Last week I introduced Laudate Deum as Pope Francis’ follow-up to his 2015 encyclical Laudato Si’. I’d like to take a few weeks to explore this new document and its message for us about the environment. We’ll start with the introductory sections that talk about the roots of the crisis and our current situation from the Pope’s perspective. We remember that when a Pope speaks in formal writing to the world, he is establishing a position for the global Catholic Church and calling the world’s attention to specific issues. He is not just ranting on the Internet.
The Pope begins by summarizing the last eight years since his first environmental encyclical: “I have realized that our responses have not been adequate, while the world in which we live is collapsing and may be nearing the breaking point.” (2) He goes on to say something quite striking about the climate crisis: “This is a global social issue and one intimately related to the dignity of human life.” (3)
Human dignity is the bedrock principle of Catholic social doctrine, and the subject of a wide-ranging new document promulgated this April, Dignitas Infinita. The climate crisis is not simply an ecological, physical, or scientific issue; it is a human, social, and moral issue of the highest order. We have a social crisis with the possibility of global collapse, and our response so far is inadequate. The Pope’s statements are very clear about the gravity of our situation.
Coastal Greenland, 2017
One of the challenges of our times is a strong segmentation of society on ideological grounds. It’s not just that people are being partisan, or bull-headed, or willfully ignorant. Relativism opens up space for “my truth” and “your truth”, for “alternative facts” and “conflicting narratives”. Science presents us with an ever-sharper view of reality, but some want to pick and choose the scientific facts that justify their beliefs. Laudate Deum challenges this, calling for unity around the solid scientific conclusions and obvious physical evidence of the climate crisis. It says in paragraph 6:
In recent years, some have chosen to deride these facts. They bring up allegedly solid scientific data, like the fact that the planet has always had, and will have, periods of cooling and warming. They forget to mention another relevant datum: that what we are presently experiencing is an unusual acceleration of warming, at such a speed that it will take only one generation – not centuries or millennia – in order to verify it. The rise in the sea level and the melting of glaciers can be easily perceived by an individual in his or her lifetime, and probably in a few years many populations will have to move their homes because of these facts. (6)
The document goes on to summarize the scientific evidence that this is a crisis because global heating is happening quickly and risks irreversible damage to our planet. Humans are responsible for this heating, not some natural process. Fossil fuel usage over the last two centuries is the primary source of carbon pollution and the main driver of global heating. We hear a renewed call to action:
A broader perspective is urgently needed, one that can enable us to esteem the marvels of progress, but also to pay serious attention to other effects that were probably unimaginable a century ago. What is being asked of us is nothing other than a certain responsibility for the legacy we will leave behind, once we pass from this world. (18)
We may not be personally responsible for all the pollution, but we have a responsibility to future generations to save our planet’s ecosystems. We have all benefited from the technological progress of the last hundred years. Are we willing to pay the cost of that progress, now that we know what it is? That is the question Laudate Deum asks us. Pope Francis is calling the Catholic Church and all people of good will to respond to the climate crisis with urgent action.
In the next articles we’ll explore some of the steps that the Pope is encouraging us to take.