Today’s Matins was “a service of the word for Creationtide”, a service designed by the Church of England “for rural communities in times of environmental crisis and climate change.” Now, knowing some of my fellow authors here, I can already feel remotely hackles rising. “There is no climate change … yada, yada, yada.” Those who refuse to believe scientists who have spent a life-time working on this, and those who choose to follow that minority of scientists who dissent, are not going to heed a young(ish) woman with a literature degree, but my own Church, and the Roman Catholic Church share a common Christian concern, best expressed in my view by the much-maligned (by some Catholics usually, the rest of us rather like him) Pope Francis in his rather splendid Laudato Si!
If those who wish to argue climate change science will do so to and there’s nothing to be done, but as Christians we are stewards, not owners, of God’s earth. I’m not so sure God will consider us good stewards.
Nicholas recently commented that I seemed like a “One Nation Tory”, which, once I had looked it up, I thought both sweet of him and not far from the truth, though I think I might also have something of the Luddite in me, not to mention Blake and his detestation of those “dark satanic mills.” I have always, as if by instinct, disliked our modern definition of “progress” which seems to be defined by consumption. Yes, I know that modern capitalism has taken more people out of poverty, etc., etc., but it’s pretty clear that something has gone wrong. Social mobility is static, income distribution is increasingly unequal, and many of those who in my father’s generation, or my sister’s (she’s 30 years older than me) would have bought homes and gone into solid middle-class careers, are finding the housing market closed to them (unless there is family money to help) and job security hard to come by.
That’s where I found the Pope’s encyclical a refreshing read. He wants us to redefine “progress” in ways which respond to the needs of the poor and of our common home, the earth. Read properly, the Encyclical is not just about climate change and its threats, it’s about those other threats to us, the loss of biodiversity, the extinction of species and the culture of waste. “Development” so-called, which does not respect the planet on which we live, is a false idol, as is consumption. At the heart of the crisis we face is what has been called the technocratic paradigm – the idea that we have confused the increase in control and manipulation of the world with progress. The Pope thinks we experience these ways of thinking as a consumerist culture characterised by wastefulness, indifference and the “rapidification” of daily life. All this, he suggests, is to the detriment of relationships with ourselves, our neighbours, the earth and God.
It may be that for you, you don’t find that life comes at you quicker and quicker, and that you have all the time you need to think, reflect, relax and get a healthy work-life balance. As somone who, as some of you know, patently failed at that one, the Pope’s message, and that of the Church of England, speaks to me.
The climate crisis is part of a more general crisis which poses questions to us as Christians:
- How do we love our neighbours in need by sharing wealth and at the same time exercise responsible stewardship over our Earth by promoting sustainability?
- How do we promote economic growth and respect the common good?
Catholic social teaching has been dwelling on some of these themes for more than a century. Pope Leo XIII realised the dangers which confront us now back in 1891:
It is no easy matter to define the relative rights and mutual duties of the rich and of the poor, of capital and of labor. And the danger lies in this, that crafty agitators are intent on making use of these differences of opinion to pervert men’s judgments and to stir up the people to revolt.
No doubt some then accused him, as they now accuse Pope Francis, of being a communist. In his day he advocated Trades Unions as ways of protecting the workers from predatory capitalism, conscious that removing legitimate grievances would actually deprive agitators of their opportunity to create revolutions. He had taken on board one of the lessons of the French Revolution, and the Russian Revolution a mere fifteen years later would show what happened when a tiny, privileged elite thought it could rule forever without consideration for the masses. Of course, we know that those masses were due to suffer more under another unjust system, but the Pope’s point remains, that if men and women follow Christ’s command to care and love each other, they provide the best barrier to revolution.
The fundamental principle can be found in “A Catholic call to political responsibility” issued by the American Catholic bishops (well-known commies no doubt) in 2003:
“The economy must serve people, not the other way around… If the dignity of work is to be protected, then the basic rights of workers, owners, and others must be respected—the right to productive work, to decent and fair wages….”
As Christ told the Pharisees, the Sabbath existed for man, not the other way around. We are not created to be cogs in an economic machine to generate ever more wealth to be harvested by a few. As Rowan Williams put it, as Christians we believe in personal transformation through the Spirit and so:
when we believe in transformation at the local and personal level, we are laying the sure foundations for change at the national and international level.
Lord Williams (who is as close to a hero as anyone I have ever met) spotted what often comes next:
Lord Williams spoke out about the “sinister feeling that this must be some kind of conspiracy”.
The belief that “climate change has been invented by communists, illuminati or some sort of other mysterious group who are determined to undermine who were are. That’s something I worry about,” he said.
Taking a balanced view, he also said that:
“Equally, a bog standard left wing myth would be – ‘it is possible to resolve all these questions once and for all, we can impose a just society, we can legislate justice into being, we can almost make tragedy and misunderstanding impossible, we’ll finish the job’ – and that is just as much of a myth.”
Both Right and Left fail here as neither is founded on Christ’s redeeming sacrifice for us, or on his command to love one another. There are, in Catholic social teaching, answers and questions that can help us – and Creationtide prompts us to reflect and pray on what we can all do,
All Along the Watchtower 
Considerations:
The days of Leo XIII are long gone in capitalist nations except for those who exploit slave labor in offshore socialistic regimes like China. The days of exploiting underage children and women in sweat shops is over unless they are doing this clandestinely and risk their financial empires to being destroyed as well as spending their remaining days in jail.
In regards to tax loopholes, who is to blame? The people or the ruling class in our governments who seem to be glad to receive the money of lobbyists to create them? Additionally, what is the right balance to be struck between wages for those who work for a company and the expansion of the company to give employ to even more people and families? For it is quite clear that the very rich who put their money at risk are not loading their money into their mattresses in their mega-mansions. They are the largest contributors to a company’s expansion and to economic expansion for the good of all. It is that money which gives us unfathomable numbers of people who do pay taxes (which came from the company) and which grows the wealth of nations. Whose idea and company did this for us? Growing a company helps not only the rediculously wealthy enterprise but also the suppliers to that company and their employees. Without them how many would be gainfully employed? And where (I speak of the USA) are they getting paid so little that they cannot afford to live? If that were the case the market would shrivel and nobody would take such a job? For there is no reason to be working if you can have free food and healthcare by going on welfare.
Nothing in life is perfect and there is no perfect outcome because we are all unique individuals. Some are willing to gamble and put at risk their capital to do what the rich and famous do and others are not. Where are those who simply want to get ahead and leave their families better off than they were to get a job if there were not these men and women who grew their companies in such a fashion as to provide opportunities to grow with them? You may as well just relegate this utopian vision to one that has no jobs to apply for unless you are forced by the state to work for them doing whatever they tell you to do. And if you don’t work, you don’t eat. And if you don’t eat you die as does your family.
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I’m with those who say that this is not the mark of the beast, but that it is laying the groundwork for it.
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Well one can see that “the known science” isn’t the Truth that some might seem to think. Global warming and Covid are very similar in size and scope and pushed by the same “science” for the same end; the reduction of population and the destruction of capitalistic economies. Will we return to normal are are we going to usher in a new dark age?
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I think it is worth considering the unprecedented normalisation of diplomatic relations between Israel and the Arab states as well in this context. I also note that there appear to be viable red heifers, and the developments in Turkey. I’m not setting dates but the type of scenario envisioned by us futurists is now coming within sight.
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I have no idea but must admit that we are living in an age where the population of the entire world can be coerced and manipulated by the will of a few.
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The Church does seem to follow suit with Rerum Novarum and has continued to developed it. Pope John Paul II wrote Centesimus annus which built greatly on the previous Encyclical
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It has, yet so many American Republicans seem to resent attempts by the Catholic Church to make things better for the poor.
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To be honest, I think that’s a vast generalization and not charitable with giving folks the benefit of the doubt.
Even if you think it’s wrong, Is it so hard to believe that some people honestly believe the tide raises both the poor and the rich? Isn’t that you assuming intentions of a large swath of people that you can’t really prove?
For example, the Catholic vote is split 50/50 between the parties because the parties simply play to specific issues to peel off the Catholic vote for their own worldviews which are both not Catholic. Many adherents are simply trying to be realist with which side will get the ‘close enough’.
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I look around me, I see your society and mine convulsed by a populism which appeals to the sense people have of being left behind and I have little charity for those running it.
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Look around you again, there is still hope, do not fall into despair.
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If not for the hope that springs eternal xx
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I assume you are not including Soros, Bezos and Bill Gates in your list of rich men who are not accumulating money for their own good?
Those working in the “gig economy” on zero hours contracts might not agree with your assessment of benign capitalism either. If both man and wife work they can often manage, but that takes women away from the home and child-rearing – and makes the State more powerful. If this is what you want, you have it, and yet reading your posts it does not seem to make you happy.
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Sounds like temp work to me with private contractors. If the private contractor is not happy they are not forced into taking the job or the money. Temps have been used forever in all civilizations. I used one from Rumania to develop a piece of my website when I was running a business from the house and he bid for the job.
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To those of us with eyes to see, it sounds like the removal of good jobs with pay that allows a an to support his family, export them to cheaper countries, let our workers decay and pay the Chinese peanuts. If that’s your idea of a healthy economy or society, I’d b surprised. It isn’t mine.
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P.S. And Soros doesn’t make anything; unless it is funding riots etc. He is a leech. As far as my liking Bezos and Gates, I don’t have to like them or what they stand for or the causes that they support. It has nothing to do with the principles of running and building a business that expands and provides jobs for others. In that respect one might evaluate the morality of their products or the ethics of how they expand or put competition out of business. I would much rather investigate how we are going to update and interpret present monopoly laws than to question the fundamental operation of capitalism. I am sure there is some tweaking to those laws that might need be made in the coming years and in fact are being looked at presently. I am no fan of companies that block views and information that they deem unacceptable politically or the invasive marketing practices and snooping into every corner of our lives. But Soros is worse than that . . . he only supports dissent, and overthrow of the present society and everything this country stands for,
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Here’s a surprise for you, I and many American conservatives will agree with much of what you say here. Why? Because it is observable truth. As I think I told you backstage, an Amazon (or Walmart, to be fair) warehouse employee starts at more than I ever made as an hourly employee. Much of that is down to me, I passed on the money for other considerations, living in a small family oriented, high trust community. In short, my choice, and I’d make it again.
But when you say:
“Yes, I know that modern capitalism has taken more people out of poverty, etc., etc., but it’s pretty clear that something has gone wrong. Social mobility is static, income distribution is increasingly unequal, and many of those who in my father’s generation, or my sister’s (she’s 30 years older than me) would have bought homes and gone into solid middle-class careers, are finding the housing market closed to them (unless there is family money to help) and job security hard to come by.”
You’re blaming the wrong party, at least in part. Yes, it happened here, just as it did there, but why did it happen? It happened because we offshored our physical labor jobs, in our case, originally to Mexico and then on to China. I’m no fan of Blake’s mills either, but I’ve been in modern manufacturing plants, neither dark, nor Satanic, just a group of people trying their best to make a living doing a good job.
If you want to see those legendary mills, one merely needs to go to China, where our toys, from nails to iPhones are made by essentially slave labor. Blake would be singing the praises of British employers in a nanosecond.
But why have we done this? Partially because we have a ‘Progressive’ consumerist market, where we never fix anything, but throw it away into our burgeoning landfills and buy a new one because it has become cheaper to do so.
So yes, Big Business has some ‘Spaining to do, especially the CBI and the Chamber of Commerce. But what they’ll tell you is that is what government has wrought, and in large measure they are correct. Our governments’s policies from Tax policy to Health and Safety that treats us all as 2-year-old idiots, instead of sentient adults to environmental regulations that attempt to punish thinking and regulated a puddle in a farm lane as ‘Waters of the United States’.
But until Wuhan Flu, that newest gift from a beleaguered China stymied so many things, we here were making great progress on these things. We were seeing young people of all colors buying affordable housing, getting real jobs with adequate pay. Sure we’ve a long way to go, but it took a long time for it to get this screwed up. At least we’ve made a start.
For Britain, this is the basic promise of Brexit, do we all have things to learn from Europe? Sure, even now we are starting to copy the Germans apprentice program, with Volkswagen’s help. It appears excellent. But Europe is a stagnant, dying (suicidal, actually) civilization. Until we get over the fatuous belief that only university graduates are smart enough to function in our societies, we will stagnate, and eventually, the meme will become fact:
“What did we use for light before candles, Mommy?” “Electricity, dear.”
And I’m sorry, I’m not willing that my generation’s legacy be countries that when the harvest fails, starve. That is the promise of Luddism.
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I am not sure that the consumer market is “progressive”. It is in the interests of the capitalist to make throw-away machines at low prices, and that’s one of the things the Pope is deploring.
On Brexit, it looks like being a disaster for our economy, something intensified by other events.
If being the largest and best economy in Europe is stagnating, then I’d take Germany any day. No one went bankrupt here or anywhere else in Europe because of ill health.
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Those who hide their eyes cannot see.
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Indeed, I see the sort of jobs that our fathers did that allowed a man dignity and the wage to support a family replaced by jobs that do neither of those things.
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