By John M. Grondelski, Crisis Magazine, July 10, 2025
John M. Grondelski (Ph.D., Fordham) is a former associate dean of the School of Theology, Seton Hall University, South Orange, New Jersey. All views expressed herein are his own.
Can Pope Leo XIV build bridges from Pope Francis’ arguably liberal mouthpiece encyclicals to something squarely Catholic?
The Vatican, on July 3, approved a new votive Mass “for care of creation” which Pope Leo XIV celebrated for the first time on July 9. A follow-on from the Francis pontificate promulgated to mark the 10th anniversary of Laudato Si’, the new votive Mass has elicited a variety of contradictory responses. I’ll weigh in: I think it is balanced in the middle, and in medio stat virtus. It’s in the middle because it avoids two extremes: the Scylla of secular environmentalism and the Charybdis of disregard for the inherent good of the temporal world. Let’s examine both.
Secular Environmentalism
Vatican sources said the new text was a response to Laudato Si’s call to recognize human life is “grounded in three fundamental and closely intertwined relationships: with God, with our neighbor and with the earth itself” (66). That insight is biblically grounded. It is part of what I call our “Genesis heritage,” the common Jewish-Christian patrimony about seeing the world that comes from the first book of the Bible. …
