As announced, Pope Francis has published the follow-up letter “Laudate Deum”. It follows on from the encyclical Laudato Si’ and represents a whole catalog of demands for action.
Pope Francis published his “environmental” encyclical “Laudato Si” on May 24, 2015. The pontiff announced a continuation or expansion of this letter weeks ago. On October 4th, 2023, a good 8 years after Laudato Si’, “Laudate Deum” (“Praise God”) was released. This letter is not treated as an independent encyclical, but as a follow-up to the previous Laudato Si’.
The Pope establishes facts
Nature is placed above the Creator
With the encyclical, Pope Francis announced environmental and climate protection as officially integrated into the teachings of the Roman Catholic Church. While Sunday still played a role in the 2015 letter, in the follow-up letter Laudate Deum the pontiff concentrated on the implementation of political measures and the rebuke of the so-called “climate deniers”. With his new letter, the Pope also sets out “facts based on science.”
Laudate Deum, paragraph 6:
“In recent years, some have chosen to deride these facts. They bring up allegedly solid scientific data, like the fact that the planet has always had, and will have, periods of cooling and warming. They forget to mention another relevant datum: that what we are presently experiencing is an unusual acceleration of warming, at such a speed that it will take only one generation – not centuries or millennia – in order to verify it. The rise in the sea level and the melting of glaciers can be easily perceived by an individual in his or her lifetime, and probably in a few years many populations will have to move their homes because of these facts.”
Laudate Deum, paragraph 7:
“In order to ridicule those who speak of global warming, it is pointed out that intermittent periods of extreme cold regularly occur. One fails to mention that this and other extraordinary symptoms are nothing but diverse alternative expressions of the same cause: the global imbalance that is provoking the warming of the planet. Droughts and floods, the dried-up lakes, communities swept away by seaquakes and flooding ultimately have the same origin. At the same time, if we speak of a global phenomenon, we cannot confuse this with sporadic events explained in good part by local factors.”
Laudate Deum, paragraph 11:
“It is no longer possible to doubt the human – “anthropic” – origin of climate change. Let us see why. The concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, which causes global warming, was stable until the nineteenth century, below 300 parts per million in volume. But in the middle of that century, in conjunction with industrial development, emissions began to increase. In the past fifty years, this increase has accelerated significantly, as the Mauna Loa observatory, which has taken daily measurements of carbon dioxide since 1958, has confirmed. While I was writing Laudato si’, they hit a historic high – 400 parts per million – until arriving at 423 parts per million in June 2023. More than 42% of total net emissions since the year 1850 were produced after 1990.”
Das Gebiet um Mauna Loa ist eines der vulkanisch aktivsten Gebiete der Erde. Warum an dieser Stelle CO₂-Messungen vorgenommenen werden, um diese Werte dann für die gesamte Atmosphäre der Erde zu interpretieren, erklärt der Pontifex an dieser Stelle nicht.
Laudate Deum, paragraph 14 (excerpt):
“I feel obliged to make these clarifications, which may appear obvious, because of certain dismissive and scarcely reasonable opinions that I encounter, even within the Catholic Church.”
Demand for centralized power
The Pope’s ideas about how to deal with power and multilateralism seem particularly interesting.
Laudate Deum, paragraph 43:
“All this presupposes the development of a new procedure for decision-making and legitimizing those decisions, since the one put in place several decades ago is not sufficient nor does it appear effective. In this framework, there would necessarily be required spaces for conversation, consultation, arbitration, conflict resolution and supervision, and, in the end, a sort of increased “democratization” in the global context, so that the various situations can be expressed and included. It is no longer helpful for us to support institutions in order to preserve the rights of the more powerful without caring for those of all.”
The world in a few hands
The pontiff demands nothing other than centralization of the government on a global level. Whether this “world government” will stand on democratic ground, as Pope Francis indicated in quotation marks, may be doubted. This “democracy” is likely to take the form of a European Union at best. The democratic deficit and the lack of legitimacy of the EU are being discussed lively(Source).
The question would then remain open as to who will take central leadership in this “type of greater democratization at the world level”. The World Health Organization (WHO), implemented in the UN, could play a pioneering role with its ambitions to become a central control center for global pandemic control.
Human family and pantheism
On the spiritual aspect, Pope Francis is returning to his favorite areas. A united, peaceful human family within a pantheistic view of the world and God.
Laudate Deum, paragraph 65:
“Hence, “the creatures of this world no longer appear to us under merely natural guise, because the risen One is mysteriously holding them to himself and directing them towards fullness as their end. The very flowers of the field and the birds which his human eyes contemplated and admired are now imbued with his radiant presence”.[39] If “the universe unfolds in God, who fills it completely… there is a mystical meaning to be found in a leaf, in a mountain trail, in a dewdrop, in a poor person’s face”.[40] The world sings of an infinite Love: how can we fail to care for it?”
Laudate Deum, paragraph 67:
“The Judaeo-Christian vision of the cosmos defends the unique and central value of the human being amid the marvellous concert of all God’s creatures, but today we see ourselves forced to realize that it is only possible to sustain a ‘situated anthropocentrism”. To recognize, in other words, that human life is incomprehensible and unsustainable without other creatures. For “as part of the universe… all of us are linked by unseen bonds and together form a kind of universal family, a sublime communion which fills us with a sacred, affectionate and humble respect'”
Sunday will soon be a big topic
A lot of preparatory work has also been done on a secular level in advance for the upcoming day of rest. This day of rest for the benefit of people and the climate will be Sunday. Pope Francis highlighted this day in his encyclical Laudato Si’.
In Laudato Si’, paragraph 237:
Sunday is the day of the Resurrection, the “first day” of the new creation, whose first fruits are the Lord’s risen humanity, the pledge of the final transfiguration of all created reality. It also proclaims ‘man’s eternal rest in God’.”
Sun worship will become a central theme
Since Sunday sanctification has its origins in Egyptian paganism and this tradition had already found its way into the churches of Rome and Alexandria in the course of the second century (Info), this Sunday tradition is directly opposed to the sanctification of the Sabbath (Saturday). A violation of God’s Fourth Commandment. Therefore, the depiction of “eternal rest” for people who adhere to the tradition set by the papacy rather than God’s commandment can safely be called cynicism. Violating God’s commandment is sin and sin leads to death (Romans 6:23).
Climate is a means to an end
The Sunday rest day is the goal and the environmental issue is merely the vehicle. For this reason, great importance must be attached to Sunday, which is traditionally sanctified by the Roman Catholic Church. The focus should not be on the details of the general measures against the “climate crisis”, but on the consequences in relation to a promised (“compulsory”) day of rest every Sunday. The religious nature of the issue of environmental and climate protection can no longer be overlooked. A question of faith in which the (formerly) Protestant churches are now heavily involved. The once enforced Sunday rest, declared as a climate protection measure, is already waiting on the doorstep.
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