The President of the United States vs the Pope

Whether you are Roman Catholic or not (I’m not), it would be difficult to look upon Pope Francis as other than a kind and loving man who cares about the earth and humanity. While he embraces a right to life stance on abortion and still adheres to opposing birth control, the overlap of values shared with President Trump and the current configuration of the Republican Party seems to end there. 

Five years ago, the Pope, after issuing a 200 page encyclical, drew the wrath of Republicans when he declared that man-induced climate change was real and that it was the moral imperative for Catholics around the world  to take environmental responsibility to reverse that warming reality. At the time, 71% of Catholics already believed that such climate change was real. His encyclical was not a request; it was a mandate from the leader of the Catholic faith, imbued with their notion of infallibility. Despite the sanctity of such papal edicts, his position put him four squares against GOP climate change deniers or minimizers.

Even among Catholic politicians. A typical response came from then presidential candidate Rick Santorum who, in 2015, stated that the Pope should stop speaking about climate change and “leave science to the scientists.” Unfortunately for Mr Santorum, the scientific community, in virtual unison had already agreed with the Pope’s conclusion. In the years that followed, a deep anti-science movement arose among socially conservative Republicans. 

The justification seemed to center on maintaining corporate profitability without regard to environmental consequences. Despite the massive job growth, actual and potential, in green friendly businesses, the GOP entered an era where it promoted even obsolescent old world industries (like coal extraction and coal-fired power generation) pretending that old jobs could be protected if corporations were released from corporate responsibility for pollution (including greenhouse gasses). And that approach clearly required that consequences from climate change had to be minimalized if not totally denied. Traditional unbridled capitalism was the GOP answer to America’s future. In fact, any scientific or medical reality that impinged on profitability was to be resisted by staunch Republicans.

When Donald Trump was elected, the words “science” and “climate change” were purged from most federal Websites by presidential order. With the coming of the pandemic, the Trump administration continued to denigrate science and scientists and even promulgated populist medical treatments that directly contradicted hard evidence from medical experts. Disease recognition and prevention became highly politicized: Republicans minimizing the impact and resisting medical recommendations, Democrats demanding medically recognized safety procedures. The United States exploded with infections and deaths from the virus, staggeringly disproportionate relative to its population, a recognized global failure in addressing the ravages of COVID-19. The pandemic and our response to it have become central to the coming election.

Today, there remains a loving softness in Pope Francis’ concern for humanity, stating a clear desire for greater unity, a dramatic contrast to the divisiveness and intolerance promulgated by the Trump administration, from its harsh immigration policies (which still separates very young children from their parents) and denial of the existence of embedded racial injustice to Trump’s blind support only of those who support him, including angry and well-armed white supremacist hate groups. Apparently deeply dissatisfied with the nascent global resistance (or underwhelming response) to reversing climate change and the exclusionary factionalization of accelerating nationalism, Pope Francis just issued another encyclical. 

Adele Peters, writing for the October 10th FastCompany.com, outlines that papal publication: “The pope, who recently published a new encyclical arguing for social unity, believes that we need to start with education about environmental problems based on science. We need to ensure that everyone has access to clean water and sustainably produced food. And we need to transition to clean, renewable energy, with a focus on meeting the needs of the poor and people who have to move to new jobs in the energy sector.

“Businesses also need to consider their impact on both the environment and humanity, he said, and one way to encourage this is by investing in companies that ‘put sustainability, social justice, and the promotion of the common good at the center of their activities.’

“‘The current economic system is unsustainable,’ he told the digital audience. ‘We are faced with the moral imperative, and the practical urgency, to rethink many things: The way we produce; the way we consume; our culture of waste; our short-term vision; the exploitation of the poor and our indifference towards them; the growing inequalities and our dependence on harmful energy sources. We need to think about all these challenges.’ All of us, he says, need to work to ‘persuade those in doubt, imagine new solutions, and commit to carry them out.’

“The economy could be based on what the pope calls ‘integral ecology,’ with the ultimate goal of protecting the well-being of humans and our common home. ‘Our goal is clear: to build, within the next decade, a world where we can meet the needs of the present generations, including everyone, without compromising the possibilities of future generations.’” Just looking at these papal statements, they seem to fall within Donald Trump’s vision of left-wing radicalism, appropriate for adherents in “Antifa” principles. To the rest of us, such admonitions represent either a God-given mandate (if you are a Catholic) or common sense from a loving and caring Christian man.

I’m Peter Dekom, and unless we recognize and practice a kinder but more scientific approach to the world, nature will continue to pound the earth with increasingly harsh reminders of the failure of our collective course of action.