IT WAS bad enough when Pope Francis began banging on about inequality. Worse still when he changed the church’s tone when it comes to addressing gay people (“Who am I to judge?”). Now the pope has issued a papal encyclical affirming the science of climate change and calling on leaders to phase out fossil fuels from the global economy.
This puts the GOP’s presidential candidates in an awkward position. At least five of them—including frontrunners Jeb Bush and Marco Rubio—are practicing Catholics. Messrs Bush and Rubio have both questioned or denied the science of climate change and rejected policies to regulate the burning of fossil fuels. And they are both from Miami, a place seen as especially vulnerable to economic damage from climate change.
For some years Republicans have been accustomed to recruiting the pope as a figure of moral authority for their social agendas, especially in their arguments against abortion and gay marriage. As governor of Florida, Mr Bush regularly cited church teachings, and enacted a law to introduce anti-abortion “Choose Life” license plates. But he has seemed rather less eager for the pope’s guidance on the environment. “I don’t get economic policy from my bishops or my cardinals or my pope,” Mr Bush insisted on Tuesday. “I think religion ought to be about making us better as people and less about things that end up getting in the political realm.
Still, Mr Bush and his peers are wary of criticising Pope Francis outright. Few score points by speaking ill of a spiritual leader, especially one as overwhelmingly popular as Pope Francis (86% of American Catholics view him favourably, accordingly to a recent poll by the Pew Research Centre).
What’s a Republican in the age of Francis to do?
American politicians have a long history of vexed relations with Rome. Many of the Founding Fathers, guided by the rationalism of the Enlightenment, were suspicious of Catholicism. In 1788 John Jay, an early leading light, urged the New York legislature to require officeholders to renounce the pope and foreign authorities «in all matters ecclesiastical as well as civil.” Anti-Catholic sentiment continued to run strong in the nativist years of the 19th and early 20th centuries. When John F. Kennedy junior, a known Catholic, ran for president in 1960, he had to make plain that his loyalty to the country took precedence over his allegiance to the pope.
In recent decades American conservatives have found common cause with the Catholic Church. The traditional family values of the Republican party are largely rooted in religious views of sex and morality. But while Americans are sympathetic to vague talk about spiritual faith and healing, they have less time for dogmatic authority figures, and few care much for church bureaucracy. Many also see the value in listening to religious leaders on matters of who has a soul and when life begins, but prefer to look elsewhere when it comes to questions of hard policy.
As a result, Pope Francis’s positions have compelled a number of politicians to once again declare themselves Americans first, Catholics second. Rick Santorum, a GOP candidate who has long attributed his staunchly conservative views to his faith, dismissed the encyclical in advance, quipping that the pope should “leave science to the scientists”. (Perhaps it bears noting that the pope trained as a chemist before joining the clergy.)
Though a solid majority of Americans believe the planet is warming, only a quarter of Catholic Republicans believe it’s a serious problem caused by human activity. This gives Republicans leeway to wax theistic without making any environmental compromises. Mr Bush walked this line on Wednesday with a statement that both acknowledged the reality of climate change without embracing left-wing solutions to the problem:
“I live in Miami, a place where this will have an impact over the long haul. And I think we need to develop a consensus about how to approach this without hollowing out our industrial core, without taking jobs away from people, without creating more hardship for the middle class of this country…I believe there are technological solutions for just about everything, and I’m sure there’s one for this as well.”
This savvy message—that the globe is indeed warming but human ingenuity will save the day without dealing harsh blows to national economies—is appealingly optimistic, if unrealistically so. It requires a certain faith in the future that many American voters will be inclined to believe. It is true that necessary policies to slow down climate change need not come at the expense of growth. But they do, however, require some hard choices and strong leadership, and a vision of the future that is rooted in terrestrial realities, not idle hopes. The pope wisely understands this. It would be good if more of America’s lawmakers recognised that the problem of global warming requires a bit more than a few prayers and a lot of hot air.
This puts the GOP’s presidential candidates in an awkward position. At least five of them—including frontrunners Jeb Bush and Marco Rubio—are practicing Catholics. Messrs Bush and Rubio have both questioned or denied the science of climate change and rejected policies to regulate the burning of fossil fuels. And they are both from Miami, a place seen as especially vulnerable to economic damage from climate change.
For some years Republicans have been accustomed to recruiting the pope as a figure of moral authority for their social agendas, especially in their arguments against abortion and gay marriage. As governor of Florida, Mr Bush regularly cited church teachings, and enacted a law to introduce anti-abortion “Choose Life” license plates. But he has seemed rather less eager for the pope’s guidance on the environment. “I don’t get economic policy from my bishops or my cardinals or my pope,” Mr Bush insisted on Tuesday. “I think religion ought to be about making us better as people and less about things that end up getting in the political realm.
Still, Mr Bush and his peers are wary of criticising Pope Francis outright. Few score points by speaking ill of a spiritual leader, especially one as overwhelmingly popular as Pope Francis (86% of American Catholics view him favourably, accordingly to a recent poll by the Pew Research Centre).
What’s a Republican in the age of Francis to do?
American politicians have a long history of vexed relations with Rome. Many of the Founding Fathers, guided by the rationalism of the Enlightenment, were suspicious of Catholicism. In 1788 John Jay, an early leading light, urged the New York legislature to require officeholders to renounce the pope and foreign authorities «in all matters ecclesiastical as well as civil.” Anti-Catholic sentiment continued to run strong in the nativist years of the 19th and early 20th centuries. When John F. Kennedy junior, a known Catholic, ran for president in 1960, he had to make plain that his loyalty to the country took precedence over his allegiance to the pope.
In recent decades American conservatives have found common cause with the Catholic Church. The traditional family values of the Republican party are largely rooted in religious views of sex and morality. But while Americans are sympathetic to vague talk about spiritual faith and healing, they have less time for dogmatic authority figures, and few care much for church bureaucracy. Many also see the value in listening to religious leaders on matters of who has a soul and when life begins, but prefer to look elsewhere when it comes to questions of hard policy.
As a result, Pope Francis’s positions have compelled a number of politicians to once again declare themselves Americans first, Catholics second. Rick Santorum, a GOP candidate who has long attributed his staunchly conservative views to his faith, dismissed the encyclical in advance, quipping that the pope should “leave science to the scientists”. (Perhaps it bears noting that the pope trained as a chemist before joining the clergy.)
Though a solid majority of Americans believe the planet is warming, only a quarter of Catholic Republicans believe it’s a serious problem caused by human activity. This gives Republicans leeway to wax theistic without making any environmental compromises. Mr Bush walked this line on Wednesday with a statement that both acknowledged the reality of climate change without embracing left-wing solutions to the problem:
“I live in Miami, a place where this will have an impact over the long haul. And I think we need to develop a consensus about how to approach this without hollowing out our industrial core, without taking jobs away from people, without creating more hardship for the middle class of this country…I believe there are technological solutions for just about everything, and I’m sure there’s one for this as well.”
This savvy message—that the globe is indeed warming but human ingenuity will save the day without dealing harsh blows to national economies—is appealingly optimistic, if unrealistically so. It requires a certain faith in the future that many American voters will be inclined to believe. It is true that necessary policies to slow down climate change need not come at the expense of growth. But they do, however, require some hard choices and strong leadership, and a vision of the future that is rooted in terrestrial realities, not idle hopes. The pope wisely understands this. It would be good if more of America’s lawmakers recognised that the problem of global warming requires a bit more than a few prayers and a lot of hot air.
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