Pope Francis And Laudato Si': Looking Back At An Ecological Turning Point For The Catholic Church

(MENAFN- The Conversation) On May 24, 2015, Pope Francis signed his encyclical Laudato Si' –“Praise be to you” in medieval Italian. This letter to Roman Catholic bishops was no half measure: it took many Catholics by surprise with its uncompromising conclusions and call for an in-depth transformation of our lifestyles. In France, it managed to bring together both conservative currents – such as the Courant pour un écologie humaine (Movement for a Human Ecology), created in 2013 – and more open-minded Catholic intellectuals such as Gaël Giraud, a Jesuit and author of Produire plus, polluer moins: l'impossible découplage? (Produce more, Pollute Less: the Impossible Decoupling?).

The Pope was taking a cue from his predecessors. Benedict XVI, John Paul II and Paul VI had also expressed concern about the dramatic effects of an abusive exploitation of nature on humanity :

What does Pope Francis's encyclical teach us? And how does it reflect the Catholic Church's vision, and his own?

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The“green” pope

In the text, Pope Francis describes a situation in which the environment is deteriorating rapidly:

The “green” pope published Laudato Si' on June 18, 2015, a few months prior to the Paris climate conference . The aim was to raise public awareness around the challenges of global warming by creating a relational approach that included God, human beings and the Earth. It was the first time an encyclical had been devoted wholly to ecology.

In it, the Pope voiced his concern about the effects of global warming:

Criticizing a“technocratic paradigm”

Since Pope Leo XIII's Rerum Novarum , the various social encyclicals have consistently rejected the liberal idea of a society solely regulated by the smooth functioning of the market. The French sociologist of religion Émile Poulat summed up the Church's position perfectly in 1977 in his book Église contre bourgeoisie. Introduction au devenir du catholicisme actuel, in which he writes that the Church“never agreed to abandon the running of the world to the blind laws of economics”.

In 2015, Pope Francis rejected technical solutions that would not truly be useful, as well as the belief in the redeeming virtues of a self-regulating market. He accused“the technocratic paradigm” of dominating humankind by subordinating the economic and political spheres to its logic (§-101). His comments are reminiscent of the unjustly forgotten French Protestant philosopher Jacques Ellul and his idea of a limitless “self-propulsion” of technology, which has become the alpha and omega of our societies.

For Jacques Ellul, technology is anything but neutral since it represents genuine power driven by its own movement. Wikimedia , CC BY-SA

The pope's charge against the supposed virtues of the market was spectacular. Among others, he criticized the following:

• overconsumption in developed countries:

• the glorification of profit and a self-regulating market:

• the hypertrophy of speculative finance:

• the unequal distribution of wealth in the world:

• the unequal levels of development between countries, leading Francis to speak of an“ecological debt” owed by rich countries to the least developed ones. (§-51 )

Social justice and shrinking growth

In Francis's words, the goals of saving the planet and social justice go hand in hand. His approach is in keeping with the work of the [economist Louis-Joseph Lebret, a Dominican, who in 1941 founded the association Économie et humanisme . Father Lebret wanted to put the economy back at the service of humankind, and work with the least economically advanced countries by championing an approach based on the virtues of local communities and regional planning.

Pope Francis , for his part, is calling for a radical break with the consumerist lifestyles of rich countries, while focusing on the development of the poorest nations. (§-93 ). In Laudato Si', he also wrote that developed countries' responses seemed insufficient because of the economic interests at stake (§-54).

This brings us back to the principle of the universal destination of goods – the organizing principle of property defended by the Catholic Church's social doctrine , which demands that goods be distributed in such a way as to enable every human being to live in dignity.

In addition to encouraging the necessary technical adjustments and sober individual practices, Pope Francis is urging citizens in developed countries not to be content with half measures deemed largely insufficient. Instead, he is calling for people to make lifestyle changes in line with the logic of slowing growth. The aim is to enable developing countries to emerge from poverty, while sparing the environment.

Nearly 10 years on, Laudato Si' resonates fully with our concerns. In the United States, Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who both identify as Catholic , would be well advised to read it anew.

This article was originally published in French

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