Current events post II: Laudato Si and Republican Catholic Candidates

Laudato Si: a no-win scenario for Catholic Republican candidates.

           

          Laudato Si is the recent Papal encyclical addressing the imminent dangers of climate change. Laudato Si poses a serious, probably unsolvable, challenge to Catholic Republican candidates for president like Jeb Bush and Rick Santorum.      

           

          The majority of the Republican base in a recent Public Policy Polling national survey would support establishing Christianity as the official national religion, suggesting that they would support more religion in politics. However, Republicans also do not want candidates kowtowing to Papal authority. Additionally, the Catholic Republican presidential candidates cannot agree with the Pope on climate change without greatly upsetting their base. With the release of Laudato Si, added to the official social teaching of the Catholic Church, a potential inconsistency became concrete.

           

          In reference to Laudato Si, Rick Santorum said to radio host Dom Giardano: “We probably are better off leaving science to the scientists, and focusing on what we’re really good at, which is theology and morality.” Notice, in this quote, that theology and morality are in the Church’s domain. However, in the last election cycle Santorum stated that JFK’s speech arguing for the absolute separation of religion and politics into their own domains ‘made him throw up.’ Now that religion has become inconvenient to his politics Santorum is, at least in this instance, advocating for separation.

           

          Jeb Bush is even more blatant, telling Politico: “I think religion ought to be about making us better as people, less about things [that] end up getting into the political realm.” However, in May of this year at the commencement address at Liberty University he stated that if elected he would let his Christian (Catholic) faith influence his decisions. If religion is less about the political realm, why would his faith influence his decisions?

            

          All of these comments by Santorum and Bush were made before Laudato Si was officially released and to my knowledge neither of them commented on the full version. However, Pope Francis argues consistently in this encyclical that politics, morality, and theology, are not separate in the climate change crisis. In fact, this triad is radically singular in Laudato Si. Not only is the Pope arguing his position well in Laudato Si, he is (obviously) the head of Catholicism, the professed religion of both Santorum and Bush. If the Pope, as spiritual leader of the Catholic Church, does not have the authority to comment on politics, why should we believe Santorum or Bush would be instructed by their faith if elected? We shouldn’t.