SPECIAL: Blase Bonpane on Pope Francis 2nd Encyclical Laudato Si’ (Praise Be to You)

There seems to be more rapport between liberation theology and socialist thought than there is between liberation theology and capitalist thought. Some Latin American prelates have made statements about not being able to coexist with atheistic capitalism. There is not one ounce of theism in the capitalist system. It is just grab the money and run. We have experienced years of equating socialism falsely with godlessness, and capitalism with God. Liberation theology has nothing to do with the union of church and state. It is the integration of political and spiritual values. I’m the same person spiritually as I am politically. There are ugly political concepts, and beautiful political concepts. Ideas, such as “stay out of politics,” are only fitting for a monarchy. No one should stay out of politics. Everyone has to be in politics all the time, but must never promote an organized religion as part of the state. When a state becomes a theocracy, it becomes a disaster. It becomes the formula for perpetual war.

There will always be those categorized as “unsaved,” ethnic and religious outcasts are categorized as second class citizens, useful only for cheap labor. Well, there must be no cheap labor, just people who have a need for a living wage. Also, liberation theology is not simply a manipulation of Christian thought by Marxists. The spiritual message came first; Marx came later. It is most unfortunate that our culture is so protected from Marxist thought. Certainly no one in the United States is permitted to study Marx from kindergarten through 12th grade. Only demonization is acceptable. The same vacuum generally applies to the first four years of college as well. A rare graduate student may study some of the wisdom of Marx. Michael Harrington, one of the greatest US socialists, dedicates his book, ‘The Twilight of Capitalism’, to the future of an almost forgotten genius. The foe of every dogma, champion of human freedom and democratic socialist, Karl Marx. Does that sound like the devil?

“It’s important to understand that the [predominant] culture in the United States is a culture of nationalistic fundamentalism…”

I think Michael Harrington knew a great deal about this. And his books are very much written within the culture of the United States. This new deal is really a very old theology. It’s what Moses was trying to get across when he told them it was not right to be in slavery. The true God liberates idols and slaves. Our true idols today are nuclear missiles and an imperial foreign policy. Such things are perceived as the will of God. But we are among people today in Nicaragua who are sisters and brothers to us. What they suffer is what our family suffers. We don’t intend to tolerate this. In the US, our development of this theology is more secular because it’s the nature of our culture. Thousands of solidarity communities have sprung up, which are base communities in fact. Spirituality does not have to stand out like an appendage. It has to be part of the fabric of our character.
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Last month we joined and initiated the Days of Decision at the Van Nuys military airbase. 34 of us got arrested that day. We were held inside of a hangar. Within that hangar was military equipment for use against the people of Central America. We knew we were in the right place.

Our message is simple, it’s the same message we generated during the war in Indo China. Three million people were destroyed because they were so-called “communists.” It was a holocaust. Our message then was, stop the war or we’ll stop the country. Nixon was ready to use nuclear bombs against the people of Southeast Asia. He had made his decision. It was the only way. We were losing the war. But he knew he could not get away with it. Nixon witnessed the largest mutiny in history, US. Soldiers were killing their officers. He could see from the window of the White House one million patriots saying, Stop the War. Indeed, the great movements in our country have come from the streets. Mass mobilizations gave way to the 8 hour day, the 40 hour week, the right to organize. There’s great wisdom in the people of the base, and there’s great ignorance at the top. Wealth is going into fewer and fewer hands, giving our country the worst distribution of wealth in the world. Our leaders are incompetent to make decisions pertaining to health, poverty and housing.

They simply think in terms of military production, and it’s literally killing us. Our cause is to turn it around. We only want government servants in government, people who look like servants, act like servants, perform like servants – or get out of government. We don’t care what they want. We must demand that they do what the great people of our country want them to do. Our freedom to do and to make history. To do and create the future. To bring justice to the planet. Tomorrow, we will visit the war.

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[dropcap]T[/dropcap]hose, my friends, were thoughts shared with a delegation of foreigners in Nicaragua, US citizens, on a beautiful star-filled tropical evening, just outside of Managua.

And so that’s where I consider liberation theology is going, and I wouldn’t say that Pope Francis is accepting all of this. I don’t know that he would accept all of this. Maybe in his inner heart, but in terms of his current position, I don’t think that he accepts this. However, he certainly accepts one of the basic themes, which is the preferential option for the poor – and he demonstrates that so clearly in this new encyclical. So we congratulate him on that. Unfortunately many journalists don’t quite understand what’s going on.

We see here journalists saying “This is the first time the Pope has written an encyclical with the intention of influencing the political process.” Nothing could be further from the truth. I think journalists have to do their homework. I think every pope has had a political purpose. My goodness, Dante was arguing whether the pope should be the last word, or the emperor. And he thought the emperor should be, because the pope thought he should be. So the popes have been interested in political issues for years, even in modern times.

Take the 19th century. Pope Leo XIII gave us the wonderful document Rerum Novarum about industrialization, and he was standing directly on the shoulders of Karl Marx. He agreed with one Marxist conclusion after another. He agreed with the situation described by Marx, and you’ll find out if you ever study Marx, he asked the right questions. He didn’t give all the answers to everything. He was a Socrates who asked the right question: why should people who create the profit not receive any of it? Or receive an unacceptably miserly part of it? So he was standing on the shoulders of the Communist Manifesto.

Forty years later Pope Pius XI gave us the encyclical Quadragesimo Anno. What did he insist on? A living wage. This was in the 1930s. A living wage, what is that? To have enough money to have a house, to save something, take vacation, to live as a human being. So it’s gone on. John the 23rd, a great revolutionary who called the second Vatican Council, and had such a deep impact on all of us in the wake of that council, because we were hearing things from Rome that we’d never heard before.

Giovanni Battista Roncalli, Pope John XXIII, the “People’s Pope”-—an indelible example.

The second Vatican Council went from 1962 to 1965, and it was in the wake of that council that so much of liberation theology developed. And finally Father Gutierrez wrote about it later; it had already begun in a peripatetic way, walking around analyzing what was coming from the Vatican. Then the bishops met in Medellin, Colombia to talk about the fact that many in the church were part and parcel of the revolution. They were dealing with Pope Paul VI, and he had written another encyclical which terrorized the upper classes. Popes have always dealt with the political. Don’t think for a minute that this is the first time. What did he say in Populorum Progressio? It is in Chapter 31:

“Everyone knows, however, that revolutionary uprisings—except where there is manifest, longstanding tyranny which would do great damage to fundamental personal rights and dangerous harm to the common good of the country—engender new injustices, introduce new inequities and bring new disasters.”

My goodness, the rebels in Latin America took that as a manifest saying that they have the right to revolt. So please don’t ever say that the popes have not engaged in political implications until this encyclical of Pope Francis, which contains marvelous ideas. And we’re very happy about it.

So we see that council as a very important time. That was an elderly man, John XXIII, who thought the church had grown so stuffy that they had to open the windows to let some air in. And that led to a reevaluation of dogmatic thinking, a reevaluation of fundamentalism, and you might say a reevaluation of Roman Catholic fundamentalism. A reevaluation of manmade ecclesiastical laws, a reevaluation of sectarianism. And this is a tremendous amount of progress.

So if we’re thinking about the environment, what is the foremost threat to the environment? There’s absolutely no question about it. The military at peace is the greatest threat to the ecology of the world. The military at war and this planet are not sustainable. We’re going to use these weapons that Reagan was ready to use, that so many presidents were ready to use, that John Kennedy was ready to use. People talk about overpopulation – friends, I don’t worry about over population, I worry about no population. Nada.

[dropcap]P[/dropcap]eople are willing to save capitalism by way of biocide. When you kill and maim, blow the heads off of people for 24 years – that’s right – we started killing Iraqis in 1991. Of course we’re shocked when we see the blowback of ISIS. Of course we’re shocked as we see people about to have their heads cut off. Horror, terror, absolutely unacceptable. But who gave Iraq and Afghanistan the cluster bombs? These bombs take the heads off children by the thousands. So what is the difference between that and the beheading of some by a sword? These cluster bombs are absolutely unacceptable. The dear Saudi Arabians are using them in Yemen, we’ve used them for 24 years in Iraq, and they have these lovely little bomblets that look like toys and attract children who hold them up until their heads are blown off.

[box type=”bio”] Download here. LAUDATO SI[/box]

[dropcap]S[/dropcap]o let’s talk about the ecology. You can’t have it and have cluster bombs. You can’t have it and have intercontinental nuclear missiles. It’s out of the question. So the first step toward saving the planet is to end war, and we can do it. We celebrated the Magna Carta this week, and we had some very silly editorials come out. Maybe they thought they were part of the new “post humanist period,” but it seemed like the silliness of academia. “Stop revering the Magna Carta,” Tom Ginsburg of the New York Times wrote. Well, well well. Stop revering it. Okay, I’ll stop right away! There’s no reason to stop revering it. “It wasn’t perfect!” Oh, I see, the Magna Carta wasn’t perfect. But of course the US Constitution was perfect. Is he trying to get around the fact that we’ve lost ground in 800 years since the Magna Carta? Does he realize that we’ve lost ground since 1215? We have. We don’t have trials, just suspects. And as we attack the suspects may be present or not. And with these virtual suspects thousands of innocents have been massacred by drones and F-15’s.

Well, maybe we got him, maybe we didn’t, but we thought he might have been on the list, we thought it was him, we might have got him, we possibly did, multiple bombs were dropped on the target. It will take us a while to determine whether we got him, unless terrorist websites confirm that we got him. Well. So we had somebody we thought might have done something or who might do something in the future. I don’t know of anyone in organized crime who would do such a thing. There is honor among thieves. I don’t think organized crime internationally would take such a step. Send in the F15 E’s and blow up as many people as are there, and you might possibly perhaps maybe get someone who we suspect might have been Muktar al Muktar.

This cannot continue. But it continues. So, where did he come from? The man we thought we might have killed allegedly had one eye. He was fighting the Soviets in Afghanistan, where he learned his combat skills. Why was he fighting the Soviets? Because we organized many of the fanatics in Afghanistan to fight the Soviets, and he was one of them. He was also a major cigarette trafficker; he was known as an honorable man, according to the New York Times. So we’re seeing the blowback from ISIS. It is unifying as groups do. At first they compete, they argue, they differ, they argue politics and religion, but they do unify and they have become unified because of the terrorism that they have lived in since 1991. The extreme terrorism in the 21st century: that terrorism has been part and parcel of our policy, basically destroying the soul of the United States of America.

So as we look at the Pope’s encyclical, let’s think about that. In order to be in sync with it, we have to end the war system. What about extremists in the United States? Well you can also read in the New York Times that the terrorist threat in this country is primarily from the extreme right. Terrorism of all forms has accounted for a tiny portion of the violence in America. There have been more than 215,000 murders in the United States since 9/11. For every person killed by Muslim extremists, there have been 4300 homicides by other threats. Police agencies are trying to become aware of this, because this month the headline was about a Muslim man in Boston who was accused of threatening police officers with a knife. Last month two Muslim extremists attacked an anti-Muslim conference in Garland, Texas, etc.

But the headlines can mislead, says the New York Times. The main terrorist threat in the United States is not from violent Muslim extremists, but from right wing extremists. Just ask the police. The survey we conducted with the Police Executive Research Forum last year, which included 342 police agencies, showed that 74 percent reported anti-government extremism is one of the top three terrorist threats. So, when we look at extremism, let’s look at our own. And those who are demonizing Islam are the same thinkers as those who demonized Judaism. They are dead wrong. They don’t know what they’re talking about. They don’t know who the enemy is. They better look to themselves and say: The enemy is us.

Commentary on the Pope’s Encyclical – Our Common Home/ Part 2

July 5, 2015

http://officeoftheamericas.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/kpfk_150705_100038worldfocus.mp3

[dropcap]I[/dropcap]’d like to wish all of you a happy 4th of July. Independence Day. May we all be independent of imperialism, independent of the evil of war, the evil of torture, the evil of lethal lies that kill millions? Happy Independence Day. Independence from Evil.

Well, we have here a letter from the Pope, and I have it with me. And I’d like to comment on it today. I think it’s a very important letter for the world. And what it amounts to is a marriage of the peace movement and the environmental movement. That’s a very important marriage. We’ve been waiting for this to happen, and I think the Pope helped very much to make it happen.

It’s called Laudato si. That sounds like Latin, but I think you’ll find that it’s 13th century Italian. “Praise to you my Lord.” In the word of a beautiful canticle, St. Francis of Assisi reminds us that our common home is like a sister with whom we share our life, and a beautiful mother who opens her arms to embrace. “Praise to you my Lord, through our sister mother earth, who sustains and governs us and who produces various fruit with colored flowers and herbs.”

There’s a very interesting focus on St. Francis. And, in a way, it’s a little unfortunate that the Pope stressed simply the love of Francis for nature. That, of course, is key. But what we have to do is look at the life of this amazing man to understand some things that might be missing here. St. Francis was born in 1181. He died in 1226. He had abandoned a life of luxury for a life devoted to Christianity after reportedly hearing the voice of God, who commanded him to rebuild the church and live in poverty. He had been renowned for drinking and partying in his youth. After fighting in a battle between Assisi and Perugia, Francis was captured and imprisoned for ransom. He spent nearly a year in prison, awaiting his father’s payment, and, according to legend, began receiving visions from God.

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Here is the part that we forget about Francis. He abhorred the Crusades as miserable slaughter in the name of God. He stood against them in a way that the best of our peace people are standing against them today. The New York Times wrote of this, I think it was Thomas Cahill, back in 2006. He actually wrote of this on Christmas day, that amid all the useless bloodshed of the Crusades, Francis of Assisi, joined the 5th Crusade, not as a warrior, but as a peacemaker. Francis was not good at organization or strategy, and he knew it. He accepted the people who offered themselves as followers, befriended them, shared the Gospel with them, but gave them no wealth. He expected them to live like him, and he said, “Preach the Gospel, and if you have to, use words.” Nothing could be stronger. We don’t need the words as much as we need the action.

Francis was not impressed by the crusaders, whose sacrilegious brutality horrified him. They were fond of taunting and abusing their prisoners of war, who were returned to their families minus a nose, lips, ears or eyes – or never returned at all. And the endless slaughters of Jews and Islamic people. Francis thought the judgement was the exclusive province of the all- merciful God – just as Pope Francis said recently, “Who am I to judge?” It was none of the Christians concern to judge. True Christians were to befriend all. Condemn no one. Give to the other, and it shall be given to you. Forgive, and you shall be forgiven. This was part of Francis’ constant preaching. May the Lord give you peace was the best greeting one could give to all one met. It compromised no one’s dignity, and embraced every good with a blessing bestowed on all. Francis bestowed it on people. Such an approach in an age when most visible signs of the Christian religion were the wars and atrocities of the Red Cross Crusaders.

This is critically important, friends. His great work was as a peace maker and as a peace activist. Symbolic gesture, Francis’ natural language, was a profound source he called on throughout his life. In one of his most poignant expressions, Francis sailed across the Mediterranean to the Egyptian court of Al-Malik Al-Kamil, nephew of the great Saladin, who defeated the forces of the hapless Third Crusade. Francis was admitted to the august presence of the sultan himself, and spoke to him of Christ, who was, after all, Francis’ only subject.

Well, friends. You know what this was? Trying to proselytize a Muslim was cause for on-the- spot decapitation. But Kamil was a wise and moderate man, deeply impressed by Francis’ courage and sincerity, and invited him for a week of serious conversation. Francis was deeply impressed by the religious devotion of the Muslims, especially by their five daily calls to prayer. It’s possible that the thrice daily recitation of the Angelus that became current in Europe after his visit, was precipitated by the impression Muslims made on St Francis.

So he went back to the crusader camp on the Egyptian shore and desperately tried to convince Cardinal Pelagius Galvani, who Pope Honorius III has put in charge of the crusade, saying that he should make peace with the Sultan who, despite a preponderance of force on his side, was all too ready to do so. But the Cardinal had dreams of military glory and would not listen. His failure amid terrible loss of life brought the age of the crusades to an inglorious end.

Here it is. Cardinal Galvani, who was a warmonger – and if we don’t deal with these realities in the history of the church, we’re playing Mickey Mouse, and if we play Mickey Mouse, we’ll never know anything. Donald Spoto, one of Francis of Assisi’s most recent biographers, rightly calls Francis “the first person from the West to travel to another continent with the revolutionary idea of peacemaking.” As a result of his inability to convince Cardinal Pelagius, however, Francis saw himself as a failure. Like his model, Jesus of Nazareth, Francis was an extremist. But his failure is still capable of bearing new fruit.

Islamic society and Christian society have been generally bad neighbors now for nearly 14 centuries, eager to misunderstand each other, often borrowing culturally and intellectually from each other without ever bestowing proper credit. But as Sir Jonathan Sacks, Chief Rabbi of the British Commonwealth, has written, almost as if he was thinking of Al-Kamil and Francis, “Those who are confident of their faith are not threatened but enlarged by the different faiths of others. There are, surely, many ways of arriving at this generosity of spirit and each faith may need to find its own.” We stand in desperate need of contemporary figures like Kamil and Francis of Assisi to create an innovative dialogue. To build a future better than our past, we need, as Rabbi Sacks has put it, “the confidence to recognize the irreducible, glorious dignity of difference.”

Friends, it’s so important to remember that St Francis was a peace activist. Just like our people today – Medea Benjamin, Kathy Kelly, a host of others who have gone and risked their lives speaking to the so-called enemy, talking about dialogue, talking about diplomacy – a lost science.

[dropcap]S[/dropcap]o I wanted to give this as a preliminary because the focus of attention here is on St Francis in beginning this letter, Our Common Home. Pope Francis didn’t care to deal with this particular aspect of it publicly – I think he might have hoped that everybody who knows something about peacemaking of St Francis would draw their own conclusions.

The church, as it developed, began to give easy condemnations of birth control, abortion, and homosexuality. Why? Because all of these throw the burden of sin to the individual. It’s a way of wholesaling sin, and does not deal with the societal sins – the greatest sins – war, hunger, disease. This would anger governments that support the church, and the churches have become subservient to the government. So the focus of attentions is diverted from the world’s greatest sins – aggressive war, torture, oppression, militarism. The church follows the state; it does not lead, and it tries not to offend power and money. And here’s an exception.

There have been many exceptions. The papal encyclicals of the 19th, 20th and 21st centuries. Also, these letters are often not heard in our churches and our parishes because it would be “offensive” to power and money. But somehow I think Our Common Home will have an impact above and beyond all organized religion.

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So here are some thoughts about our common home. It’s about 180 pages, and I have it in front of me. Now, the New York Times said the US bishops will be wary of the document. Of course they will. They have interests and investments that would not be approved by Pope Francis. They love to make the comment, “Our people are not ready for that yet.” I think of the Cardinal of Washington DC who said “Well, it might take 75 years.” Well, why not more, why not forever, as the planet disintegrates.

It is truly sad that the Rerum Novarum was never translated into Spanish from the original Latin because the oligarchs of Latin America together with the bishops were afraid of it.

Well, we take a look now at the text, which is so very important and meaningful. He recalls previous popes who have also spoken on the environment. He recalls Pope Paul VI in 1971 referring to the ecological catastrophe under effective explosion of industrial civilization. My comment would be, there’s nothing more explosive than military industrial production. And as a reference, I would suggest the works of Seymour Melman, who wrote Permanent War Economy: American Capitalism in Decline and Pentagon Capitalism: The Political Economy of War.

Our oligarchy knows that the very best way to make a profit is creating new wars. They are now out of control. More wars – and look at the plethora of candidates for the presidency. It’s really priceless. Now moaning that we’ve not been warlike enough, we need to get tougher! More profit. More destruction of the planet. Make it into a garbage dump.

Sadly, many of our people will listen to this inflammatory nonsense because the culture has descended into fear, which is the favorite theme of corrupt politicians. Yes. So other religions have expressed a deep concern and offered valuable reflections on this letter. And we’ll look to the text of the letter. I’ll mention paragraphs.

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Francis is justly recognized as the patron saint of animals and the environment. He demonstrated his profound love and compassion for nature and all creatures on numerous occasions. (Pauline Baynes)

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He’s so right on, because you can hear people in the churches say, “we’re here to worship God, we’re not here to talk about the bees and the birds, we’re not here to talk about the necessary patriotism of killing everyone else in the world, we’re just here to worship God.” Well, I’m sorry, friends, I don’t know what religion you belong to, but that’s not the message of someone who said we’re here to feed the hungry, clothe the naked, assist people who are sick or in prison, and what we do to them is our relationship to the Almighty.”

So this is paragraph 14. We move on here and find a lot of important statements. Paragraph 16:

“I will point to the intimate relationship between the poor and the fragility of the planet, the conviction that everything in the world is connected, the critique of new paradigms and forms of power derived from technology, the call to seek other ways of understanding the economy and progress, the value proper to each creature, the human meaning of ecology, the need for forthright and honest debate, the serious responsibility of international and local policy, the throwaway culture and the proposal of a new lifestyle. These questions will not be dealt with once and for all, but reframed and enriched again and again.”

And that’s what he’s certainly trying to do. He creates an interesting word in paragraph 18:

“The continued acceleration of changes affecting humanity and the planet is coupled today with a more intensified pace of life and work which might be called “rapidification”.”

We see that everywhere. Hype. Speed. Remember Gandhi saying, “There’s more to life than increasing its speed.” Think of the car on the freeway going 95 miles an hour, endangering everyone. If you ask the driver where he or she is going, you’d probably here “nowhere” or “to the next bar.” So – “rapidification is not good.” He goes on:

“Although change is part of the working of complex systems, the speed with which human activity has developed contrasts with the naturally slow pace of biological evolution. Moreover, the goals of this rapid and constant change are not necessarily geared to the common good or to integral and sustainable human development. Change is something desirable, yet it becomes a source of anxiety when it causes harm to the world and to the quality of life of much of humanity.”

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Well, that’s paragraph 18, and an important part of the encyclical. The press was quite impressed with paragraph 21:

“The earth, our home, is beginning to look more and more like an immense pile of filth. In many parts of the planet, the elderly lament that once beautiful landscapes are now covered with rubbish. Industrial waste and chemical products utilized in cities and agricultural areas can lead to bioaccumulation in the organisms of the local population, even when levels of toxins in those places are low. Frequently no measures are taken until after people’s health has been irreversibly affected.”

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[dropcap]F[/dropcap]riends, as climate is a common good and meant for all, we should look at the air. The water, the soil, the subsoil – and people might be paid for working on it. But never for owning it. And that, strangely enough, is part of the Mexican constitution of 1917. It has not been well applied in Mexico, but it is a very first class statement. Air, water, soil, subsoil, oil – all belong to the people. And of course you can be paid for working it, but not for owning it.

I guess the severest criticism of the encyclical came from David Brooks of the New York Times. He was very offended that the pope attacked cap and trade. I’m amazed that the pope pointed out that it’s a shell game – a useless effort to stop the disaster that’s taking place. The letters to the editor after Brooks’ article were extremely strong condemnations of Brooks’ approach.

Paragraph 24: Warming has effects on the carbon cycle. It creates a vicious circle which aggravates the situation even more, affecting the availability of essential resources like drinking water, energy and agricultural production in warmer regions, and leading to the extinction of part of the planet’s biodiversity. The melting in the polar ice caps and in high altitude plains can lead to the dangerous release of methane gas, while the decomposition of frozen organic material can further increase the emission of carbon dioxide. Things are made worse by the loss of tropical forests which would otherwise help to mitigate climate change. Carbon dioxide pollution increases the acidification of the oceans and compromises the marine food chain. If present trends continue, this century may well witness extraordinary climate change and an unprecedented destruction of ecosystems, with serious consequences for all of us. A rise in the sea level, for example, can create extremely serious situations, if we consider that a quarter of the world’s population lives on the coast or nearby, and that the majority of our megacities are situated in coastal areas.

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And paragraph 26:

“Many of those who possess more resources and economic or political power seem mostly to be concerned with masking the problems or concealing their symptoms, simply making efforts to reduce some of the negative impacts of climate change. However, many of these symptoms indicate that such effects will continue to worsen if we continue with current models of production and consumption. There is an urgent need to develop policies so that, in the next

few years, the emission of carbon dioxide and other highly polluting gases can be drastically reduced.”

I think it’s very important that he’s on top of the problem of public relations, which is a way of trying to lie our way out of reality. Paragraphs 27 and 28 address water:

“We all know that it is not possible to sustain the present level of consumption in developed countries and wealthier sectors of society, where the habit of wasting and discarding has reached unprecedented levels. The exploitation of the planet has already exceeded acceptable limits and we still have not solved the problem of poverty.

“Fresh drinking water is an issue of primary importance, since it is indispensable for human life and for supporting terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems. Sources of fresh water are necessary for health care, agriculture and industry. Water supplies used to be relatively constant, but now in many places demand exceeds the sustainable supply.”

Well, friends, we could add that war production is destroying the planet. You know, when the pope went to Turin last week, he spoke at the university. And he said, “Those who are involved in building arms and the arms trade should not call yourselves Christians.” I think he’s on a roll, and a very important roll. Understanding the problem we’re in. He goes on for a couple of paragraphs about water, and he says:

“Even as the quality of available water is constantly diminishing, in some places there is a growing tendency, despite its scarcity, to privatize this resource, turning it into a commodity subject to the laws of the market.” Yes, thank you Bechtel, for going to Bolivia and trying to privatize the water of Bolivia, and having the people of Bolivia throw you OUT of the country. “Yet access to safe drinkable water is a basic and universal human right, since it is essential to human survival and, as such, is a condition for the exercise of other human rights. Our world has a grave social debt towards the poor who lack access to drinking water, because they are denied the right to a life consistent with their inalienable dignity. This debt can be paid partly by an increase in funding to provide clean water and sanitary services among the poor.” This is from paragraph 30.

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The pope is not sparing the corporate world. In paragraph 31:

“Greater scarcity of water will lead to an increase in the cost of food and the various products which depend on its use. Some studies warn that an acute water shortage may occur within a few decades unless urgent action is taken. The environmental repercussions could affect billions of people; it is also conceivable that the control of water by large multinational businesses may become a major source of conflict in this century.”

Well, it’s already obvious. Talk to the Bolivians. They said get out of here. That’s what the Salvadorans are trying to do. Get out of here. Don’t mess with our water or our air. Do you want to sell air too? Do you want to sell it by the puff? Wouldn’t that be wonderful?

That’s paragraph 31. He goes on to talk about the loss of biodiversity:

“Each year sees the disappearance of thousands of plant and animal species which we will never know, which our children will never see, because they have been lost forever. The great majority become extinct for reasons related to human activity. Because of us, thousands of species will no longer give glory to God by their very existence, nor convey their message to us. We have no such right.” And in paragraph 34:

“It may well disturb us to learn of the extinction of mammals or birds, since they are more visible. But the good functioning of ecosystems also requires fungi, algae, worms, insects, reptiles and an innumerable variety of microorganisms. Some less numerous species, although generally unseen, nonetheless play a critical role in maintaining the equilibrium of a particular place. Human beings must intervene when a geosystem reaches a critical state. But nowadays, such intervention in nature has become more and more frequent. As a consequence, serious problems arise, leading to further interventions; human activity becomes ubiquitous, with all the risks which this entails. Often a vicious circle results, as human intervention to resolve a problem further aggravates the situation. For example, many birds and insects which disappear due to synthetic agro toxins are helpful for agriculture: their disappearance will have to be compensated for by yet other techniques which may well prove harmful. We must be grateful for the praiseworthy efforts being made by scientists and engineers dedicated to finding solutions to man-made problems. But a sober look at our world shows that the degree of human intervention, often in the service of business interests and consumerism, is actually making our earth less rich and beautiful, ever more limited and grey, even as technological advances and consumer goods continue to abound limitlessly. We seem to think that we can substitute an irreplaceable and irretrievable beauty with something which we have created ourselves.”

Consumerism. This letter is so important at this time. I think it will probably be read more widely than any other papal letters. The popularity of Pope Francis, and the subject matter. He speaks of specific areas in chapter 38:

“Let us mention, for example, those richly biodiverse lungs of our planet which are the Amazon and the Congo basins, or the great aquifers and glaciers. We know how important these are for the entire earth and for the future of humanity. The ecosystems of tropical forests possess an enormously complex biodiversity which is almost impossible to appreciate fully, yet when these forests are burned down or leveled for purposes of cultivation, within the space of a few years countless species are lost and the areas frequently become arid wastelands. A delicate balance has to be maintained when speaking about these places, for we cannot overlook the huge global economic interests which, under the guise of protecting them, can undermine the sovereignty of individual nations. In fact, there are “proposals to internationalize the Amazon, which only serve the economic interests of transnational corporations”.

..

All these trade bills being dealt with now have this as the objective – the corporate takeover of the planet. That is to say, the corporate destruction of the planet where people who have a patent on a death seed can sue someone else who has a natural seed because they didn’t use the death seed which can be used only once – and then you have to go back and buy more. I think we’re really onto something here.

In paragraph 40, pope states:

“Oceans not only contain the bulk of our planet’s water supply, but also most of the immense variety of living creatures, many of them still unknown to us and threatened for various reasons. What is more, marine life in rivers, lakes, seas and oceans, which feeds a great part of the world’s population, is affected by uncontrolled fishing, leading to a drastic depletion of certain species. Selective forms of fishing which discard much of what they collect continue unabated. Particularly threatened are marine organisms which we tend to overlook, like some forms of plankton; they represent a significant element in the ocean food chain, and species used for our food ultimately depend on them.”

So he’s talking about the death of the oceans. “Many of the world’s coral reefs are already barren or in a state of constant decline. “Who turned the wonder world of the seas into underwater cemeteries bereft of color and life?” This phenomenon is due largely to pollution which reaches the sea as the result of deforestation, agricultural monocultures, industrial waste and destructive fishing methods, especially those using cyanide and dynamite. It is aggravated by the rise in temperature of the oceans. All of this helps us to see that every intervention in nature can have consequences which are not immediately evident, and that certain ways of exploiting resources prove costly in terms of degradation which ultimately reaches the ocean bed itself.”

We should realize that much of this is done for military purposes – for military bases. The people of the world are protesting, and the destruction goes on. Because all creatures are connected, he says in