Pope Francis Plants a Flag in the Ground on Climate Change - by John Abraham

A recent news splash was made of predictions of an encyclical soon to be given by Pope Francis, the spiritual leader of the Catholic Church with its 1.2 billion members.  This encyclical is expected to further solidify the Catholic Church’s strong stance on climate change and its focus on the impact to people around the globe.  As examples of this tradition, the US Conference of Catholic Bishops made early and public statements about the challenge of climate change.  Among other statements, in 2011 Pope Benedict XVI strongly supported international climate change action.  And now, Pope Francis continues that tradition.  But this soon-to-be released encyclical should properly be viewed as a continuation of strong statements he has made since ascending to the papacy.

I asked Dr. Michael Naughton, Professor of Catholic Studies at the University of St. Thomas about the significance of the expected encyclical.  He told me,

For Francis our ecological crisis highlights how important the relationship between faith and science is.  On one hand, science enriches faith by protecting it from superstition and ideologies.  On the other hand, faith helps science to see the deeper human implications of the reality in front of it.  One of the terms that will most likely to come from Francis’ encyclical is ‘human ecology,’ which sees our ecological crisis in terms of both our natural as well as cultural and social environments.

While it is not clear what will be in the encyclical, it likely will urge Catholics around to world to take action in their own lives to preserve the environment for themselves, others, and for future generations.  The urging will be based on both moral and scientific bases.  It may surprise people, but the Catholic Church has long had active and informed scientific bodies which have informed the papacy, in fact there is a Pontifical Academy of Sciences which serves such a purpose.
...
Professor Naughton added his perspective on this forthcoming action, saying,

Francis will no doubt, in his punchy and prophetic tone, draw our attention to a market system that too often treats the environment like a commodity in what he describes as a “throw away” culture.  As he is never tired of repeating, the poor suffer the most from our ecological crisis.  He will confront this “logic of the market” with a “logic of gift” that views the earth to be shared with all of humanity—a gift in need of great care and attention.

Read more at Pope Francis Plants a Flag in the Ground on Climate Change