The Catholic Church has embraced a radical position on sharing the world’s resources, one that we would all do well to heed and ponder. But the real significance of Laudato Si’ is its powerful message on the centrality of ending poverty for healing the wider crises of climate change and environmental degradation.
Since the long-awaited papal encyclical 'on care for our common home' was published on the 18th June, progressives and campaigners of all types have enthusiastically hailed Pope Francis' latest teaching - and for good reason. The diverse causes championed in this compellingof human progress beyond consumption-driven economic growth.
Again and again he returns to this central theme, variously repeating how "everything is connected" and thus if we fail to hear the cries of the poorest among us, it becomes "difficult to hear the cry of nature itself" . Warning against both a misguided anthropocentrism as well as 'biocentrism' , he further warns: "There can be no renewal of our relationship with nature without a renewal of humanity itself.
No doubt Pope Francis doesn't hit the right note on every social and environmental issue, and the more uncompromising or agnostic activists may be put off by the later passages on worshiping God, performing the Sacraments and experiencing the Eucharist as "an act of cosmic love" .
"For all our limitations, gestures of generosity, solidarity and care cannot but well up within us, since we were made for love" . In other words, the Church has made a clarion call for powerful nations to share the world's resources more equitably and sustainably, based on a fundamental understanding that is far from mainstream political thinking: that "developing countries, where the most important reserves of the biosphere are found, continue to fuel the development of richer countries at the cost of their own present and future" .
Indeed whether we are believers or not, it is arguable that a fairer and more sustainable distribution of resources throughout society can only result from an urgent understanding of the "period of self-destruction" that we are living in, and the need to adopt new lifestyles and new modes of economic organization that affirm a sense of "universal fraternity" , especially "with those in greatest need" .
"We must regain the conviction that we need one another, that we have a shared responsibility for others and the world, and that being good and decent are worth it" . Less mentioned, however, is the Pope's central focus on sharing as a solution to the interconnected global crises of climate change, inequality, resource conflicts and unsustainable consumption patterns. From the very outset, he frames his second encyclical letter in terms of the urgent challenge to protect our common home, the Mother Earth, that we all share with every other living being .
It is from this direct appeal to our compassion and empathy for others that we can fully appreciate the encyclical's wider political, economic and ecological perspectives.
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