if it weren’t for the harm it’ll do. A lot of people worldwide take the Pope as the highest authority on every subject, and those people deserve better from their Church.
But regardless of that, in Galileo’s day the Church was the government. That’s hardly the fault of the Church; secular governments simply hadn’t evolved very far. Galileo was just too full of himself – I love that painting of him at the Inquisition where he looks like he’s about to bite his knuckle and stamp his little foot. (Darn it, why can’t I find anything on the net anymore …)
One thing Francis has made me wonder about, not just with this recent Gaia nonsense but with all his leftist nonsense since his … what do y’all call it, ordination? Just what does a Pope really do? And what does his simpleminded acceptance of leftist cant imply regarding his real function?
The Pope is a man just like you and me and can get facts wrong. But, we believe he is protected by a charism of the Holy Spirit when proclaiming things infallibly on faith and morals.
No. Man-caused global warming is a scientific issue to be settled by scientific facts (and it is unfortunate that the Holy Father has apparently been advised by those who go beyond science into scientism). The moral issue we must follow is respect and care for all of creation. It is the all part that gives everyone the vapors.
Agreed. The Pope is a smart man. How is it that he can’t see this? His heart is in the right place but his brain seems misplaced on the science.
One of the best paragraphs of commentary I have read has come from David Warren:
I’d like to thank everyone who has commented here. I haven’t engaged because I have been slowly reading the encyclical and relied on the comments to help focus my head on some of the key issues. I would describe myself as a climate change skeptic/agnostic. While I seriously doubt that the earth is about to dry up–earth is one tough hombre–I think common sense suggests that pumping trillions of tons of gunk into the air cannot help but have some negative effects. And, if there is legitimate concern it is about what to do about it.
Among my chief objections to the Pope is his nearly complete failure to consider all scientific views. To rely on the extreme view without carefully reviewing the data on the other side–or in the middle–is not just unscientific, but sloppy thinking.
The encyclical cannot be understood in just one reading so I’ll not post on it for a couple weeks, if at all. It will be old news by then except perhaps in theological circles. That’s too bad because the Pope himself might learn something if he were to read some thoughts from Vatican outsiders. So it goes…
I should probably disclose that I’m not opposed to taking measures against greenhouse gasses per se. I don’t know how bad the impacts of GHGs are, but it seems like something reasonable people can disagree about.
The cultural revolution/ earth as a ball of filth/ global government for farming/ social mortgage on all private property/ indigenous people as not having tradeable title to their land/ deified market/ we shouldn’t let GM food feed people because economic equality is more important/ anti globalization stuff bothers me.
I don’t think that he should be speaking about AGW in an encyclical either, unless he has something useful to contribute, but other than his ridiculous claim that poor countries should invest heavily in solar, I don’t think that he said much that was offensive or heretical on AGW.
I’ve long been an advocate of nuclear power. There are risks and advantages, but what else is new? Sadly, the Fukishima, Chernobyl, and Three Mile Island accidents, which have been grossly exaggerated, have us on hold.
Okay, yes, add his stuff about nuclear technology, nuclear weapons, and air conditioning to the list of regrettable passages. I feel we could mandate that 80% of Ricochet headlines had to be Francis quotes without significantly reducing the diversity of topics discussed.
Air conditioning is an old bugbear of mine. People would complain endlessly about Iraqi power being out as often as it was under Saddam, but the reason for that was that Saddam banned air con, and free Iraqis really wanted it, which meant that consumption went up. This meant that people would dismiss the importance of AC, but when temperatures reach 117 degrees, AC is not a luxury. Chhokra helpfully points out that it wouldn’t have been to the French elderly either.
Ya. I thought the AC business was way over the top. They could sure use AC in Argentina.
He’s where the buck stops for all temporal matters. Like any CEO, active micromanagement of the organization is not necessary. After all, subsidiarity in governance is a concept that was popularized by the Roman church in the first place.
On matter spiritual, of course, the buck stops with God.