Consider a recent conversation engaged in by some New York Times cognoscenti about the significance of the life and witness of Pope Francis.* They managed to fill almost a whole news page without even mentioning his greatest contribution! Among many other things, they discussed Francis’ global vision, particularly his advocacy for refugees, and his cautious, not to say rigorously fuzzy, approach to divisive issues such as clerical sexual abuse or women in the priesthood.
All these issues, surely, and doubtless many others like them, must be regarded as critically important for the Church of Rome today. But to address high-stake issues like that, if I may identify an incredibly obvious philosophical premise, you have to have a world in which to get them done. Francis’ Laudato Si’ nails that trenchant truth to the one of the walls of our, often, all-too-walled-in middle class existence and its public support systems. How will our churches respond to our global ecojustice crisis?
As a correction for the Times story, I reproduced in this post a superb summary of Laudato Si’ by the distinguished Australian Catholic theologian, the late Denis Edwards, originally made available to me with his permission.**