On Thursday, Pope Francis delivered a formal proclamation that climate change is a "principle challenge" for humanity, and taking actions to reverse its effects on the Earth is a core principle in Christianity.
In his lengthy encyclical given to bishops, Francis writes that greed and apathy have led countries to disregard the need to take care of the planet and called on everyone to take more responsibility for their fellow man. He singled out poorer nations as the worst contributors of pollution, stating that they use less renewable resources.
"The earth, our home, is beginning to look more and more like an immense pile of filth," writes the pope.
Though environmentalists were praising Francis for being a religious voice of the moral implications of climate change, others were a little less fervent about mixing religion and science. Columnist for the U.K.'s Telegraph Julia Hartley-Brewer said Pope Francis's views on climate science hold about as much water as her own.
"[W]hat the Pope has to say about humans tackling climate change as a moral issue is about as relevant as Kim Kardashian’s views on the future of the eurozone," she quipped. "[T]he Pope knows next to nothing about climate science, which makes his opinion worth as little as mine."
She called into question the Catholic Church's track record in light of its historic dispute with science, like when it persecuted Galileo for proving the Earth is not the center of the universe, and how that might negate anything the pope may say on the subject. (She also lumps in other moral stances the Church takes on contraception, abortion, and divorce as being "stuck in the dark ages.")
Concluding her blistering takedown, Hartley-Brewer doesn't feel the leader of the Catholic Church can be a minister of morality on the climate, or any subject for that matter, when his church spent years covering up rampant sexual abuse of children by its own priests:
Of course the Church's legions of abusive priests are not the only people who have harmed children over the years. But since they used their unique access and position of trust in the Church to commit that abuse and, when found out, the Church chose at the highest levels to cover up those crimes, the Church has a unique moral culpability for what has happened to thousands of innocent children.
Even today, the Vatican is still dragging its feet over the attempts to uncover how high up the cover-up went and failing to open up its records to enable the guilty to be prosecuted.
So, for all those reasons, forgive me if I don't think the Pope is in a position to lecture anyone – let alone the entire world – on this issue or anything else.
If we are going to rely on the Catholic Church to teach us about science or morality, then God help us all.
