Evangelii Gaudium did not reject capitalism, or even particular market theories. Instead, it rejected idolatry of any economic system as a panacea, and it called Catholics to human solidarity in the context of public policy. The Pope affirmed that markets must be understood and administered in justice, with due regard for the sovereignty and solidarity of families and human dignity. Pope Benedict XVI presented similar ideas in depth in 2009, as did Saint Thomas Aquinas and Saint Augustine.
The Environmentalist Encyclical
Lumen Fidei was not a controversial document, and while Evangelii Gaudium made some conservative readers uneasy, others insisted that the pope was not straying into partisan politics. With his second encyclical, however, Francis turned to a topic with obvious political implications: the environment.
Laudato Si’, bearing the subtitle On Care for Our Common Home, was leaked to the media in advance of the official publication in June 2015, and journalists quickly announced that it was devoted to the topic of “climate change.” That assessment was not quite accurate—any more than it would be accurate to say that Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet is a play about suicide. Yes, the topic is mentioned; indeed it is a very important part of the story. But it is not the main theme.
A reader disengaged from today’s ideological battles, having digested the full 192-page text, might conclude that the encyclical is mostly about sustainable development, or anthropocentrism, or the unequal profits and burdens associated with exploitation of natural resources. More generally it is about living in harmony with nature, preserving a humble reverence for the intricate beauty and balance of creation. One perceptive reader remarked, quite accurately, that Laudato Si’ could be read as this pope’s homage to his two most recent predecessors, whose thoughts are cited constantly.
It could be argued that the most interesting facet of the encyclical is the pope’s development of the concept of “ecological debt.” Previous Roman pontiffs had referred to the “social mortgage” on private property. “Ecological debt” is a similar concept. In Catholic social teaching, the right to private property is essential, but it is not absolute. Since all material resources should serve the common good, and since anyone in possession of valuable property is ultimately indebted to God for his blessings, the wealthy few have a moral obligation to use their resources in ways that serve the poor. The “social mortgage,” then, is roughly equivalent to noblesse oblige—with money and power come certain implied obligations to the community. The concept of “ecological debt” is based on the same logic. When we extract ore or fossil fuels from the earth or put dangerous chemicals into the air and water, we are leaving problems for our children and grandchildren. We should stop running up environmental debts that future generations must repay or at least, Francis argues, find ways to help them pay down those debts.
Many analysts had predicted that the pope would denounce climate-change skepticism. They were not disappointed. “A very solid scientific consensus indicates that we are presently witnessing a disturbing warming of the climatic system,” Francis writes, noting that “a number of scientific studies indicate that most global warming in recent decades is due to the great concentration of greenhouse gases (carbon dioxide, methane, nitrogen oxides and others) released mainly as a result of human activity.”
A spiritual leader weighing in on a scientific debate, Francis is obviously out of his element. Man-made climate change either is or is not a scientific reality. A pronouncement by the pope—who has no special authority on scientific issues—will not affect that reality one way or another. In Laudato Si’, the pontiff sides with the majority opinion, and he does so unnecessarily, because the question of climate change is not central to the moral argument that he is exploring.1
Plunging deeper into the scientific and political debate, Francis goes on to declare that nature “now cries out to us because of the harm we have inflicted on her by our irresponsible use and abuse of the goods with which God has endowed her.” Just as Pope John XXIII had issued his encyclical Pacem in Terris when mankind stood on the brink of nuclear disaster, Francis declares, so he is issuing Laudato Si’ at a time of looming environmental disaster.
The pope’s “green” sympathies are evident throughout the document. In his laments over the loss of natural scenery and of family farms, powerful multinational corporations, and blighted urban landscapes, Francis can be read as a conventional liberal. But the same complaints are characteristic of an important strain of conservatism, represented by the agrarians and the distributists, the followers of Russell Kirk and the small-is-beautiful disciples of E. F. Schumacher. Readers from both ends of the political spectrum could find in this document some reasons to cheer.
Take, for instance (although it is definitely not a minor issue), the pope’s insistence on reverence for all human life. It is “troubling,” he writes, “that, when some ecological movements defend the integrity of the environment, rightly demanding that certain limits be imposed on scientific research, they sometimes fail to apply those same principles to human life.” And he warns of a “constant schizophrenia, wherein a technocracy which sees no intrinsic value in lesser beings coexists with the other extreme, which sees no special value in human beings.” The argument that population growth is the source of our environmental woes is, he said “one way of refusing to face the issues.”
On the other hand, defenders of free-market economics were once again rattled by the pope’s argument that reliance on the market alone is a form of moral relativism. Later he adds: “To claim economic freedom while real conditions bar many people from actual access to it, and while possibilities for employment continue to shrink, is to practice a doublespeak which brings politics into disrepute.”
Above all the pope criticizes a society that defines progress in terms of the stimulation and satisfaction of purely material needs: “This paradigm leads people to believe that they are free as long as they have the supposed freedom to consume.” Issuing a challenge to the economic profession, the pontiff writes, “The principle of the maximization of profits, frequently isolated from other considerations, reflects a misunderstanding of the very concept of the economy.”
But wait—if the goal of economic activity is not to maximize profits, what is the goal? Francis suggests a broader conception of what constitutes success. Again and again he speaks of “sustainable development,” emphasizing that the economic activities of a healthy society should pave the way for further “sustainable development” in future generations.
The characteristically Christian instinct to share—both with the poor and with future generations—is diametrically opposed to the impulses of what Francis condemns as a “throwaway culture.” In Laudato Si’ the pontiff expands on this theme, decrying the tendency of modern man to identify productive resources, use them up, and move on without a thought to the long-term consequences. The poor do not enjoy the same opportunities to profit from the results of technological progress, the pope contends, yet they suffer disproportionately from the environmental harm. Care for the environment, therefore, is a form of care for the poor.
A Climate-Reform Rally in St. Peter’s Square
If this encyclical furnished the argument for Catholic environmental activism, the Vatican followed up with a concrete—and distinctly partisan—application of that argument a few months later. In December 2015, a light show billed as “Fiat Lux: Illuminating Our Common Home” was displayed across the façade of St. Peter’s Basilica. Archbishop Fisichella said that the show, “inspired by the most recent encyclical of Pope Francis, Laudato si’, is intended to present the beauty of creation, especially on the occasion of the Twenty-first United Nations Climate Change Conference.” The show’s promoters also produced a Fiat Lux website, which encouraged visitors to “demand climate reform” and urged them to sign a petition addressed to “President Obama and the leaders of China, European Union, India and Russia,” who “represent the world’s five largest carbon emitters” and “therefore hold
the future of countless species in [their] hands.”
“Fiat Lux,” a purely secular affair, was produced by foundations engaged in partisan political activity, with the backing of some of the world’s wealthiest men, including Paul Allen, the co-founder of Microsoft, and Li Ka Shing, a Hong Kong magnate believed to be the richest man in Asia. If the show, an impressive technical achievement, had been displayed in a secular setting—the wall of the Grand Canyon, for example, or the white cliffs of Dover—few would have objected. Then again, few would have noticed. The show drew worldwide attention precisely because it was displayed on the most famous church in the world, a universally recognized symbol of the Catholic Faith. The purpose of the light show was to put environmentalism in the foreground with the Catholic Faith as a backdrop, to enlist religious support without supporting religion.
The sophisticated foundation executives who suborned the Vatican to arrange this show knew exactly what they were doing. Did the Vatican, under Francis, recognize how the influence of the Church was being exploited? Any Christian—any deist, for that matter—should recognize the moral obligation to be a good steward of creation. If hot-button political debates have predisposed some of us to be leery of environmentalist rhetoric, all the more reason for a Roman pontiff to seek a different perspective, one more consistent with the Faith.
The pope’s environmental advocacy veered into doctrinal territory in his message for the World Day of Prayer for Creation in September 2016, when he said that care for the environment should be added to the Church’s traditional list of the corporal and spiritual works of mercy. Unlike his questionable judgments on scientific and political issues, his remarks about the works of mercy pertain directly to the moral teachings of the Church.
Unless his statement is to be dismissed as a rhetorical flourish, the pope was suggesting an alteration in the Catechism. Young Catholics of future generations would be taught that there are eight works in each category. Alongside corporal works like feeding the hungry and clothing the naked, they would find care for the environment. Alongside spiritual works like instructing the ignorant and admonishing sinners, they would find … what, exactly? Support for the Sierra Club? That change cannot easily be undone.
Francis was not proposing an organic change to the list of works of mercy. He was putting things—virtuous actions, perhaps—in a category where they did not belong. Turning off unnecessary lights, as the pope urges, is undoubtedly a good idea. But it is not a work of mercy as Catholics have always understood that term. The traditional works of mercy—corporal and spiritual—all have a human person as both subject and object. The object is a person in some kind of need. The subject is you or I—a person challenged to imitate Christ by filling that need. In the new works of mercy that Francis proposed, the object is the natural environment, not a human soul. And many people will assume that the subject of these new works is not the individual Christian but the government, which should make laws to protect the environment.
Exhorting the faithful to turn off lights, join car pools, and separate paper from plastics—however commendable such acts may be—dilutes the authority of the pope’s teaching office, inviting the danger that his condemnations of blasphemy and abortion will be taken as the same sort of “nice” suggestions as his call for car pools.
Explaining Away the Pope’s Statements
The pope’s statements on environmental affairs required an assessment of scientific evidence that he is not qualified to make. The same criticism could be leveled at many of his comments on economic affairs.
In March 2017, Francis publicly recognized a group of executives from the Sky Italy television network who were in attendance at his weekly general audience. Sky Italy had recently announced plans to downsize and restructure, and three hundred workers would be asked to move from Rome to Milan. Addressing these executives, the pontiff said, “He who shuts factories and closes companies as a result of economic operations and unclear negotiations, depriving men and women from work, commits a very grave sin.” Admittedly, the remarks were muddled. (Translators could not be blamed for the confusion; the sentence is equally unclear in the Italian.) But in the context of addressing representatives of a specific corporation, the pope appears to accuse the executives of Sky Italy of “a very grave sin.” Did he understand the circumstances that had prompted the corporate decision? When he said that layoffs should never be caused by “economic operations,” what on earth did he mean? If employers are forbidden to close plants, must they leave the plants open even when they are losing money, until the corporation runs into bankruptcy—and the employees lose their positions anyway?
With such imprudent statements, Francis left loyal Catholics grasping for ways to interpret his message so that they could maintain the wholehearted support they had always given to the Roman pontiff. As the months of the pontificate passed, and the ledger of partisan messages grew steadily more unbalanced, that effort became more and more difficult.
From the start the pope’s unconventional approach has dismayed some Catholics. Soon after his election, he visited the Vatican press office to introduce himself to the reporters who cover the Holy See. The journalists expected him to conclude the visit with a blessing. But the new pope decided not to make the sign of the Cross, telling them, “Since many of you do not belong to the Catholic Church, and others are not believers, I will cordially impart this blessing to each of you in silence, with respect for the conscience of each individual, but in the knowledge that each one of you is a child of God.” Then he bowed his head, prayed in silence for a few moments, and left the room. Puzzled Catholic journalists—and the vast majority of Vatican journalists are Catholic—looked confusedly at each other, feeling as if the event had not quite ended. One reporter told me that he felt he had been cheated out of a papal blessing.
Similarly, when he spoke at the White House and before a joint session of Congress in September 2015, Francis never mentioned the name of Jesus Christ. His defenders explained that it would be inappropriate to mention the Lord’s name in a formal address to a secular audience. But when St. Peter was admonished “not to teach in this name” (Acts: 5:28), he ignored the restriction. Why should his successor act differently now? In his appearance before Congress the pope was treated as a secular head of state and clumsily introduced to the assembly with the nonsensical title “the Pope of the Holy See.” But why should American politicians be interested in the opinions of the leader of a tiny city-state? When the bishop of Rome travels abroad, he might explain why people should listen to his message: because he speaks in the name of Jesus.
In the early months of the papacy it was possible to explain the pope’s more troublesome statements as part of an effort to strike a balance between liberal and conservative views. In November 2013, Ross Douthat, a columnist for the New York Times and a Catholic, suggested that the pontiff was trying to end “a kind of low-grade institutional civil war” that had afflicted the Church since the Second Vatican Council and had “ultimately left everyone a loser.” I myself wrote that analysts on both ends of the political and theological spectrums were, for their own partisan purposes, trying to portray the pope as a radical. A year later, I was ready to conclude that maybe Francis really was a radical, and Douthat was several strides ahead of me, suggesting that orthodox Catholics “might want to consider the possibility that they have a role to play, and that this Pope may be preserved from error only if the Church itself resists him.”
Sandro Magister wrote in March 2015 that Francis was doing a “two-step,” mixing statements of traditional Catholic teaching with surprising concessions to liberal secular thinking. “The novelty of his pontificate,” he wrote, “is that along with these reaffirmations of perennial doctrine it also gives free rein to doctrines and pastoral practices of a different and sometimes opposite nature.”
Mixed Messages on Contraception …
In January 2015, Francis drew headlines with another of his famous airborne interviews. En route to t
he Philippines, he revealed to reporters that he had once “rebuked” a woman with a history of troubled pregnancies who was expecting her eighth child, asking her, “But do you want to leave seven orphans?” He called for “responsible parenthood.” The pope did not endorse artificial contraception and was careful to state that “God gives you methods to be responsible,” alluding to natural family planning. But his remarks provoked a fresh round of editorial mockery of Catholics for their rejection of birth control—mockery in which the pontiff himself seemed to join with his comment, “Some think that, excuse me if I use that word, that in order to be good Catholics we have to be like rabbits. No!”
Again, a pattern of statements that was confusing in 2015 began to seem clear a year later. In February 2016, in another airplane interview—the same interview in which he suggested that a wall-building Donald Trump was “not Christian”—the pope responded to a question about a UN proposal to distribute contraceptives in parts of Latin America affected by the Zika virus, which can cause serious birth defects. “Avoiding pregnancy is not an absolute evil,” Francis replied.
Asked whether contraception is the “lesser of two evils” when the Zika virus threatens birth defects, the pope replied in part, “On the lesser evil, avoiding pregnancy, we are speaking in terms of a conflict between the Fifth and Sixth Commandments.” What conflict? Did he mean to suggest that in some cases, adhering to one of God’s laws might entail violating another?
In the next sentence, the pope referred to a purported decision by Pope Paul VI authorizing nuns in the Belgian Congo to use contraceptives when they were threatened with rape. But it is not entirely clear what direction Paul VI actually gave to the nuns. If he did authorize the use of contraceptives, some Catholic moral theologians argue, his advice was unwise. In any event, that papal directive did not apply to the situation in Zika-stricken Latin America. Contraception is immoral because it violates the integrity of the marital act. In the Congo, some moral theologians argued, contraception was justified as a means of thwarting an act of violence—logic that would not apply to the Zika case.
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