At the beginning of his Pontificate, Pope Leo XIV explained that “in our own day, the Church offers to everyone the treasury of her social teaching in response to another industrial revolution and to developments in the field of artificial intelligence that pose new challenges for the defence of human dignity, justice and labour”.
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There is a wide variation in practice in relation to whether business enterprises respect the natural environment and human dignity as well as the rights of local communities. Best practice in environmental sustainability and the protection of the rights and dignity of local people can only be achieved if both governments and companies fulfil their proper functions and behave ethically. A typical situation here might be a mining or other industrial company choosing to operate in a poorer country.
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I wonder how many of us know what our carbon footprint actually is? The average for those of us in the UK is around 6.0 tonnes of greenhouse gases (GHG) each year (Our World in Data) For comparison, it’s 6.76 tonnes globally and 17.7 tonnes in the US and 9.8 in China.
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In the run up to the election, our friends at Together for the Common Good have launched a new podcast series exploring the common good as a catalyst to spiritual and civic renewal.
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Despite the strong interest in property rights in Catholic social thought and teaching, their importance is rarely linked to the topic of the preservation of the natural environment. There is a clear prima facie case for doing so. It starts with what is often described as the ‘tragedy of the commons’.
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On 4th October, the Feast of St. Francis of Assisi, Pope Francis published an apostolic exhortation, Laudate Deum (Praise God). This is a summary of that document.
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We are at the end of the Season of Creation, a special period of prayer and reflection which the Catholic Church observes from 1st September to 4th October each year. This year the Holy Father will publish a new letter on care for creation on Wednesday 4th October, following his 2015 encyclical, Laudato Si’.
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There are clear signs e.g. here, here and here that rapid climate change is no longer a possibility that can be dismissed. Indeed, if the analogy of a boiling kettle being a tipping point that is preceded by fizzing as an indicator that the water is about to boil is relevant, current indications might mean that rapid and even runaway climate change is upon us.
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October 4th was the feast of St Francis of Assisi, the patron saint of ecologists and animals. The day brought to an end the season the Catholic Church describes as “The Season of Creation”. The Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales also chose that day to launch a considerably revised, new edition of its teaching document on the environment – The Call of Creation.
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Pope Francis has raised, in several of his talks and encyclicals, the problem of corruption. It is surprising how rarely this has featured explicitly in Catholic social teaching more generally because it is a major driver of poverty, injustice and miserable living conditions.
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