By Ted Glick
Photos: Wikimedia Commons
Growing up, I had virtually no contact with people who identified themselves as Catholics. Perhaps some of my friends and acquaintances in high school and college were but if so, I didn’t know it.
The first open Catholics I came to know in late 1969 at the age of 20 were people like then-Sister Joann Malone, Fathers Joe Wenderoth and Neil McLaughlin, John Grady and, eventually, Father Phil Berrigan. These were all leaders of the militantly nonviolent Vietnam War resistance movement, the Catholic Left.
These and other Catholics I came to know back then had been influenced by the South and Central American liberation theology movement which emerged in the 1960’s following the Cuban Revolution of 1959, led by Fidel Castro.
Castro had been raised in a Catholic family. In an interview in 1985 with Chilean priest Frei Betto, he spoke about the influence of his deeply religious mother and grandmother: “I always listened to them with great interest and respect. Even though I didn’t share their concept of the world, I never argued with them about these things, because I could see the strength, courage and comfort they got from their religious feelings and beliefs. Of course, their feelings were neither rigid nor orthodox but something very much their own and very strongly felt. It was a part of the family tradition.” (1)
Pope Francis prior to his being named Pope was connected with and supportive of the liberation theology movement, although he was explicitly not a supporter of armed struggle for the overturning of repressive and unjust governments. He was, however, a strong advocate for social and economic justice as made very clear in his famous 2015 encyclical, “Laudato Si’: On Care for Our Common Home.”
I re-read Laudato Si’ yesterday. There is much in it of value to all people, not just Catholics and including agnostics and atheists. In the introduction Francis summarizes the main questions the book deals with: “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 see 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.”
Over the book’s 157 pages Francis does, indeed, deal with all of this and more.
Francis makes very clear over and over again that a central reason why the world’s economies and ecosystems are in such a critical state is the domination of government by “transnational corporations” and “powerful financial interests.” This is a good thing. Being truthful about the main source of our problems is always what those who want a world based on love, justice, peace and connection to nature should be about.
However, it is a problem that he never explicitly says that in order to create just societies and avoid economic, social and ecological collapse, the power and wealth of this billionaire class must be ended and drastically redistributed. Indeed, in such new societies billionaires would not exist. In my opinion, those who are now billionaires or multi/multi millionaires might come to appreciate how wrong they were to put the pursuit of obscene wealth and power before anything else. Some of them might actually come to realize that love and service to others is, indeed, a much better way to live.
Related to this problem with Laudato Si’ is the fact that nowhere in the book that I could find does Francis use the phrase, “fossil fuel industry,” much less call for it to be immediately and drastically downsized, moved aside so that wind, solar and other clean, renewable energy sources can take their place as rapidly as possible.
The fossil fuel industry and those banks and insurance companies who are financing their ecosystem-destroying pursuit of private profit must be named, called out, targeted for consistent, militant, nonviolent demonstrations and risk-taking direct action. They are truly public enemy number one and need to be treated as such.
As the Trump Must Go movement continues to grow and build its strength, with the next big showing of our power coming up on May 1, we can draw inspiration from the life and teachings of Pope Francis. He was a man of the people, humble, willing to take on conservative Catholic theology and speak truth to power. Let us hope that the new person elected to replace him continues and builds upon his forward-looking teachings.
1—p. 47, Fidel Castro and Frei Betto, “Fidel and Religion: Conversations with Frei Betto on Marxism and Liberation Theology.”
Ted Glick has been a progressive activist and organizer since 1968. He is the author of the recently published books, Burglar for Peace and 21st Century Revolution, both available at https://pmpress.org . More info can be found at https://tedglick.com.
