Since I cover the religion beat here at BHL, I figure I’ll share my thoughts on Pope Francis’s new encyclical, Laudato Si′, as a Lutheran libertarian with Catholic (specifically Thomistic) sympathies. I read it right after it came out, but I wanted to let my thoughts settle before I blogged on it. After a week of mulling it over, I still have mixed feelings.

I. The Beautiful

The best parts of Laudato Si′ are near the end, from paragraph 222 forward. On the moral and theological aspects of caring for the environment, Francis has much to teach us. A favorite excerpt:

228. Care for nature is part of a lifestyle which includes the capacity for living together and communion. Jesus reminded us that we have God as our common Father and that this makes us brothers and sisters. Fraternal love can only be gratuitous; it can never be a means of repaying others for what they have done or will do for us. That is why it is possible to love our enemies. This same gratuitousness inspires us to love and accept the wind, the sun and the clouds, even though we cannot control them. In this sense, we can speak of a “universal fraternity”.

229. 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. We have had enough of immorality and the mockery of ethics, goodness, faith and honesty. It is time to acknowledge that light-hearted superficiality has done us no good. When the foundations of social life are corroded, what ensues are battles over conflicting interests, new forms of violence and brutality, and obstacles to the growth of a genuine culture of care for the environment.

230. Saint Therese of Lisieux invites us to practise the little way of love, not to miss out on a kind word, a smile or any small gesture which sows peace and friendship. An integral ecology is also made up of simple daily gestures which break with the logic of violence, exploitation and selfishness. In the end, a world of exacerbated consumption is at the same time a world which mistreats life in all its forms.

Here we see Francis interweave care for the environment into the moral values at the heart of Christianity. We cannot consistently care for humanity and be indifferent to the environment within which God has placed us. We cannot consistently respect the dignity that God has conferred on man, while degrading and destroying God-give animal and plant life. Francis, following JPII, stresses a “human ecology” that is not Gaia-worship, but is instead a commitment to respecting the environment rooted in the ultimate spiritual needs of humanity. I felt deeply challenged and moved by these reflections. I hope that by publicly mentioning this, it will lead me to change my behavior and to move in a greener direction for Christian reasons.

II. The Bad

On institutional analysis, Francis should show greater respect for those who disagree with him on economic matters. The spirit of Laudato Si′ seems decidedly incompatible with a sincere form of free-market environmentalism. Reading the encyclical leads one to think Francis just plain doesn’t like the market, as he almost begrudgingly acknowledges the ways in which markets have served the poor, while consistently complaining about market-based consumerism and the rule of economics over democratic politics. But there are really attractive free-market approaches to protecting the environment, and it seems that Francis would dismiss them utterly out of hand were he even aware of them (and I have no idea whether he is).

I also wish he would substantiate more of his claims with reference to empirical work and formal economic models. Consider the following passage:

189. Politics must not be subject to the economy, nor should the economy be subject to the dictates of an efficiency-driven paradigm of technocracy. Today, in view of the common good, there is urgent need for politics and economics to enter into a frank dialogue in the service of life, especially human life. Saving banks at any cost, making the public pay the price, foregoing a firm commitment to reviewing and reforming the entire system, only reaffirms the absolute power of a financial system, a power which has no future and will only give rise to new crises after a slow, costly and only apparent recovery. The financial crisis of 2007-08 provided an opportunity to develop a new economy, more attentive to ethical principles, and new ways of regulating speculative financial practices and virtual wealth. But the response to the [financial] crisis did not include rethinking the outdated criteria which continue to rule the world. Production is not always rational, and is usually tied to economic variables which assign to products a value that does not necessarily correspond to their real worth. This frequently leads to an overproduction of some commodities, with unnecessary impact on the environment and with negative results on regional economies.

Francis rightly points out that the bailouts were a bad idea and that much of present economic activity that some call capitalism is deeply unjust. But some worrisome ideas make their appearance:  (i) the financial system is inherently subject to crushing booms and busts, (ii) the market often operates as a destructive anarchy of production, (iii) a general glut theory of market disequilibrium (and maybe (iv) the doctrine of the just price). I wish Francis had simply made his Keynesian-Marxist hybrid model of the macroeconomy explicit and defended it on formal and empirical grounds. He doesn’t have to do it himself: he needs merely to ask for help from economists, and then, following their advice, cite empirical data and economic models he finds compelling.

The reason Francis doesn’t do this is that it would be obvious that he is taking sides in an area where the Church should not say what is correct or incorrect. I’m sure the Pope doesn’t think he’s taking sides, but that’s because no one around him is pressing him to develop his views with much-needed social-scientific rigor.

Some may respond that this sort of rigor isn’t appropriate for an encyclical. Fine. Just add some footnotes referring to more detailed discussions.

In general, Francis identifies many genuine concerns, but he seems to repeatedly bite the hand that feeds the poor. He consistently fails to sufficiently celebrate how far we’ve come and how global markets are lifting hundreds of millions of people out of poverty. And he also expresses almost random and pointless policy prejudices. He trashes carbon credits, which is actually a pretty good idea (though there are legitimate concerns about it), along with criticizing the expanded use of air conditioning.

III. The Bulky

Some commentators don’t seem to mind that Laudato Si′ covers so many topics. But I found it distracting. I expected a careful, spiritual approach to environmental issues. What I read was Francis’s take on all the world’s social ills and the repeated insistence that “everything is connected.” It is better to treat significant issues separately for the sake of clarity and deeper understanding. An encyclical on the environment doesn’t need to talk about the family, abortion, consumerism, the financial crisis, and an obsession with technology all at once. Yes, these issues are connected; but they didn’t have to be thrown into one document. All that extraneous discussion could have been replaced with an application of Catholic theology to careful analyses of potential policy solutions, perhaps setting out a range of reasonable policy approaches that Catholics could adopt to protect the environment.

 IV. Summary (tl;dr)

I have mixed feelings about Laudato Si′. On matters of moral and theological principle, it is a beautiful application of Catholic social thought to new issues, both drawing on tradition and extending it. It has challenged me to reevaluate my theological commitments and to adopt a new perspective on how I relate to the environment. On the other hand, it at times reads like a grab bag of Francis’s personal political and economic prejudices. Laudato Si′ almost entirely ignores critical complexities involved in institutional analysis and fails to acknowledge an appropriately broad range of reasonable policy disagreement. Good Christians can sincerely and prayerfully affirm market-friendly policies to protect God’s creation.