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just 'cause he
clowns around,
don't think he
doesn't mean
business
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Well Pope Francis’ long expected encyclical on a Christian response to
the impact of climate change on the environment is due to be released on
Thursday and it is already causing a stir. Italian journalist, Sandro Magister, an
outspoken critic of Pope Francis and blogger for the Italian daily L’Espresso wrote the introduction for a
bootlegged copy—or alleged copy—his editors had managed to purloin and was
promptly and indefinitely deprived of his credentials by the Vatican Press
Office. But this is not simply a matter
of a newspaper getting a scoop. Magister
has become one of the rallying forces in the anti-Francis movement and has
close ties to some of the curial prelates who find Francis’ reforms very
threatening to their lives of comfortable graft. The Katholik Krazies are rallying around
Magister in this latest kerfuffle as this encyclical is a particularly
neuralgic point for them. While previous
Popes, including Francis’ predecessor Pope Benedict XVI, have spoken up to raise
the issue of environmental responsibility (and Benedict was given the moniker
“The Green Pope” in acknowledgement for his environmental concerns), with
Francis a real danger to the industrialized establishment has arisen as Francis
is not one to pull any punches. Previous
magisterial pronouncements have been limited to somewhat abstract moral
principles. Francis is not a theologian
(he was trained as a chemist) but has a science background and tends to bring
abstractions right down to the very concrete realities. This makes nervous those semi-gnostics who
like to divide creation into the material and the spiritual and think our only
concern is to be about the spiritual.
Sandro Magister is not the only water carrier for the big boys
of industry whose productivity and wealth depend on an unlimited access to
water, atmosphere, forests, and the earth.
Former Senator and professedly new to the Catholic Cafeteria, Rick
Santorum, is no admirer of Pope Francis, espousing a Reform of the Reform
Catholicism that is selective in its acceptance of the teachings and decrees of
the Second Vatican Council. The
implications of the role of the Church in the modern world as outlined in Gaudium et Spes would seem to him and to
many Catholics like him to put too much stress on the secular and to lose focus
on the Church’s spiritual mission. Of
course the fact that Consol Energy, a Pennsylvania energy company with
interests in coal and natural gas production, is one of Santorum’s clients
compromises the former’s Senator’s objectivity when it comes to developing a
Christian response to the moral imperative of environmental
responsibility. Senator Santorum said
that the Pope should limit himself to spiritual matters and leave science to
the scientists. The Pope has an advanced
degree in the sciences; Santorum’s academic background is Political Science (“not
a real science” as Sheldon Cooper would say) for undergraduate; a Masters in
Business Administration, and a Juris Doctor (Law School Graduate). But then Cardinal Burke says that men need to
dress like men so as they say on the lower East Side: “Go figah.”
Jeb Bush is another Catholic running for President who weighed
in against Pope Francis’ teaching on the moral issues regarding the environment
though he was a bit more respectful in his tone than Senator Santorum. The former Florida governor and latest scion
of the Bush dynasty to seek the White House said that he would not pass
judgment until he read what the Pope wrote, but thinks that the purpose of
religion was about making us better people and less about “things that end up
getting in the political realm.” Again
we hear the whine of that that mild gnosticism. Well, while Poppy Bush was
devilishly intelligent (adjective meant to be taken literally), his sons are
somewhat dim bulbs who seem incapable of making the connections between moral
imperatives and political agenda even when a Pope sent Cardinal Pio Laghi, a
family friend of the Bushes, to explain it.
But the issue about Francis bugging the conservatives is more
fundamental than his call for a responsible use of our natural resources and
protecting the environment. The heart of
the matter is probably best explained in this morning’s New York Time’s article
where Michael McKenna, an energy lobbyist and Republican political consultant—and
a self proclaimed “conservative Catholic”—said the following
“For practicing
conservative Catholics, the folks who sit in the pews on Sunday, this is not
going to be an indictment of guys like Rubio and Jeb,” Mr. McKenna said. “Those
guys have already made up their minds on climate change. For the real
churchgoers, this is going to be an indictment of the pope.
“This pope is
selling a line of Latin American-style socialism,” he continued. “This guy is
not in sync with the American Catholic Church. Guys like Jeb and Rubio are more
in line with the American Catholic Church than the pope.”
This is the problem: not that the Pope is speaking out on the
moral imperatives of environmental responsibility but that the Pope is making
it clear that unbridled free-market capitalism and the raping of the earth’s
resources and environment that is consequent to lack of governmental—and
international—control is not compatible with our Catholic faith and
morality. While previous popes—Leo XIII,
Pius XI, John XXIII, Paul VI, John Paul II and Benedict XVI—have spoken out
loud and clear about the moral imperatives of social responsibility, Francis
still represents a startling discontinuity with his predecessors. The break is not so much in the message—it
would be difficult to find more explicit challenges to the industrial and
economic status quo than Rerum Novarum or
Mater et Magistra—as in the stance
from which the position is being declared.
At the end of the day Francis’ predecessors went home to the Apostolic
Palace and its courtly life. Francis, in
his very public rejection of the pontifical life style and his frayed sleeves
and down-at-the-heels black shoes lets you know that despite that friendly
smile and his donning the occasional clown’s nose for a photo, means business. His merciless reforms at the Vatican Bank,
his virtual sacking of opposition Cardinal Raymond Burke, his plain-spoken
off-the-cuff remarks to the press, his calling to account of Bishops who have
covered up sexual misconduct by their priests tells us that this encyclical
isn’t going to be ceremonially delivered and then go away. Republican members of Congress (and potential
Presidential candidates) should start sweating now about his September address
to a Joint Session of Congress. (Not
that he will let Democrats off the hook when it comes to the unborn and
probably same-sex marriage.) But it will
be much harder for Republicans in the upcoming elections to revive the Karl
Rove strategy of convincing Catholics that our true political home is in the
GOP.
Francis himself has said that his papacy will be short but there
is no doubt that he will not leave the Church as he found it and his legacy
will be a pain in the ass for advocates of the old order of things. It is a risky business for Francis personally
but for the Church it is a defining entry into the realities of applying the
Gospel to our contemporary world. Angels
need no longer dance on the head of a pin ‘cause we ain’t countin’ no more.
