[A slightly modified
version of a one-page leaflet I passed out at a discussion and
question-and-answer session on Pope Francis’s new encyclical on the
environment, Laudato Si’, held in the Interchurch Center on the campus
of the Christian Theological Seminary, Indianapolis, Indiana, June 22,
2015. The event was organized around
panel presentations by Jesse Kharbanda, Executive Director of the Hoosier
Environmental Council, and Andy Pike, head of St. Thomas Aquinas Catholic Church
and School’s Creation Care Ministry. The
discussion with question-and-answer session, open to the public as part of a
series of forums held under the sponsorship of the Seminary’s Monday evening SPEA
class and organized by the students themselves, while positive on the need for
environmental protection and the need for action, focused primarily on the
“spiritual” side of the Pope’s encyclical, and what individuals themselves
“could do” to advance environmental awareness.
Aside from the students, the great bulk of the audience was decidedly
senior, with most of the public attendees easily in their 50s, 60s, 70s, and
even 80s, which is reflective of Indianapolis’s aging “progressive” population
itself. The youngish (under 40) Kharbanda,
by his own admission, has tried to “broaden the appeal” of environmentalism by
pitching the environmental message not only to the usual left and liberal
activists and groups, but also to corporations and conservative Christians and
other religious; Pike, who is retired, spoke as a Catholic activist on
environmental and other issues. The
modified text of the leaflet is directly below.
It is essentially as it was originally composed (admittedly in a hurry)
and passed out at the meeting, where it was received with interest—GF]
POPE FRANCIS’S CLIMATE CHANGE
ENCYCLICAL—
KUDOS TO THE POPE, BUT NOT TO CATHOLICISM!
written on June 22, 2015
by George Fish, georgefish666@yahoo.com,
Indianapolis, Indiana:
ex-Catholic, atheist,
democrat, socialist, humanist, secularist
While we
can indeed take heart at the Pope’s recent, very positive and needed,
affirmative encyclical message and call for action on climate change, Laudato
Si’—a message issued so strongly, so urgently, and with such scientific
validity it upset climate-change denialists and conservative Catholics to a
degree that drove them into frothing rage—let it not stand as a vindication or
a prettifying of a still-ugly and ominously regressive Catholic Church. Of course, we who are secular and democratic
in our instincts should be delighted at the viciousness and obtuseness it has
excited among the likes of the Catholic League’s Bill Donohue and Republican
Presidential Candidate Rick Santorum, notoriously right-wing Catholics and
ardent opponents of both science and secularism. Yet that not serve as pretext for overlooking
the still-seamy underside, indeed, even the public face, of official Catholicism: as illustrated by remarks, and their lack, from
Pope Francis himself.
In all honesty, even as we celebrate the Pope’s directness
and scientific correctness evinced in Laudato
Si’, let us also pointedly note that scientists and secularists have been
saying the very same things as the Pope is now saying, and for a good decade
previously. And in honesty, let us also
pointedly note that Pope Francis, ever true to official Catholicism even in its
open obscurantism, felt obliged to gratuitously insert into his climate change
encyclical yet more inappropriate, dogmatic and obscurantist screeds against
not only abortion, but even birth control, “officially Catholic” positions even
much of the forced-to-remain-silent Catholic lay body objects to; not to
mention all of us outside of the Catholic Church who are sick and tired of
hearing these monotonous, one-sided mantras that indicate so firmly that
Catholicism has yet to actually enter the 21st Century.
Let us not also forget the Pope’s, and the Vatican’s, denunciation
of the recent historic vote in traditionally-Catholic Ireland firmly upholding
same-sex marriage, a fundamentally decent political and human rights position
the still-viciously homophobic Catholic Church insists on repeatedly negating
and denouncing; thus denying in its ecclesiastical fulminations the fundamental
dignity and humanity or non-heterosexual humanity. Let us not forget either the Pope’s own
backhanded approval given to the Muslim fanatics who committed the Charlie Hedbo massacre, as the Pope himself
gave backhanded justification to the murders of the magazine’s staff for
“offending” another religion—as if the magazine’s open secularism and
anti-clericalism even justified horrific mass murder! Let us also note the Pope’s own glaring
silence on the ethnic cleansing being carried out today in Myanmar (Burma) and
Sri Lanka that is being fomented by chauvinistic Buddhist monks. As well his silence on the ever-prevailing
atrocities continually carried out in the name of Islam not only by supposedly “rogue”
groups such as ISIS, but even by Islamic states themselves, as in Saudi Arabia
and under the military dictatorship in Egypt—not to mention the Islamic
suppression of the Arab Spring!
Nor let us forget the still-festering scandal within
Catholicism due to rampant priest-pedophilia, and the Vatican’s still-prevailing
do-nothing-effective approach to it (Pope Francis did nothing more except
appoint yet another commission to “study” the problem). Nor let us forget the centuries of abuse and
suffering meted out to Catholics and non-Catholics alike through the official
actions of the Church, in the rampant abuse and abuse of power in the Catholic
school system, and the systematic oppression meted out to whole populations,
even those that were comprised of stalwart Catholics, in such Catholic
countries as Ireland, Spain, and throughout Latin America. Despite
the Pope’s new encouraging words on climate change, Catholicism still has a lot
to answer for before the body of secular, democratic humanity.
