As I intend to reflect on Pope Francis’s letter Laudate Deum in the context of my own experience with the environment, I must first provide background for my observations.
As an engineer, scientist, and teacher who has worked on hundreds of environmental and infrastructure projects—and who has applied technology on almost every one of those projects, from basic valves and pumps to million gallon tanks filled with gazillions of microorganisms purifying wastes to membranes that produce drinking water and other ultra-pure waters—I find Laudate Deum to be a necessary and important word about our natural world and humanity’s stewardship of this world.
Pope Francis devotes much of this letter to climate change “weeds” (I say this respectfully) where he certainly had to rely on other authorities for much of the content, the nitty gritty of which is outside my competence. But regarding debates and disputes about the degree of climate change the world is undergoing, and the extent to which humanity is contributing to this phenomenon, I offer an insight I read years ago, in which the author suggested that even if an outcome might have a lower probability of occurring (as many still believe about climate change), if the impact of such an outcome would be devastating, then anticipatory or remediating measures are warranted.
Not necessarily every remediating measure imaginable, but meaningful measures. I find this experiment in logic, which complements Pope Francis’s perspective, to be compelling.
Pope Francis criticizes the “technocratic paradigm”:
In Laudata Si, I offered a brief resumé of the technocratic paradigm underlying the current process of environmental decay. It is “a certain way of understanding human life and activity [that] has gone awry, to the serious detriment of the world around us”. Deep down, it consists in thinking “as if reality, goodness and truth automatically flow from technological and economic power as such.
For context, I offer a perspective, based on experience, that technology—along with economic incentives to invent and innovate—has markedly contributed to projects that have given us healthy drinking water, cleaner waterways, cleaner air, and healthier habitats. Not to mention infrastructure that can prevent, or at least alleviate, the effects of storms, flooding, droughts, wildfires, and the like—think about the multi-measure Dutch tactics to control flooding in an extremely vulnerable country. In this context, economic means and technology can be good servants when properly applied.
Pope Francis goes on to state:
Also some interventions and technological advances… have proved promising. Nonetheless, we risk remaining trapped in the mindset of pasting and papering over cracks, while beneath the surface there is a continuing deterioration to which we continue to contribute. To suppose that all problems in the future will be able to be solved by new technical interventions is a form of homicidal pragmatism…
I answer: we need not set up a dichotomy between technology solving all problems in the future and technology being an exclusively good servant. As an example, the Detroit River and adjoining habitats are healthier than they have been in over a hundred years. And this isn’t an anomaly in the Western world. As late as the 1970s and 1980s, water quality, air quality, and habitat health were the top environmental concerns.
Great progress has been made in these areas, especially in the Western world. Technology deserves historical context.
Pope Francis’s “situated anthropocentrism” where humanity is linked by unseen bonds to the natural world, and his reference to Fratelli Tutti and the “primacy of the human person,” is qualitatively superior to the perspective of environmentalism’s advance guard, where humanity is no more significant than any other organism, and perhaps less significant by virtue of humanity’s outsized environmental footprint. Most welcome is Pope Francis’s rejoinder to a form of atheism, in which humans have no more value than any other creature:
For “we are part of nature, included in it and thus in constant interaction with it”, and thus “we [do] not look at the world from without but from within”… This itself excludes the idea that the human being is extraneous, a foreign element capable only of harming the environment. Human beings must be recognized as a part of nature. Human life, intelligence and freedom are elements of the nature that enriches our planet, part of its internal workings and its equilibrium.
How can I argue with Pope Francis’s assertion that “… we can state that a broad change in the irresponsible lifestyle connected with the Western model would have a significant long-term impact”?
Indeed, there is much about the Western world and its priorities ripe for criticism. However, the great majority of advances in water quality, air quality, and habitat health have occurred in the Western world. Not in China, Russia, or other command-and-control regimes, where environmental and pathogen narratives are strictly controlled without regard for the truth if it conflicts with a political agenda.
Here, I wish Pope Francis had gone deeper than Western “irresponsible lifestyles,” and had addressed how explicit and implicit (or practical) atheism fosters materialism in which man or the natural world are merely resources for a political or material end. Such honestly about regimes outside the Western world, including not a few impoverished nations plagued by dictators or regimes that perpetuate poverty and prey on their people, would have been consistent with other harsh truths the Pope expounds in this letter.
Encounters with Jesus transform us in many ways, molding our minds and hearts. After 40 years working on the environment, I am still undergoing a transformation in my stewardship of the world God bequeathed to humanity. I cannot stand still. Perhaps I must climb a tree as did Zacchaeus.
Pope Francis closes with ‘Praise God,’ the title of his prophetic letter. ‘For when human beings claim to take God’s place, they become their own worst enemies.’
Amen! Unless hearts are changed, even clean fusion energy can’t save us from ourselves.
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There are some fine ideas in this exhortation. I hope Francis actually reads what was written for him, especially that which relates to material atheism, a tendency he sometimes exhibits with his rejection of immutable truth.
And I hope he can allow himself to consider that ideology actually exists on the left, especially among those whoe use environmentalism as a pretext for alleviating repressed guilt for supporting exterminationist attitudes for inconvenient life.
I have described the teaching of Bergoglio as a parched new-age desert sprinkled with uprooted Catholic trees. I chose this metaphor carefully. The world-view he promotes is NOT Christo-centric.(his insistence on giving the Eucharist to those who reject Church teaching proves this.) His decade-long “Papacy” is replete with steadfast criticism and even rejection of long accepted Catholic doctrine and tradition. “It’s silly to call Mary co-redemptrix.” Really? From the very dawn of the Church, we Christians were urged to willingly unite our sufferings to the suffering of Christ so that ours might also become redemptive. Is this something Mary was excluded from? Is Bergoglio really this ignorant? As one surveys the totality of the “teaching” of “Pope Francis”, one is struck by its bizarre incoherence, its utter lack of Catholic perspective. “proselytism is a sin against Ecuminism.” Where is Christ in this tangle of gibberish? He is one of the many “uprooted Catholic trees” sprinkled across the barren landscape of Bergoglio’s “papal magisterium” so as to fool us into thinking this man is actually Catholic. Please tell me what sane person has been led closer to Jesus Christ by ten years of Bergoglio’s gruesome fables. “The Church is confined by small-minded teaching”. The document commented on in the above article is a classic example of the pagan Bergoglian nonsense (closely hewing to the narrative of the New World Order) decorated with uprooted Catholic trees to make it more persuasive. How much longer will CWR insist that all Catholics must assert that JB is a valid Pope lest we become self-excommunicated.
“How much longer will CWR insist that all Catholics must assert that JB is a valid Pope lest we become self-excommunicated.”
That’s a rather odd question. Let’s say, theoretically, that Pope Francis is not a valid pope. It’s not CWR’s job or place to make that judgement, especially now.
I think Francis is indeed a valid pope. I also think he is a deeply flawed pope who continues to make many poor, or even horrible, decisions. We will be addressing his “mess” for many, many years.
Mr. Olson, my question is not an odd one. Your answer indicates you’ve entirely missed the point of the question. My question did not pertain to CWR passing judgment on the Bergoglian papacy. Your publication – like the vast majority of Catholic publications – seems to insist that no good Catholic is allowed to even express doubt about the validity of the Bergoglian papacy. Some even claim this constitutes heresy, and that consequently we are ipso facto excommunicated! I re-phrase my question: Even if you don’t wish to doubt Pope Francis, why are we not allowed to doubt? You put the pot on the stove, put in all the ingredients, keep turning up the heat, but when someone asks: “Is it soup yet?” you say: “Pay no attention to that pot!”
Those of us who brush off presumed exaggerated environmental claims need only experience first hand the ravaging, the utter contempt for human life. The latter spoken about recently when I learned pristine Canadice Lake [meaning long lake in Iroquois] where I fly fished was once [later drained and cleared] contaminated with barrels of highly toxic waste. It is a watershed for Rochester NY. The former was majestic 12,000 ft Taylor Mountain that rose from a much lower elevation near Grants NM, its snow capped peak seen for miles most of the year, a welcome sight on route from NY to Gallup NM. Until one year the peak was shaved off. Uranium, one of the world’s richest deposits, was discovered and mined while I was away. Assigned to Crownpoint NM the Navajo mission was dissected by an endless row of tall towers lit day and night signs of another world beneath of men and machines drilling for uranium. There’s a price to pay for our advanced technology and lifestyle. Is it a moral imperative to pull back industry, or is that unrealistic politically? Is inertia due to lack of an assumed workable resolution also a form of Doran’s “homicidal pragmatism”.
They’re are other considerations that appear to make changing the world
unachievable, at last impractical. Although Christ commanded the Apostles to do just that. As did the early Fathers. East Africa where I served is a testing ground for reasoned plans to better things. Dire poverty exists alongside luxurious living. Among the many thatched roofed huts walled hacienda type homes with large pools. These were primarily government workers, the thatched hut people their wards. Ironically, the poor don’t complain about their comparatively rich neighbors. They’ve made it. They deserve the high life. A strange idea of justice. I can offer lots of answers but in the end it’s an anomaly. Our African Catholic missionaries didn’t preach social justice as our many Jesuits did in S Am. Still it remains a mystery. The answer may be found in the seeming impossibility of the challenge. That futility is realized when we surrender.
The point being that despite the seeming impossibility of the challenges our persistence in the effort to pursue the good is what in the end really matters.
Dear Fr Peter, I am grateful to have been able to contribute to hundreds of projects that produced cleaner water, air, and habitats for people and other living things. Context is looked down on today, but I understand the environment to be a subject where context is often sorely lacking. If you read the article carefully, you may see this.
Jesus Christ crucified and risen. Come to me you who are burdened. I have come that you might have life and have it abundantly. I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life……….. There are many Catholics who, like me, have not yet managed to really know Jesus as we ought, but yet are profoundly touched by Him. Because of this we understand that the only solution to the fear, sorrow, and injustice that seem to fill the world is conversion to Jesus Christ. In Christ, even if we’re far from saintly, our duties are easier to see, and (sometimes) easier to do. Preaching Jesus Christ brings transformation. Preaching Social Justice brings envy and heightened discord. “Pope Francis” and many Catholic bishops resist preaching Christ, but want to impose teachings derived from the Gospel on those who are not Christian. Why? Many Christian teachings are “foolish” outside the context of the Gospel. “consciousness raising” is a device used by liberation theology and other agitators to stir up envy and even hatred among the “oppressed” against the “oppressors”. Jesus did nothing of the sort. Neither should we, His followers. When there is injustice, those who perpetrate it must be addressed and persuaded. Fomenting violent revolt – even if necessary – is a last resort. Another point: not all inequality is an injustice. Early in our marriage (53 years ago), my wife and I made a Choice: children and family time first. Many of my friends now have have more money and a nicer house. Big deal! Many of my friends worked shorter hours and made more money. Big deal! There is certainly injustice in the world, and as Christians we have a duty stand against it. But Christ – not the arrogant fool Bergoglio – must be our guide
You’ve made the right decision D’Orazio regards faith in Christ and abeyance of Pope Francis. You seem on the fringe of radical exclusivity misinterpreting others. For example, my comment isn’t a defense of Marxist socialism and the mistakes of Jesuits in S Am. Rather social justice meaning love of our brother and giving him his due, such as, in reference to the poor in E Africa the services he deserves from the government. That would be addressed as Christ would, not with intent of division.