I have drafted elsewhere the letter George W. Bush ought to
have written in response to the letter he received from Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Here
I intend to do something much more arrogant. As a recently returned Catholic who had felt threatened and disturbed by last year’s Papal Encyclical ‘Laudato Si’ - but having read through it is more or less okay with it now - I
would like to suggest two small additions to it.
The first addition is intended to assuage the concerns of
those, such as myself, who are concerned that a preoccupation with the threat
of anthropogenic global warming distracts from more important environmental
issues and is a convenient rod for technocrats to beat the backs of the poor.
The second addition would address a certain elephant in the room.
‘Laudato Si’ is not primarily concerned with ‘climate
change’. It begins with a long list of different environmental problems, some
of which are undoubtedly serious, others less so. Pope Francis does not
prioritise them. This is a particular bugbear of mine – the failure to
prioritise – but in this case I can see both a good excuse and a good reason
why this should be the case. The excuse is that it is so much easier. Though
not technically written by a committee (I assume), an encyclical necessarily
takes on some of the characteristics of any document written by a committee,
which means it is much easier to get some additional topic included vaguely
than to get a firm plan with priorities and actions and deadlines. In the
interests of avoiding interminable to-ing and fro-ing about priorities, and coming up with a final draft before 2056,
I think not putting priorities on the litany of environmental woes can be
excused. The good reason I can think of is that the Pope is humbly and
clear-headedly aware that he does not have the skills and knowledge to prioritise
these environmental concerns. Realising that even the whole apparatus at his
command does not have the appropriate skills and knowledge, it is reasonable
for him to refrain from offering priorities in the encyclical. What I suggest
be added is an explicit statement of this difficulty, combined with a clear
statement of the need for someone to prioritise to challenges listed. I propose
something along these lines, to be inserted at the end of paragraph 62, the end
of Chapter One:
“Mindful of our Saviour’s exhortation to ‘Love the Lord your God with all your mind (Matthew 22:47; mark 12:30; Luke 10:27), we recognise that balancing the social and economic needs of humanity with the needs of the Earth is a difficult task, in which it will be necessary to employ the fruits of scientific inquiry and of the economic calculus, and to exert in extraordinary ways the abilites of humanity granted to us by God. We pray that our leaders be granted the discernment to respond in these challenges in a way that will heal our common home without adding one jot or tittle to the suffering of the poor.”
That is all. That would effectively neuter any concerns
about ‘Laudato Si’ as a leftist stalking-horse clothed in Catholic rhetoric, at
least as far as I am concerned. (For what it’s worth, having read it I am
convinced it is the other way around: it is primarily an attempt to yoke
certain fashionable causes to the plow of traditional Catholic social teaching.)
Now, to move on to the second addition. In paragraph 106
Pope Francis makes the following statement: “This has made it easy to accept
the idea of infinite or unlimited growth, which proves so attractive to
economists, financiers and experts in technology. It is based on the lie that there
is an infinite supply of the earth’s goods, and this leads to the planet being
squeezed dry beyond every limit. It is the false notion that “an infinite
quantity of energy and resources are available, that it is possible to renew
them quickly, and that the negative effects of the exploitation of the natural
order can be easily absorbed”.[Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace,
Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church, 462.]”
This idea of infinite or unlimited growth is not unique to
capitalists, however. It is a fundamental characteristic of life. In the words
of the Chinese science-fiction author Cixin Liu: “The amount of matter in the
universe remains constant, but life grows exponentially. Exponentials are the
devils of mathematics. If there’s a microscopic bacterium in the ocean that
divides once every half hour, its descendants will fill the entire ocean in the
space of a few days, so long as there are sufficients nutrients.” [Cixin Liu,
the Dark Forest]
The elephant in the room is of course this. You cannot
plausibly advocate for the protection of the environment while simultaneously
advocating - or being seen to advocate - policies that lead to exponential population growth. Addressing this
inconsistency would require a clear statement of policy, rather than rhetoric alone.
But it could be done very simply, without damaging the ecumenical dialogue with
the East or leading us down the slippery slope the Anglican Communion began to
descend in 1930. All is needed is a clarification of the existing teaching of
the Church on the conditions under which natural family planning is justified,
to state that these explicitly include a concern for the environment. I propose something along these lines, to be added at the
end of paragraph 50:
“Pope Paul VI, in his encyclical Humane Vitae, has stated that recourse to infertile periods is a lawful method of regulating procreation, if “there are well-grounded reasons for spacing births, arising from the physical or psychological condition of husband or wife, or from external circumstances”. [Humanae Vitae, 16.] It is now clear that these external circumstances include the clear and serious challenges facing our common home, and we encourage faithful Catholic married couples to remember this.”
That would never satisfy the World, the Flesh, and the Devil, but then nothing will satsify them. To thoughtful people, however, it would signal that Pope Francis is serious about what he is saying in ‘Laudato Si’.
