In 2015, in his Encyclical Laudato Si, Pope Francis echoed several themes of his Papacy.
Included among them is his profound suspicion and distrust of capitalism and its role in harming the environment, saying: "Our propensity to interrupt the world’s delicate and balanced ecosystems, our insatiable desire to manipulate and control the planet’s limited resources, and our greed for limitless profit in markets — all these have alienated us from the original purpose of creation. We no longer respect nature as a shared gift; instead, we regard it as a private possession. We no longer associate with nature in order to sustain it; instead, we lord over it to support our own constructs."
The Encyclical garnered a great deal of media attention.
However, its actual effect on average Catholics is debatable.
An Annenberg Public Policy Center Survey found that the Pope’s attention to the issue did little to change Catholics’ minds. In fact, only 24 percent of Catholics believe in climate change.
What the Pope does not quite seem to understand is that the Catholic public is not convinced of any real science or fact regarding such environmental claims. In reality, there is no hard science to support such claims.
In the end, Francis undermines his own credibility and authority by introducing the politics of environmentalism into the moral arena.
As a result, he does violence to the moral voice of the Church itself.
The question is: why?
I’d love to hear a cogent response.
Wouldn’t you?
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