“The Earth is the Lord’s and everything in it” (Psalm 24:1). In his recent encyclical letter on the care of creation, Laudato si’, Pope Francis has provided us with a comprehensive reflection on the implications of this item of faith for our responsibilities towards the life-support systems of our beautiful, yet finite and scarred, planet.
The predictable response from the neo-conservative commentators was swift, harsh and ignorant. I say ignorant because they claim the Pope had written an encyclical “about climate change”, yet climate is one of the least-mentioned terms in the encyclical (14 times); other terms get far more coverage, such as environment (158), poverty / the poor (73), ecology (69), waste (28) and consumerism (23).
You can be sure the critics falsely ascribed a narrower focus to the encyclical so that they might confront the Pope on a preferred neo-con battle ground where – in the USA at least – they feel they are making headway in championing a laissez-faire attitude. These inveterate opponents of objective climate science then have the chutzpah to advise His Holiness to “leave science to the scientists” – something they themselves refuse to do! What they mean is “leave us to savage the scientists”; their concern is that the Pope’s reflections might give heart to embattled scientists who are pilloried by neo-con pressure groups.
Shame on them all, especially the Catholics amongst them: they ought to be prayerfully reading the encyclical, especially chapter 2 (“The Gospel of Creation”), and indeed trying to make their own the Pope’s two, beautiful closing prayers – an innovation in themselves, with one formulated for inter-faith use, the other explicitly Christian.
It is especially distressing to find a Vatican insider – Cardinal George Pell – reinforcing the neo-cons’ spine with his comment that “the Church has no particular expertise in science ... the Church has got no mandate from the Lord to pronounce on scientific matters,” I suppose it depends what you mean by “Church”: do the millions of qualified scientists in the Church no longer constitute part of the Body of Christ? The Vatican Observatory employs many fine scientists, and the Pontifical Academy of Sciences regularly convenes highly-respected colloquia. The Lord’s mandate to his Church to “pronounce on scientific matters” comes precisely through his calling so many of us to “the life scientific”.
And although it is many years since Pope Francis last practised his science, he has lost none of his acuity: I found no scientific blunders in Laudato si’. More important even than the holistic picture he paints of the ecological challenges that result from reckless consumer culture is his reflection on “the gaze of Jesus” (nn. 96-100), and the call to a radical change of heart over our world’s fragile and wounded ecology.
In his interview with the Financial Times, Cardinal Pell went on to say that “We believe in the autonomy of science.” Let’s get this straight too: as a quintessentially human activity, science is subject to the values of the Gospel, which are without exception directed at humans. Scientific epistemology is at its most dangerous when severed from an ethical framework, such as faith provides – which, incidentally, is one of the Pope’s principal observations in Laudato si’.
Professor Paul L Younger occupies the Rankine Chair of Engineering at the University of Glasgow
Above: Pope Francis with Cardinal Pell. Photo: CNS
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User comments (6)
Three key elements in the Catholic Catechism are:
390 The account of the fall in Genesis 3 uses figurative language, but affirms a primeval event, a deed that took place at the beginning of the history of man’.
745: The Son of God was consecrated as Christ (Messsiah) by the anointing of the Holy Spirit at his Incarnation.
1060: At the end of time, the Kingdom of God will come in its fullness. Then the just will reign with Christ forever, glorified in body and soul, and the material universe itself will be transformed. God will then be ‘all in all’ (1Cor 15:28) in eternal life.
Pope Francis said ‘Faith is not fearful of reason; since the light of reason and the light of faith both come from God and cannot contradict each other ... Whenever the sciences – rigorously focused on their specific field of enquiry – arrive at a conclusion which reason cannot refute, faith does not contradict it.’ Science has no problem with CC 745. By his life, death and resurrection, Christ proved his nature was both human and divine – a fact attested by many, contemporary witnesses. Thomas also put the bodily resurrection of Christ to the scientific test of touch.
Neither has science any problem with CC 1060 saying space-time universe began with the Big Bang at an historic beginning in time, is still expanding, and is destined for a finite end.
Original sin seen as a transcendental catastrophe, causing the Big Bang, reconciles faith and reason and resolves the problem of theodicy.
Kim
You make some good points:..."Science is purely the pursuance of truth. The scientific method is the method of objective pursuance of truth".... And it "pursues the truth" only about "objective facts" of the material world.. It is not concerned with "faith" or "morals" or the "spiritual realm"
Of course "Science" as we know it, is something that developed gradually over the Church history time-line. We used to think that everything we think of as Science was "in the Bible" and the Bible was inerrant about evrerything. Gradually we learned that the Bible was just talking about "faith and morals"...and was not always defining even "morals" definitively for all time in every passage.
So we reject polygamy, and Abraham pawning Sarah off as his siter so that the Pharoah could put her in his harem, and Peter had the great vision about no foods being unclean, etc. etc.
we generally don't condemn scientists, as we did with Galileo, on grounds that discoveries don't agree with the Bible.
Yet the Church's function, it would seem, is to learn from Science, and advise us as to any moral or faith implications.
We seem to have gradually learned that we can accept evolution, and that it does not really contradict faith or Bible. And in the process learned that the Biblical Creation stories are a myth literary form of writing.
Church Theology needs to consider Science seriously and guide us on how to incorporate it into our faith world view.
Thank you so much for this reflection. To my embarrassment, as much as I already was tracking the bizarreness of neo-cons claiming the Church cannot speak about science from the heart of this profoundly incarnational faith, I was not thinking of the many members of the Church who are scientists--shame on me! Your blog was extremely helpful also about the number of times climate change was mentioned -- it is much easier to distract with that rather than face the gaze of Jesus.
Kim says the scientific method is the objective pursuance of truth. However it is in practice the construction of a theory that fits the facts known to date and the continuing questioning of this theory until further facts undermine it and causes a new theory to come into existence. Only a small number of dogmatic scientists would claim to have the "truth".
The pope has every right to decide on the evidence, as have we all, to conclude that we agree with the overwhelmingly number of climate scientists who say that the modern climate changes have been brought about by human activity which we need to modify. And further that we in the rich world are largely responsible and that the poor are the first to suffer the effects.
In response to Kim:
Your comment illustrates my point, in that you also seek to reduce the scope of the encyclical to "... global warming \ global cooling \ climate change ...". PLEASE read the whole encyclical and then tell me if His Holiness is obsessing or in any way misrepresenting the overwhelming scientific consensus on that particular issue. When you say that climate "science is definitely not 'settled'" it makes me wonder how much time you spend with climate scientists. Call in by the Hadley Centre or the Tyndall Centre and see what their take is on this. Surely the words of actual climate scientist should take precedence over vague slurs over a "losing horse". Can I recommend an article in the current issue of Geoscientist to put you in the picture on current climate research: https://www.geolsoc.org.uk/Geoscientist/July-2015/Steps-and-cycles
Tell me what part of that you dispute?
By your standards, relativity, evolution and plate tectonics are also 'not settled' - whereas all those who study them properly know that is a gross mis-representation.
Finally, my closing point is your opening one: the application of science should be subject to morality. It is not 'autonomous' from faith-based ethics.
Science, of itself, is not of a moral nature. It is the application of science that is of a moral nature. Science is purely the pursuance of truth. The scientific method is the method of objective pursuance of truth.
Cardinal Pell is perfectly right in what he said. The pope \ the Church should not be making pronouncements on science, particularly not on global warming \ global cooling \ climate change which is an area where the science is definitely not 'settled'.
To back a losing horse, particularly by the Church can be very damaging.
JPII did a very good job because he understood what was important and where the domain of the Church lay. BXVI rather lost things. F seems to have gone right off the reservation.