On Laudate Deum: a Reflection (Part II)

A realistic understanding of the long-term development of Catholic moral teaching — of which Laudato Si’ and now Laudate Deum constitute key new expressions — requires recognizing that it progresses by drawing on four sources. The first source constitutes what Catholic official teaching ‘has always taught’ — or what can be plausibly presented as always taught, even when that is not quite so historically. Sometimes dismissed by ‘progressives,’ sometimes absolutized by ‘traditionalists,’ this is the starting point for Catholic moral teaching.

The second source is closely related: Sacred Scripture, understood as those books from the Jewish scriptures and the Christian New Testament that the Church accepts as the divinely inspired Word of God. What that latter phrase in fact means is an important conversation within both Christianity and Judaism, but contemporary Catholic moral teaching carries a clear commitment to the centrality of the Scriptural witness — properly interpreted.

The third source can be described as “the sciences” or “human knowledge” (understood as the always-emerging human understanding of reality, whether from the natural sciences, the social sciences, or philosophy, history and the humanities). The Church has learned to treat these gingerly, informed by the long and painful experience that human sinfulness includes distortion of the truth. For example: racism, eugenics and slavery were all at one time embraced by dominant (pseudo-) science. But the Church inevitably must preach the good news of Jesus within the real world, where human knowledge evolves and, over time, accumulates insight into the truth. The Catholic intellectual tradition represents the Church’s voice in that research — that is, the scholarly discernment and sifting of ‘scientific’ and other scholarly claims to truth. Through that work, Catholicism strives to locate the actual abiding insight and reliable knowledge that can contribute to Catholic moral teaching and public intervention.

The Church inevitably must preach the good news of Jesus within the real world, where human knowledge evolves and, over time, accumulates insight into the truth.

Pope Francis’ statements on climate change represent a more confident Catholic stance in that process, drawing on the best contemporary science to inform its public teaching in an assertive way that allows the Church to be relevant in one of the crucial public debates of our time.

The fourth and final source informing Catholic moral teaching is human experience. Catholicism draws on the experience of broad human communities over very long periods of time to discern what practices, values and commitments contribute to human thriving via healthy families and communities, well-functioning economies and governments.

Pope Francis’ statements on climate change represent a more confident Catholic stance in that process, drawing on the best contemporary science to inform its public teaching in an assertive way that allows the Church to be relevant in one of the crucial public debates of our time.

When Catholic moral theology is healthy, no one source dominates; rather, there is an ongoing discernment of the best wisdom and therefore best teaching on any given terrain. This process might be seen as a spiral: moving circularly through these four sources and linearly forward in time to address the ever-evolving human situation in the world. The Catholic intellectual tradition —what scholars and Church leaders around the world do, and what we do at the Institute for Advanced Catholic Studies — is how that happens.

Pope Francis’ new statement on climate change is a renewed, careful embrace of scientific evidence on an issue that will reverberate through humanity’s future. He may not get all the details right, but failure to speak would deeply discredit the Church in the eyes of emerging generations.

Ultimately, it would also fail to live up to the Church’s mission in the world: helping humanity encounter the sacred and experience Jesus’ words: “The truth shall make you free.”

Editor’s note: Richard L. Wood, Ph.D., is president of the Institute for Advanced Catholic Studies at USC. This post is part two in a two-part reflection on Laudate Deum. Read the first part on the IACS News & Insights blog and at: https://dornsife.usc.edu/iacs/2023/10/11/on-laudato-deum-a-reflection/