By Michael Pakaluk, The Catholic Thing, Oct. 26, 2023
Michael Pakaluk, an Aristotle scholar and Ordinarius of the Pontifical Academy of St. Thomas Aquinas, is a professor in the Busch School of Business at the Catholic University of America. …
My worry about Laudate Deum (“all you praise God”), the recent Apostolic Exhortation “to all people of good will on the climate crisis,” is that because it is represents an incursion into the domain of the laity, it implicitly converts a matter of prudence, which always involves an awareness of trade-offs, into a matter of faith.
I take my doctrine on the laity from Vatican II. In Lumen gentium, bishops are accorded the role of defining doctrine in faith and morals. Their specific competence in this task “extends as far as the deposit of Revelation extends.” (n. 25) The laity in contrast are tasked with applying these principles to the world: “laity, by their very vocation, seek the kingdom of God by engaging in temporal affairs and by ordering them according to the plan of God.” (n. 31) “By divine institution Holy Church is ordered and governed with a wonderful diversity,” the Council Fathers exclaim. (n. 32)
One would think that this genuine diversity, in the matter of the climate, would imply a division of labor: the bishops set down general principles drawn from the deposit of faith; and the laity, using their specific competencies, consider how most prudently to apply them. Lumen gentium imagines teamwork in the Church, in outline working like this.
But in Laudate Deum the Catholic laity do not make an appearance. What one finds instead is teamwork between the Holy See and an association of scientists, the “Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change” (IPCC), with a short-circuiting of the laity. (Perhaps teamwork is not propitious in the face of emergencies.) …
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