Catholic News Service
You need look no further than the rising sea waters threatening Miami or the erosion of coastal Alaska, where entire villages must be relocated in a state that’s becoming a bellwether for climate change.
Or study our polluted oceans, where our love affair with one-use plastic desecrates the sea, or feel the incrementally hotter temperatures assailing us each decade.
It doesn’t take much to conclude that climate change and environmental degradation are here.
The care of creation is a moral issue. It’s a Catholic issue.
If you have any doubts that climate change and care for God’s creation are moral concerns dear to the Catholic heart, you need only study what our three most recent popes have said on the issue.
Then, read the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops statements. And see the activism of Catholic Climate Covenant that was formed in 2006 — inspired by a 2001 USCCB statement on climate change — and that is supported by 16 national partners, including the USCCB, Catholic Relief Services, Catholic Charities USA, the Catholic Health Association and congregations of religious men and women, among others.
Pope Francis is our first pope to devote an entire encyclical to the environment. “Laudato Si’, On Care of Our Common Home,” was published in 2015, and in it the pope relies on well-documented scientific studies but also upon Catholic teaching, moral arguments and the statements of his predecessors.
In his 1990 World Day of Peace message, St. John Paul II said the environment must be a moral priority of the church, warning that a lack of due respect for nature threatened world peace.
Pope Benedict XVI famously installed large solar panels at the Vatican, and the Vatican daily newspaper, L’Osservatore Romano, said at the time that “the gradual exhaustion of the ozone layer and the greenhouse effect have reached critical dimensions.”
Papal interest in social problems was made clear by Pope Leo XIII. He took on the volatile issues of his day, defending the rights of workers and labor unions in his 1891 encyclical, “Rerum Novarum,” the template for Catholic social justice.
As Jesuit Father James Martin reminded us in a 2015 article in America magazine, an encyclical carries great authority in the church — only below the teaching of an ecumenical council or the Gospels themselves.
Pope Francis quotes St. Francis of Assisi’s 13th-century poem, “Canticle of the Creatures,” in the opening lines of “Laudato Si’.” Beyond this great saint of nature, care of creation can be traced to Jesus and beyond him to Genesis.
This is a Catholic issue.
In his article, Father Martin helped explain the lengthy encyclical in 10 main takeaways. One thing Pope Francis has done, Father Martin says, is bring faith into the international dialogue on the issue.
Pope Francis brings home another message, Father Martin explains, that environmental destruction has a disproportionate effect on the poor. The wealthy exploit resources from the poor, who cannot defend themselves from the ravages of climate change.
Why, Father Martin says the pope asks, are so many of the wealthy turning away from the poor? This is a grave moral question of our time.
The U.S. Catholic bishops have been vocal on climate change. In 2001, the bishops wrote “Global Climate Change: A Plea for Dialogue, Prudence and the Common Good.”
“Action to mitigate global climate change must be built upon a foundation of social and economic justice,” they wrote.
In their document, the bishops stated, “We especially want to focus on the needs of the poor, the weak and the vulnerable in a debate often dominated by more powerful interests.”
Again, we hear the Catholic plea to listen to the poor rather than powerful interest groups and lobbyists that so often dominate politics today. But, we ask, who is listening to the cry of the poor?
After the March 28, 2017, executive order in which President Donald Trump effectively dismantled the Clean Power Plan, the chairman of the USCCB Committee on Domestic Justice and Human Development criticized the decision.
“The USCCB, in unity with Pope Francis, strongly supports environmental stewardship and has called consistently for ‘our own country to curtail carbon emissions,'” said Bishop Frank J. Dewane of Venice, Florida, in response to the order.
“This executive order places a number of environmental protections in jeopardy and moves the U.S. away from a national carbon standard, all without adopting a sufficient plan for ensuring proper care for people and creation.”
What can an individual do?
Pope Francis tells us this is a personal, moral issue of connectedness between us and God’s creation.
We must examine our own greed, our personal connection and concern for the poor. What is our role in what the pope calls a “throwaway culture”? Do our cars and driving habits consider fuel efficiency? Are we wasteful, recreational shoppers? Do we turn our thermostats down and examine our use of non-renewal items like plastic utensils and packaging?
Can we become activists and write our elected representatives? Join the Catholic Climate Covenant?
Pope Francis has given us a strong mandate: On climate change, “there is therefore a clear, definitive and urgent ethical imperative to act.”
(Caldarola is a freelance writer and a columnist for Catholic News Service.)
