VATICAN CITY — Anxiety has so gripped American conservatives over Pope Francis’ upcoming encyclical on the environment that you might think a pope had never before blamed fossil fuels for global warming. Or urged the rich to consume less and share more.
But several of Francis’ immediate predecessors have done just that, inspired by the Bible itself — raising the question of what all the fuss is about. Why would U.S. Republican presidential hopeful Rick Santorum, a devout Catholic who says he loves the pope, urge Francis to “leave science to the scientists” and stop talking about global warming? And why would conservative Catholic commentators attack the Vatican for hosting the U.N. secretary-general at a climate conference?
It turns out that environmental issues are particularly vexing for the Catholic Church, especially in the United States. They carry implications for Big Business and their Catholic supporters, as well as for the world’s growing population, which brings up questions of birth control. For the religious right, the Vatican’s endorsement of the U.N. agenda on global warming amounts to an endorsement of the U.N. agenda to give women access to contraception and abortion.
How Francis deals with population growth as it affects the environment is one of the key questions that will be answered when the encyclical, entitled “Laudato si (Be Praised), On the Care of our Common Home,” is released June 18.
Although the church’s environmental stance has been articulated for many years, no pope has dedicated an entire encyclical to ecological concerns. And no pope has cited the findings of the U.N. International Panel on Climate Change in a major document.
