- Feb 5, 2002
- 166,616
- 56,251
- Country
- United States
- Faith
- Catholic
- Marital Status
- Married
- Politics
- US-Others
Laudate Deum (“Praise God”), Pope Francis’s apostolic exhortation on the climate crisis, released in Rome today, has at least one great strength. It’s shorter than Laudato Si’ (“Praised Be”), his 2015 encyclical on much the same subject. That may sound like snark, but it’s the opposite. The latter was a bloated document of nearly 38,000 words. The new text is a leaner, far more effective effort of barely 7,500 words. Which means that ordinary people may actually read it.
As with nearly everything Francis says and does, Laudate Deum is a mixed drink. In six sections and seventy-three paragraphs, Francis outlines his views on our “global climate crisis,” the negative impact of today’s technocratic mindset, the weakness of relevant international structures in moderating the crisis, the progress of climate conferences, “what to expect from COP28 in Dubai,” and, lastly, “spiritual motivations.”
Few would dispute the pope’s claim that we now face serious environmental issues of waste and pollution with climatic effect, and that wealthy, developed nations are the main culprits. Laudate Deum’s first section—“The Global Climate Crisis”—is an impressively argued data dump supporting the case, though Francis too impatiently dismisses contrary views as “scarcely reasonable.” He makes a regrettable gaffe in resurrecting the memory of Covid-19 and its lesson that “what happens in one part of the world has repercussions on the entire planet.” That may be so, but the “science” behind the 2020–2021 Covid hysteria and lockdowns proved to be flawed or flatly false, resulting in thousands of needless deaths and the systematic bullying of anyone, including veteran scientists, who questioned Covid policies.
In Covid’s aftermath, the appeal of “following the science” as a slam-dunk argument for anything, including climate change, has understandably worn thin. On the other hand, Francis does note that “in an attempt to simplify reality, there are those who would place responsibility [for climate damage] on the poor,” or that “everything is the fault of the poor” because they have too many children. Exactly so. That’s an implicit motive in every First World population-control aid package to Third and Fourth World nations.
The document’s second section—“A Growing Technocratic Paradigm”—is the strongest. It’s well-written and persuasively presented. And it’s consistent with the teaching of all of Francis’s most recent predecessors. A sample is paragraphs 23 and 24:
Continued below.
www.firstthings.com
As with nearly everything Francis says and does, Laudate Deum is a mixed drink. In six sections and seventy-three paragraphs, Francis outlines his views on our “global climate crisis,” the negative impact of today’s technocratic mindset, the weakness of relevant international structures in moderating the crisis, the progress of climate conferences, “what to expect from COP28 in Dubai,” and, lastly, “spiritual motivations.”
Few would dispute the pope’s claim that we now face serious environmental issues of waste and pollution with climatic effect, and that wealthy, developed nations are the main culprits. Laudate Deum’s first section—“The Global Climate Crisis”—is an impressively argued data dump supporting the case, though Francis too impatiently dismisses contrary views as “scarcely reasonable.” He makes a regrettable gaffe in resurrecting the memory of Covid-19 and its lesson that “what happens in one part of the world has repercussions on the entire planet.” That may be so, but the “science” behind the 2020–2021 Covid hysteria and lockdowns proved to be flawed or flatly false, resulting in thousands of needless deaths and the systematic bullying of anyone, including veteran scientists, who questioned Covid policies.
In Covid’s aftermath, the appeal of “following the science” as a slam-dunk argument for anything, including climate change, has understandably worn thin. On the other hand, Francis does note that “in an attempt to simplify reality, there are those who would place responsibility [for climate damage] on the poor,” or that “everything is the fault of the poor” because they have too many children. Exactly so. That’s an implicit motive in every First World population-control aid package to Third and Fourth World nations.
The document’s second section—“A Growing Technocratic Paradigm”—is the strongest. It’s well-written and persuasively presented. And it’s consistent with the teaching of all of Francis’s most recent predecessors. A sample is paragraphs 23 and 24:
Continued below.
Laudate Deum Barely Mentions Christ | Francis X. Maier
Pope Francis seeks to speak a common ethical language to a very diverse global audience, but he ends up blessing the direction of mainstream opinion already stated well elsewhere.
www.firstthings.com
