The Political Pope

by George Neumayr

  The Vatican’s red carpet was unfurled for officials of the Obama administration as well. Gina McCarthy, the head of Obama’s Environmental Protection Agency, turned up in 2014 to tell Pope Francis that Obama appreciated his green activism.12 “I think the pope knows his own beliefs,” she said. “I want him to know that the president is aligned with him on these issues and that we are taking action in the United States.”

  Vatican officials gave McCarthy a tour of the Holy See’s solar panels and environmentally conscious air filtration system in the Sistine Chapel. McCarthy made a revealing comment to the press during her visit about the propagandistic power of a green pope. He can depoliticize the issue for climate change activists, she said. “One of the challenges that I think we face in the U.S. is that climate change is very often viewed as a political issue,” said McCarthy. “And environmental issues are not political. I think we need to get this out of the political arena and get it back to the arena we work most effectively on: What’s right for our kids, for our families, for public health, and what solutions do we bring to the table that are going to address those?”

  McCarthy was oblivious to the irony of Democrats calling for a pope to decide the debate, given the frequency with which they call for a “separation of church and state.” Suddenly a close relationship between church and state didn’t look so worrisome to liberals. “The faith community’s voice is going to be very important here because EPA can talk about the science and reach only so far,” she said. “We need to get this to the point where people are as comfortable talking about this as they are other international public health threats.”

  “Everybody is just looking for the pope to continue to make signals that this is an issue that is important to the Catholic Church and should be important to all of us,” said McCarthy. She praised the Catholic Climate Covenant, which is a network of Catholic dioceses, organizations, and schools dedicated to climate change activism.13

  Pope Francis also made time to meet with actor Leonardo DiCaprio, who gave Francis a book containing a painting that depicts “overpopulation” and other “excesses” on the planet.14

  Pope Francis often describes himself as a “man of dialogue,” but he took no interest in dialoging with global warming skeptics, such as Marc Morano of the Heartland Institute. When he appeared at a 2015 Vatican summit on climate change to ask a question, a security guard shut him down, saying, “You have to control yourself or you will be escorted out of here.”15

  “It wasn’t a summit,” says Morano in an interview for this book. “It was more like a rebranding party for the Church and the United Nations to merge on climate change. No dissent was going to be tolerated.”

  “It was a real culture shock,” he recalls. “The pope was aligning himself with the most anti-Catholic radicals around, people who want to tear down the Church.”

  The Eco-Encyclical

  Francis’s encyclical on the environment, the first ever written by a pope, was released in May 2015. Its section on climate change turned out to be as radical as conservatives feared. It uncritically drew upon the assumptions and doomsday rhetoric of the warmists.

  “It was a cut-and-paste job from the documents of the United Nations,” says the physicist Dr. Tom Sheahen in an interview for this book.

  The pope made it clear that he was advancing a temporal political goal. He addressed the document to everybody “on the planet” and endorsed the specific climate change initiatives of the United Nations. The encyclical rests on the false premise that resistance to the claims of environmentalism are equivalent to mistreatment of God’s creation. What the pope presents as a moral crisis is in fact nothing more than a political dispute. In the encyclical’s most controversial sections, Pope Francis treats global warming theory as ironclad fact and gives his blessing to all of the “solutions” proposed by the environmental left to control the climate:

  A very solid scientific consensus indicates that we are presently witnessing a disturbing warming of the climatic system. In recent decades this warming has been accompanied by a constant rise in the sea level and, it would appear, by an increase of extreme weather events, even if a scientifically determinable cause cannot be assigned to each particular phenomenon. Humanity is called to recognize the need for changes of lifestyle, production and consumption, in order to combat this warming or at least the human causes which produce or aggravate it.

  The passages in the document touching on global warming read like a hybrid of Marx’s Das Kapital and Al Gore’s Earth in the Balance. “Climate change is a global problem with grave implications: environmental, social, economic, political and for the distribution of goods. It represents one of the principal challenges facing humanity in our day. Its worst impact will probably be felt by developing countries in coming decades,” he wrote.

  “Never have we so hurt and mistreated our common home as we have in the last two hundred years,” he asserted, adopting a Malthusian tone. He said the earth was becoming an “immense pile of filth.” He offered an absurdly one-sided treatment of technology, free markets, and consumerism, conveniently ignoring all of the evidence that those developments had alleviated poverty, improved health, and raised standards of living.

  He endorsed a “true world political authority” to enforce “global regulatory norms,” saying that “it is remarkable how weak international political responses have been.” He called for the phasing out of fossil fuels: “We know that technology based on the use of highly polluting fossil fuels—especially coal, but also oil and, to a lesser degree, gas—needs to be progressively replaced without delay. Until greater progress is made in developing widely accessible sources of renewable energy, it is legitimate to choose the less harmful alternative or to find short-term solutions.”

  The document is riddled with half-truths and scattershot generalizations, many of which come from deep-seated prejudices against capitalism. He wrote, “The Christian tradition has never recognized the right to private property as absolute or inviolable, and has stressed the social purpose of all forms of private property. Saint John Paul II forcefully reaffirmed this teaching, stating that God gave the earth to the whole human race for the sustenance of all its members, without excluding or favouring anyone.”

  In fact, Pope John Paul II had defended the free market, saying “Christ does not condemn a simple possession of material goods. Rather, his most severe words are directed against those who use their riches in an egoistic manner, without preoccupying with their neighbor who lacks the indispensable.”

  No such balance appeared in Laudato Si’. Instead, perfectly reasonable human activity, such as turning on air-conditioning, is cast as overconsumption:

  People may well have a growing ecological sensitivity but it has not succeeded in changing their harmful habits of consumption which, rather than decreasing, appear to be growing all the more. A simple example is the increasing use and power of air-conditioning. The markets, which immediately benefit from sales, stimulate ever greater demand. An outsider looking at our world would be amazed at such behavior, which at times appears self-destructive.

  Many found this a curious example of overconsumption, given that the lives of millions of people have been saved or improved by air-conditioning. The culture of “overconsumption” and “waste” against which the pope rails has contributed to longer and healthier lives for the poor.

  Openly endorsing the anti-growth policies of the Left, Pope Francis cast economic decline in the West as a requirement of justice: “We know how unsustainable is the behavior of those who constantly consume and destroy, while others are not yet able to live in a way worthy of their human dignity. That is why the time has come to accept decreased growth in some parts of the world, in order to provide resources for other places to experience healthy growth.”

  Socialists found his searing critique of Western capitalism exhilarating. To the Brazilian socialist sociologist Michael Löwy, no pope had ever denounced capitalism so directly. “For Pope Franc
is, ecological disasters and climate change are not merely the results of individual behavior, but rather the result of the current models of production and consumption,” he said.16

  The encyclical represented a departure from the pope’s normally tolerant attitudes toward the “modern world.” On disputed cultural matters, he approaches the modern world very gingerly. “The complaints of today about how ‘barbaric’ the world is—these complaints sometimes end up giving birth within the church to desires to establish order in the sense of pure conservation, as a defense. No: God is to be encountered in the world of today,” he has said. That attitude vanishes in Laudato Si’, which amounts to a jeremiad against the modern world.

  Addressing a subject on which he enjoys no expertise and that has no bearing on the salvation of souls, he sounded more like Noam Chomsky than St. Francis of Assisi. Adopting the grim faux-scientific tone of Marx, Pope Francis writes in the encyclical:

  Production is not always rational, and is usually tied to economic variables which assign to products a value that does not necessarily correspond to their real worth. This frequently leads to an overproduction of some commodities, with unnecessary impact on the environment and with negative results on regional economies.

  No serious economist today gives any credence to such warmed-over Marxist claims. Pope Francis asserts that a free market, because it allows for income inequalities, is not only a threat to the environment but also a cause of war—a link that even the left-leaning Economist finds “ultra-radical.” It perplexes the Economist that Pope Francis “consciously or unconsciously follows Vladimir Lenin in his diagnosis of capitalism and imperialism as the main reason why world war broke out a century ago.”17

  Pope Francis has admitted that his knowledge of economics is thin. “I don’t understand it very well,” he once said.18 But that didn’t stop him in the encyclical from offering highly specific economic prescriptions.

  As a number of economists and political analysts noted, the encyclical, if followed, would hurt the very poor people its advice purports to help.

  “Pope Francis—and I say this as a Catholic—is a complete disaster when it comes to his policy pronouncements. On the economy, and now on the environment, the pope has allied himself with the far left and has embraced an ideology that would make people poorer and less free,” wrote the economist Stephen Moore. “The pope recently declared: ‘The monopolizing of lands, deforestation, the appropriation of water, inadequate agro-toxics are some of the evils that tear man from the land of his birth. Climate change, the loss of biodiversity and deforestation are already showing their devastating effects in the great cataclysms we witness.’ This is the language of the radical green movement that is at its core anti-Christian, anti-human being and anti-progress. He has aligned himself with a secular movement that is antithetical to the fundamental theological underpinning of Catholicism—the sanctity of human life and the value of all souls.”19

  “Pope Francis frames his argument in favor of a heavy-handed environmentalism around the idea that climate change hurts the poor the most. Yet he seems to have little notion of what has helped the world’s poor more than anything: namely, the march of markets and technology, which has lifted billions out of destitution,” wrote Steven Malanga. “As Michael Shellenberger, president of the Breakthrough Institute and co-author of An Ecomodernist Manifesto, observed: ‘When [the] Pope speaks of ‘irrational faith in human progress’ I want him to visit the Congo to see what life is like when there is no progress.’”20

  Cardinal Peter Turkson, the head of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, has been credited with writing one of the encyclical’s first drafts. Turkson is famous for his over-the-top pronouncements against capitalism. Among the other papers that have been issued by his pontifical council is one that calls for a “global public authority” to correct the “distortions of capitalist development.”21

  Pope Francis has made it clear that he agrees with Turkson’s support for world government. “Interdependence obliges us to think of one world with a common plan,” he writes in the encyclical. “It is essential to devise stronger and more efficiently organized international institutions, with functionaries who are appointed fairly by agreement among national governments, and empowered to impose sanctions.”

  In August 2016, the Vatican announced that Turkson would head up a new Vatican department dedicated to promoting environmentalism and other politically liberal projects described as “Integral Human Development.” Pope Francis said that Turkson’s dicastery would focus on “migrants, those in need, the sick, the excluded and marginalized, the imprisoned and the unemployed, as well as victims of armed conflict, natural disasters, and all forms of slavery and torture.”22

  The Church of Jeffrey Sachs

  In many dioceses, the Church has gone intensely green under Francis. Rosary groups have given way to recycling clubs, and priests are more likely to question Catholics for their “carbon footprint” than their abortions. It is now common to see “justice and peace” diocesan offices calling on Catholics to “go vegetarian,” “take shorter showers,” and “use both sides of paper.” In March 2016, the governorate of the Vatican City State announced that it was going to “repurpose” the floral arrangements from the Easter Mass and announced that it would set up an “ecological island” at the Vatican to serve as a compost station for waste. To promote “climate change awareness” on March 19, Pope Francis ordered the cupola of St. Peter’s Basilica and Bernini’s colonnade to go dark for an hour and urged the faithful to turn off all nonessential lights.23

  Eyeing the Church’s enormous resources, environmentalists have convinced many Catholics organizations to divest from coal, oil, and gas companies and to go solar. In the Philippines, thousands of Catholics, led by their bishops, marched against fossil fuels. The 2016 event was organized by Greenpeace and other radical groups.24

  The coordination between the environmental left and the Church has never been more obvious, with environmentalists putting out memes about the need for Catholic institutions to “free” themselves from fossil fuels. That such efforts will increase unemployment doesn’t seem to disturb a pope who claims unemployment as one of his key issues. Nor does he feel any reservations about using the donations he has inherited from previous generations for an overtly political cause. Catholics have donated to the Church over the years on the assumption that that money would go to the promotion of the Catholic faith, not end up in an ideological slush fund directed by activists like Jeffrey Sachs.

  The Vatican is now looking at making classes in “ecology” a requirement for all seminarians. Many seminaries across the world have already adopted such classes, in light of the pope’s call that “seminaries and houses of formation will provide an education in responsible simplicity of life.”

  According to La Stampa, “Seven Catholic seminaries offer courses on faith and ecology.” In the US, they are the Catholic Theological Union in Chicago; Catholic University of America: School of Theology and Religious Studies in Washington D.C.; Oblate School of Theology in San Antonio, Texas; Saint Paul Seminary School of Divinity at Saint Thomas University in St Paul, Minnesota, it reported. “The Pontifical universities in Rome that have introduced such courses include the Gregorian University, St. Anselmo and the Salesian Pontifical University.”25

  In September 2016, Pope Francis stunned Catholics by suggesting that environmentalism be added to the spiritual and corporal works of mercy. In a message on the “world day of prayer for the care of creation,” he wrote:

  The Christian life involves the practice of the traditional seven corporal and seven spiritual works of mercy. “We usually think of the works of mercy individually and in relation to a specific initiative: hospitals for the sick, soup kitchens for the hungry, shelters for the homeless, schools for those to be educated, the confessional and spiritual direction for those needing counsel and forgiveness… But if we look at the works of mercy as a whole, we see that the object of merc
y is human life itself and everything it embraces.”

  Obviously “human life itself and everything it embraces” includes care for our common home. So let me propose a complement to the two traditional sets of seven: may the works of mercy also include care for our common home.

  As a spiritual work of mercy, care for our common home calls for a “grateful contemplation of God’s world” (Laudato Si’, 214) which “allows us to discover in each thing a teaching which God wishes to hand on to us” (ibid., 85). As a corporal work of mercy, care for our common home requires “simple daily gestures which break with the logic of violence, exploitation and selfishness” and “makes itself felt in every action that seeks to build a better world” (ibid., 230–231).

  He also said that Catholics should go to confession if they fail to uphold the injunctions of environmentalism:

  After a serious examination of conscience and moved by sincere repentance, we can confess our sins against the Creator, against creation, and against our brothers and sisters. “The Catechism of the Catholic Church presents the confessional as the place where the truth makes us free.” We know that “God is greater than our sin,” than all our sins, including those against the environment. We confess them because we are penitent and desire to change. The merciful grace of God received in the sacrament will help us to do so.

  Examining our consciences, repentance and confession to our Father who is rich in mercy lead to a firm purpose of amendment. This in turn must translate into concrete ways of thinking and acting that are more respectful of creation. For example: “avoiding the use of plastic and paper, reducing water consumption, separating refuse, cooking only what can reasonably be consumed, showing care for other living beings, using public transport or car-pooling, planting trees, turning off unnecessary lights, or any number of other practices” (Laudato Si’, 211). We must not think that these efforts are too small to improve our world. They “call forth a goodness which, albeit unseen, inevitably tends to spread” and encourage “a prophetic and contemplative lifestyle, one capable of deep enjoyment free of the obsession with consumption” (ibid., 212, 222).