Pope Francis to issue decree on faith, climate

• United Church of Christ and the Unitarian Universalists are divesting in fossil fuels.
• Louisville-based Presbyterian Church USA, others, welcome the papal engagement
• Pope Francis' advisers see an urgent threat from climate change.
• An encyclical is among the most important papal writings.

When the Rev. Gary Padgett plans to speak on the politically charged issue of climate change to a Catholic congregation, he undertakes a delicate process.

He said he avoids "talking points," keeps language ambiguous and tries to show how care for what he describes as God's creation is relevant to people's lives and faith. "I am thinking how am I going to craft my message so that it can be heard," said Padgett, the former Ascension parish priest who now heads the St. James and St. Brigid parishes in the Highlands. "If they are polarized, it's hard for them to come into church and hear that."

Catholic pastors like Padgett, other leaders and parishioners in Louisville and around the world who are concerned about climate change will soon be getting some guidance. Pope Francis is planning to inject a major dose of ethics and morality into the problem of a warming planet, and how humanity should respond to scientists' warnings of costly, deadly climate disruption in the decades and centuries ahead.

This summer he's planning to release a papal encyclical, a letter to the 3,000 Catholic bishops, that officials expect will offer guidance on how Catholic theology views the relationship between humans and God's creation.

Experts said it is the most significant type of communication any pope can make. It would also be the first encyclical to address the environment and climate change — an issue of particular concern in Kentucky and Indiana with their coal-dependent economies.

The impact may be felt far beyond the Catholic Church and its 1.2 billion followers, the largest Christian denomination in the world, because of the pope's huge audience, popularity and gravitas.

"It has the potential to be a real game changer," said Norman Wirzba, professor of theology, ecology and rural life at Duke University. "It will draw attention from people not just in the church, but people from outside the church. They will want to know what the pope has to say."

Critics respond

Other popes have raised the alarm about the environment and even climate change.

Pope John Paul II in 1990, for example, warned in a speech about a crisis depletion of the ozone layer and the greenhouse effect, blaming "industrial growth, massive urban concentrations and vastly increased energy needs."

But an encyclical carries much more weight. And while Francis' letter has not leaked out yet, Vatican officials have been outspoken about their concern for how humans are damaging the planet, identifying fossil fuels such as coal that emit climate pollution as an urgent concern.

It's all prompted a backlash from some camps, including some conservative religious circles and the libertarian, free-market Chicago-based Heartland Institute, which denies mainstream climate science.

"The Holy Father is being misled by 'experts' at the United Nations who have proven unworthy of his trust," said Heartland Institute President Joseph Bast in a recent statement. "Though Pope Francis' heart is surely in the right place, he would do his flock and the world a disservice by putting his moral authority behind the United Nations' unscientific agenda on the climate."

The pope's advisers, however, see an urgent threat.

"The scientific community is telling us there isn't much time," said the Rev. Michael F. Czerny, a Jesuit priest and counselor to Cardinal Peter Turkson, who is the leader of the peace and justice arm of the Vatican that has been developing the document.

Czerny was in Louisville recently for the Festival of Faiths. "If we have been slow, we have to catch up, or at least not miss the train entirely," he said in an interview.

Czerny noted the landmark 1992 United Nations Earth Summit and a resulting treaty with its objective of stabilizing greenhouse gases.

"Its recommendations have largely been ignored," Czerny added.

Address to Congress

Greenhouse gas levels continue to climb, with scientists increasingly warning that global warming and its rising seas and supercharged weather are no longer a distant threat.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration earlier this month found that the global monthly average concentration of heat-trapping carbon dioxide in the atmosphere exceeded 400 parts per million, a level likely unprecedented for millions of years.

Czerny said he does not know exactly what the pope's communication will say.

But he noted the pope in January said he wanted the letter to be useful to diplomats who are working on a new climate change treaty that seeks to blunt dangerous climate change, leading up to a United Nations summit in Paris later this year. In that same news conference, the pope said people "have exploited nature too much."

The pope also is scheduled this fall to speak before a joint meeting of Congress — a first for any pope.

Congress has been unable to agree on any sweeping climate protection legislation. A Democratically controlled House of Representatives passed a cap-and-trade bill in 2009, but that bill was defeated in the Senate.

The pope's words could reach Congress on different terms, Wirzba said.

With "faith and morality," Wirzba said, "immediately there is common ground, when you talk about children and grandchildren."

Rob Steurer, spokesman for Sen. Mitch McConnell, the Republican from Louisville and Senate majority leader, declined to comment for this story.

"We're not going to be able to weigh in on something we haven't seen yet," Steurer said.

'Integral ecology'

In the Archdiocese of Louisville, Archbishop Joseph E. Kurtz said the encyclical will likely prompt discussion, action and an "institutional response." The archdiocese serves 200,000 Catholics in 111 parishes in 24 counties in Central Kentucky.

"I suspect our Holy Father is going to try to pinpoint what is distinctive about Catholic theology and what Catholic theology can bring to the environment," Kurtz said.

Kurtz said he anticipates it will explore something called "integral ecology," which was discussed earlier this year in a speech by Cardinal Turkson titled "Integral ecology and the horizon of hope: Concern for the poor and for creation in the ministry of Pope Francis."

In the speech in Ireland, Turkson said integral ecology provides "the basis for authentic and sustainable approaches to human development."

Kurtz said it involves human ecology and natural ecology, bringing them together as one. The pope has also talked a lot about the problem of a "throw-away culture," Kurtz added, "where we disrespect people and we disrespect things, and we tend to turn in on ourselves."

Within the faith, he said the pope's words will cause some Catholics and parishes to look at their own contributions to global warming, and consider ways to reduce their carbon footprints.

That's already been happening, he added.

"There has been an increased desire among parishes, and I hope within society, to develop clean alternatives and sustainable energy."

He also expects to see conferences where priests and others may gather to discuss how to respond to the pope's concerns, and study guides developed for Catholics.

The pope's letter will also factor into the work of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, said Kurtz, the president of that group, the official organization of the Catholic hierarchy in the United States.

"This is going to have a mighty effect when we take positions on specific pieces of legislation" in Congress, he added.

Evangelicals suspicious

The biggest asset the pope brings to the table is a very large base of popularity, said University of Louisville political science assistant professor David Buckley, whose expertise includes religion, science and politics.

The pope has the potential to bridge a gap between white evangelicals and the religiously unaffiliated, "one of the most conservative sectors of the electorate and one of the most liberal sectors of the electorate," Buckley said.

Polling also shows that Catholics in the United States are likely to be receptive of a papal statement on climate change, he added.

But a key question, Buckley said, is whether religious concern for the environment gets translated into political action, and that's where real differences can emerge, especially with white evangelicals who are skeptical of government power.

"Evangelicals are going to be very suspicious," said the Rev. Albert Mohler, president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville.

He said he agrees with a Christian imperative to care for creation and be stewards of the Earth. But he said he is leery of "conversations about climate change as anti-human, that human beings are a blight on the planet. Human beings are not a blight on the planet.

"It will be interesting to see the balance the pope strikes."

Many younger evangelicals are increasingly concerned about the climate, he acknowledged. But he said he is concerned about the costs of what are put forward as climate solutions. "That's a situation where I don't believe there's a clear answer," he said.

The good news, he said, "is that there are a lot more conversations about the responsibilities of stewardship."

A lot of faith communities in the United States were generally slow to embrace environmental concerns when they first took prominence in the 1960s, said Wirzba, who previously taught at Kentucky's Georgetown College.

"Many called it 'new age worship,' or paganism, and there was a lot of hesitance on the part of Christians," he said.

But increasingly people of faith are seeing care for the environment as a matter of moral obligation, he said.

Called to respond

In Louisville, the nonprofit group Kentucky Interfaith Power and Light has a Cool Congregations program that explores the way faith communities can become better stewards of the planet, and has conducted energy audits, including one for the St. James and St. Brigid parishes that parish leaders say will help guide future energy efficiency measures. St. Brigid now has electricity-sipping LED lighting, for example.

"We are making a statement that care for our creation, for our environment, is important in our decision making," Padgett said.

And St. William Church, part of the Louisville Archdiocese, has had solar panels since 2009.

The United Church of Christ and the Unitarian Universalists are divesting in fossil fuels, and the Presbyterian Church USA is considering that.

First Unitarian Church in Louisville also has installed solar panels and regularly features the environment in its mission, said its pastor, the Rev. Dawn Cooley.

"Every day, we see evidence that it is already causing suffering for people around the world," she said. "We are called as people of faith and conscience to work to heal and sustain our planet, for ourselves, for our children, for future generations."

A key underpinning of the Louisville-based Presbyterian Church USA is to advocate for the poor and most vulnerable, said the Rev. Rebecca Barnes, coordinator of that denomination's environmental ministries. And the poor are likely to be hardest hit by climate change.

She cited rapid glacier melt that threatens water supplies to millions in Peru and said she welcomes the papal engagement.

"It will give a new chance for everyone to speak about their faith life and how it forms their daily decisions about how they will live in the world," she said.

Reach reporter James Bruggers at (502) 582-4645 or on Twitter @jbruggers.

What's your story?

Is your church, synagogue or faith community concerned about climate change? If so, please let reporter James Bruggers know why, and what you are doing about it, for potential followup stories. If not, please tell us why. Write Bruggers at jbruggers@courier-journal.com.