Just about everyone has read misunderstood Pope Francis’ Laudato Si thus far. Understandable to a point, until it slowly dawns on you that the misunderstanding is being done by otherwise educated people with agendas… then it ceases to be understandable at all when you press the question “Did you actually read it?”
Lamentable, isn’t it?
Of course, the encyclical had nothing to do really with climate change, other than issue the admissive that climate change exists. For the political left, that’s where it all goes downhill, as Francis goes on to demolish just about every leftist proposition regarding the environment, including an attack on promoting abortion (120), dismisses carbon credits as a gimmick (171), and argues for the efficient use of fossil fuels until alternatives can be developed (165).
Then there’s the emphasis on the free market — not the “unbridled market” Francis has criticized in the past — but one that focuses on small businesses, small farms, and an emphasis on job creation and development (189). Francis takes square aim at corporatism and socialism (104). Francis loves GMOs (130-135). I’d check the Vatican Bank for a Monsanto donation…
Three things worth noting, in my opinion:
1. Pope Francis champions the small. Let me give you an example in para. 112:
112. Yet we can once more broaden our vision. We have the freedom needed to limit and direct technology; we can put it at the service of another type of progress, one which is healthier, more human, more social, more integral. Liberation from the dominant technocratic paradigm does in fact happen sometimes, for example, when cooperatives of small producers adopt less polluting means of production, and opt for a non-consumerist model of life, recreation and community. Or when technology is directed primarily to resolving people’s concrete problems, truly helping them live with more dignity and less suffering. Or indeed when the desire to create and contemplate beauty manages to overcome reductionism through a kind of salvation which occurs in beauty and in those who behold it. An authentic humanity, calling for a new synthesis, seems to dwell in the midst of our technological culture, almost unnoticed, like a mist seeping gently beneath a closed door. Will the promise last, in spite of everything, with all that is authentic rising up in stubborn resistance? (emphasis added)
In essence, Francis devotes the middle third of Laudato Si towards a concept that he never quite awards a name to, but Americans should instantly understand: free enterprise.
The focus here is threefold: small businesses are less wasteful, small businesses are innovative, small businesses teach people to appreciate hard work and production rather than excess and consumption — a recurring theme in the encyclical.
2. Laudato Si is a thoroughly anti-consumerist and anti-materialist tract. For instance, para. 78:
78. At the same time, Judaeo-Christian thought demythologized nature. While continuing to admire its grandeur and immensity, it no longer saw nature as divine. In doing so, it emphasizes all the more our human responsibility for nature. This rediscovery of nature can never be at the cost of the freedom and responsibility of human beings who, as part of the world, have the duty to cultivate their abilities in order to protect it and develop its potential. If we acknowledge the value and the fragility of nature and, at the same time, our God-given abilities, we can finally leave behind the modern myth of unlimited material progress. A fragile world, entrusted by God to human care, challenges us to devise intelligent ways of directing, developing and limiting our power. (emphasis mine)
On five separate occasions, Francis references the book The End of the Modern World by Romano Guardini:
203. Since the market tends to promote extreme consumerism in an effort to sell its products, people can easily get caught up in a whirlwind of needless buying and spending. Compulsive consumerism is one example of how the techno-economic paradigm affects individuals. Romano Guardini had already foreseen this: “The gadgets and technics forced upon him by the patterns of machine production and of abstract planning mass man accepts quite simply; they are the forms of life itself. To either a greater or lesser degree mass man is convinced that his conformity is both reasonable and just”. This paradigm leads people to believe that they are free as long as they have the supposed freedom to consume. But those really free are the minority who wield economic and financial power. Amid this confusion, postmodern humanity has not yet achieved a new self-awareness capable of offering guidance and direction, and this lack of identity is a source of anxiety. We have too many means and only a few insubstantial ends. (emphasis mine)
Material goods cannot save the soul of mankind; mass consumerism is a dead end. No small wonder why some observers have amusingly referred to Laudato Si as a “crunchy con” encyclical, but nevertheless, it hits home.
One has to remember that dialectical materialism — the idea that human beings can be uplifted by the provision of material goods — works in two different ways. The first, the idea that government can provide material goods and improve the condition of mankind (socialism); the second, the idea that one must collect as many material goods for oneself as possible in order to lift your own condition (Randian objectivism comes to mind). Both have no need or use for God, only for the collection of things.
3. Waste not, want not. Be thankful for God’s creation. Be sober in its use. Pope Francis emphasizes the concept of sobriety in the latter parts of the encyclical, and if one appreciates the monastic tradition of the Church, one can instantly see Francis’ appeal:
224. Sobriety and humility were not favourably regarded in the last century. And yet, when there is a general breakdown in the exercise of a certain virtue in personal and social life, it ends up causing a number of imbalances, including environmental ones. That is why it is no longer enough to speak only of the integrity of ecosystems. We have to dare to speak of the integrity of human life, of the need to promote and unify all the great values. Once we lose our humility, and become enthralled with the possibility of limitless mastery over everything, we inevitably end up harming society and the environment. It is not easy to promote this kind of healthy humility or happy sobriety when we consider ourselves autonomous, when we exclude God from our lives or replace him with our own ego, and think that our subjective feelings can define what is right and what is wrong.
What interests me here is Francis’ emphasis on the diffusion of power, not its collection. More to the point, the empowerment of the little guy while refusing to concede to disenfranchisement.
There are a number of things in Laudato Si that are quite distributist in nature. But this was not the train wreck that many conservatives are calling it, nor was it the Roman triumph that many leftists sought. It is quite a Catholic response to the environment qua ecology that takes square aim at materialist ethics which seek simply to consume at all costs, or worse still to reduce the number of poor in order provide for their material needs. No advocate of the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals took courage from this encyclical, despite efforts to twist it otherwise.
The encyclical is worth reading, regardless as to whether or not you are a Catholic (of course, I would say that). In the search for an alternative to the dictatorship of relativism and meaning outside of the materialist ethic, it’s a welcome break from the cacophony of the internet.
