A Brief Glance At Pope Francis' Encyclical

I’ve only had time to read about half of the Pope Francis’ Encyclical On Care For Our Common Home. Just a couple things to say from what I’ve read so far. The Encyclical is not only about climate change. It is about our entire global environmental crisis, of which global warming is only one aspect.

            I’ll have much more to say about this later, once I’ve read the whole thing and had time to digest what the Pontiff has to say. In the mean time I thought it might be good for you to take a look at what Francis says in part of the first chapter about superficial ecology, something that I run into much more than I want to. Francis says:

At the same time we can note the rise of a false or superficial ecology, which bolsters complacency and a cheerful recklessness. As often occurs in periods of deep crisis which require bold decisions, we are tempted to think that what is happening is not entirely clear. Superficially, apart from a few obvious signs of pollution and deterioration, things do not look that serious, and the planet could continue as it is for some time. Such evasiveness serves as a license to carrying on with our present lifestyles and models of production and consumption. This is the way human beings contrive to feed their self-destructive vices: trying not to see them, trying not to acknowledge them, delaying the important decisions and pretending that nothing will happen.

Pope Francis

Thank God For Pope Francis

A big thumbs up for the pope

This is big. Really big. In anticipation of his upcoming encyclical on global warming, Pope Francis held a summit meeting yesterday called “Protect the Earth, Dignify Humanity: The Moral Dimensions of Climate Change and Sustainable Development,”

So often when I hear people talk about global warming, what is put forward are technological fixes, everything from switching to hybrid cars to turning the oceans into mechanisms to sequester vast amounts of the carbon that we’ve thrown up in the atmosphere. We certainly need to consider and implement some of these technology changes. Driving a Prius is better than driving a gas-guzzler.

            But technology alone will not get us out of the corner that we have painted ourselves into. For what has driven all of our tech advances since the birth of the industrial revolution is the consumption of resources. That’s what the whole paradigm is all about. Technology cannot save us from technology.

            What the pope is calling for to save us and our planet is a change in our spirit. One top Vatican official, Cardinal Peter Turkson, said during the meeting that a “full conversion” of hearts and minds is necessary to solving the problem of global warming. He is right. Turkson went on to say:

In our recklessness, we are traversing some of the planet’s most fundamental natural boundaries. And the lesson from the Garden of Eden still rings true today: pride, hubris, self-centeredness are always perilous, indeed destructive. The very technology that has brought great reward is now poised to bring great ruin.

As long as we are geared and programed to consume and have the hubris that blinds us to the effects of our actions we will continue to warm the world. And this message is not just something for Catholics or just for Christians. Jewish,Muslim, Protestant, Buddhist and Hindu leaders accompanied the pope at the meeting today.

The Heartland Institute To Pope Francis: Don't Believe the Science of Global Warming

I couldn’t help but feel a twinge of embarrassment when I read about this. Apparently the Heartland Institute, possibly the most rabid of the conservative “think tanks” when it comes to denying the existence of global warming, is sending a contingent of its folks to Rome to, in their eyes, set the pope straight about climate change.

            The American organization sponsors an annual bizarro world version of the UN’s IPCC, in which they bloviate as best they can about conspiracies, money-grubbing climate scientists falsifying data, and imaginary cooling trends. They even call their get together the International Conference on Climate Change (ICCC) in the hope, I image, that the initials are close enough to fool people into thinking that they are the same as the UN’s IPCC.

The Heartland folks are on their way to Rome as they anticipate the Pontiff’s upcoming encyclical. The pope is expected to say that, given our present situation, reducing greenhouse gasses has become a moral imperative.

The pope is called upon to be gracious to those who seek his audience, so Pope Francis will meet with the representatives from the Heartland Institute. But they should already know that the pope receives some of the best council when it comes to science. OK, the Church really blew it with Bruno and Galileo, but that was over 300 years ago. Things have changed since then.

            Years ago, when scientists were uncertain if other factors besides CO2 might mitigate the warming effects of our release of greenhouse gasses, the Heartland Institute could gain some traction in the news and opinion pieces. But since that time they have painted themselves into an intellectual corner, and now they are quite stuck.

Pope Francis is expected to say that reducing greenhouse gasses is a moral imperative.

And they are now desperate. Until now global warming has been something scientists studied; it has been an issue for which governments and politicians have made laws and created policies. It has been something that most people ignored, too.

But with this his encyclical, Pope Francis takes global warming into our spiritual realm, a place where the Heartland Institute does not go. The “think tank” can have success with some folks as they sow doubt, and they can have even more success as they lobby Congress and make their large campaign contributions. But the pope, particularly this pope, holds great influence over his Catholic Church, as well as a great deal of the rest of the Christian world. With his upcoming encyclical, climate change becomes part of our spiritual lives, the subject of homilies from the pulpit, and a concern of our prayers. It goes from an abstract thing to something quite human.

In their campaign to keep us from addressing climate change, with this latest development with the pope, the Heartland Institute should know that they no longer have a prayer.