Lessons for 2015: Pope Francis, climate change, and unpublished encyclicals

Chances are you’ve been hearing the many secular reports about Pope Francis’s planned eco-encyclical. Many are claiming that the unreleased document will focus primarily on climate change and political solutions. But you can bet it will be much more nuanced and Catholic.

Sources I’ve spoken with are concerned that because of such misconceptions, 2015 could be a dangerously divisive year for Catholics. They have a point. When reading the recent secular accounts, it’s as if a virtual Church has formed around us—a Church made up of lies, damned lies, and fear.

As people of faith, we know a thing or two from the third chapter of Genesis about the source of lies and fear—and the division that results. We also know the solution: The life, charity, and truth of Christ, which we mirror in our daily attempts to offer charity in truth to those we love and those we find hard to.

And so to keep things calm when it comes to Catholics and ecology, the following is offered to help conversations stay civil and constructive.

To be Catholic means to appreciate nature

There’s a bit of a false “either-or” proposition going around. It suggests that one is either orthodox or that one is an environmentalist. Some argue that issues of ecology fall outside the faith and morals competency of the Church, and thus can be ignored—or derided.

That’s a difficult position to maintain since the last three popes have taught us otherwise.

Maybe a quick look at what the Church has been saying will help. Let’s begin with ecology, which tells us not only that nature has laws but that it is good. These two intertwined truths are, for people of faith, revealed principles that come from the first chapter of Genesis and continue through Revelations. They have been affirmed by the Church fathers and the magisterium. And today, with sin in the form of global ecological damage impacting millions—mostly the weakest among us—the Church adds her voice to say that those affected must be protected because they must be loved.

To be Catholic means bringing the gospel to the public square

The Church, while critiquing obvious failures and applauding the benefits of this or that structure of power, is not keen on offering particular solutions to the world. That is the business of the world via politics and the state, as Benedict XVI reminded us in Deus Caritas Est (Section 28a). This is so because, as we know, the needed sacrifice to make a civilization is authentically derived from a choice, not a law.

Let’s look at this another way: when secular, atheistic ecologists demand that people change their ways and sacrifice for the good of others, they’re taking on a role (by accident or design) that Catholic should find familiar. What Catholics understand that secular ecologists may not is that we need lots of help to truly change—to repent—and to truly sacrifice. We need help that cannot come from ourselves or anyone like us.

What we need can only come from a Source much more loving, wiser, and stronger than we could ever hope to be.

Putting it all together, being an ecologist (or an environmentalist, or what have you) is not something that Catholics have to add to their to-do list. Nor is it a political choice. It comes as a side-effect of striving to be holy. Because to be holy is to repent, to sacrifice, to live temperately—it is to live as a mirror of life for others, not as a consumer of life for our own gain.

Pope Francis is not an aberration

When God’s grace elevates the individual natures of whomever is sitting in the Chair of St. Peter it may look to the rest of us as if there are big changes taking place from one pope to the next. But when you look closer and through the lens of 2,000 years, you see that something much more beautiful is unfolding around you.

Carl Olson at Catholic World Report has a helpful look at the similarities between Pope Francis and Benedict XVI when it comes to ecology and economics. Others (myself included) have written often about this, too. Dan DiLeo’s thoughtful piece in Millennial does a fine job answering some common objections to Francis and the Church’s statements on climate change. And for context, check out this statement by Benedict XVI.

While the mainstream media and some ideologues are eager to portray Francis as a radical left-wing hero (or villain), the truth is something much more sublime in its continuity.

Like his predecessors, Pope Francis is a gift to the Church.

The secular media is not our friend. (Nor is it our enemy.)

To be friends, two people must have shared life experiences and core principals. The secular media is often not staffed with men and women who share in the life of the Church, sacramentally or otherwise. And they may not be versed in the history of the Church. Nor is likely that they support the Church’s teachings on life and sexual issues.

So how can such people ever hope to understand the Church? And if they cannot understand it, how can they report about it?

Given what we witnessed the past few weeks, the secular press has let us down. I was truly taken aback by the rate at which a few news stories multiplied, each one becoming more emphatic about borrowed statements that were provisional in earlier stories.

John Allen at Crux has more to say on this in his piece on the media’s misfires when reporting in 2014 on Francis and the Church. Andrew Redkin at the New York Times has just posted a look at the most-recent spate of Francis-eco-climate-encyclical-stories. And a post at BelovedPlanet undoes the media narrative about what Evangelicals think about climate change. And again, Carl’s piece at Catholic World Report also gets to this point.

In any event, trust not the reports and re-reports of reporters and bloggers who may know less about the Church than they think. We should be grateful that the secular press is speaking to and about us, but we may want to offer their overworked reporters a charitable rebuke when they speak with incessant narratives that are best located in the fiction isle.

Science is our friend

There is a debate among Catholic ecologists about whether or not to refer to the science of issues like climate change or biodiversity loss whenever discussing them. Some say that spelling out scientific truths only invites debate. Others embrace such debate because it may help people see the truth of this or that issue.

Both views have a point. It would, after all, be helpful if those who have an opinion on a scientific matter have read up on the topic. (This is true not just for science, but for politics, theology, salt-water fishing, sewing, and anything else that requires a little knowledge of basics.) Indeed, one should be able to both argue their case about a particular matter and also articulate and defend the arguments of those who think otherwise. In part this is what made St. Thomas so effective.

To do that in the arena of ecology, people need to know their science. And to do that, one has to be comfortable to go wherever the science leads. And in the bitter back-and-forths over issues like climate change, it seems very often that hard, objective science is not the basis of conversations about … science.

The Church has a teaching about faith and science. It's in section 159 of the catechism. It’s a beautiful one and it can speak for itself.

The pope's eco-encyclical will not be what so many expect.

Media coverage aside, the upcoming encyclical on ecology will not be a call to dismember capitalism. It will not be a political manifesto. It will be a Catholic social encyclical that will draw off the ones that have proceeded it. It will be in Francis's own style, but it will have lots of quotes of Benedict XVI, Saint John Paul II, Paul VI, and probably even Leo XIII.

It's not as if we have no clue about what the Holy Father stresses when we speaks on ecology. I've been covering that beat from the beginning. So to get a better idea of what the encyclical will look and sound like, see this post, this one, this one, and this one. In short, look for this term to be found often in the final document: Human ecology.

To be a consumer in the West often has a sinister side.

We know that a great deal of the food and consumer goods that we in the West buy in high volumes comes at a price to day laborers, migrant workers, and struggling families in the developing world.

With a pope from one of the many countries eyed by the West for its resources, we’re hearing language that sounds threatening—even if it is the same language used by his predecessor.

For people in nations like my own, there are some tough realizations and choices ahead. An objective look at how so many nations obtain so many resources (to say nothing of how those resources become consumer goods) is a sobering study. This is why none other than Benedict XVI has called for … well, read him for yourself:

The way humanity treats the environment influences the way it treats itself, and vice versa. This invites contemporary society to a serious review of its life-style, which, in many parts of the world, is prone to hedonism and consumerism, regardless of their harmful consequences. What is needed is an effective shift in mentality which can lead to the adoption of new life-styles “in which the quest for truth, beauty, goodness and communion with others for the sake of common growth are the factors which determine consumer choices, savings and investments”. Every violation of solidarity and civic friendship harms the environment, just as environmental deterioration in turn upsets relations in society. Nature, especially in our time, is so integrated into the dynamics of society and culture that by now it hardly constitutes an independent variable. Desertification and the decline in productivity in some agricultural areas are also the result of impoverishment and underdevelopment among their inhabitants. When incentives are offered for their economic and cultural development, nature itself is protected. Moreover, how many natural resources are squandered by wars! Peace in and among peoples would also provide greater protection for nature. The hoarding of resources, especially water, can generate serious conflicts among the peoples involved. Peaceful agreement about the use of resources can protect nature and, at the same time, the well-being of the societies concerned. (Caritas in Veritate, 51. Emphasis original.)

That about sums up where we’re at in these early days of 2015. How we learn, pray, and act in the year ahead will say much about who we are and how closely we know and practice our faith. Because it won’t be civil disobedience, petitions, or political parties that change the world. What’s needed is the conversion of the human heart. And what’s needed for that is grace—the kind that can only come from time with the Lord, especially in word and sacrament.

For now, my prayers are that we as a Church seek unity and truth. And that out of love we will do what’s best for the children that will be conceived and born this year and all the new years to come.

Photo: Ironically, this image from my usual stock photo website is of a school room in Argentina. It happened to be the best image in a search of "Catholic schools."

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About the Blog

Catholic Ecology posts my regular column in the Rhode Island Catholic, as well as scientific and theological commentary about the latest eco-news, both within and outside of the Catholic Church. What is contained herein is but one person's attempt to teach and defend the Church's teachings - ecological and otherwise. As such, I offer all contents of this blog for approval of the bishops of the Church. It is my hope that nothing herein will lead anyone astray from truth.