NFU: Pope’s message has ‘big implications;’ cardinal criticizes Bush statement
June 19, 2015 |07:48 PM
“This encyclical underscores how farming isn’t solely an economic endeavor,” said Jim Ennis, the executive director of Catholic Rural Life, a U.S. group, in a statement released by Farmers Union.
“Rather, it needs to be thought of in a much broader framework, with ethical, social, environmental, and even cultural dimensions in mind.”
The National Farmers Union believes in a strong role for government in agriculture, and its members are considered more likely to vote for Democrats than Republicans.
Last year, Farmers Union Enterprises and Midwestern chapters of Farmers Union helped Catholic Rural Life put on a farm conference in Minnesota that was a prelude to the “Faith, Agriculture, Food and the Environment” symposium, which will take place in Milan, Italy, next Saturday and Sunday.
The conference, which is sponsored by several farm groups, will focus on the pope’s encyclical on the environment and how it relates to contemporary challenges in agriculture and food production.
One of the speakers at that conference will be Cardinal Peter Turkson of Ghana, the president of the Vatican’s Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace and a key architect of the encyclical.
On Thursday, Turkson responded to a statement by Bush, who said: “I don’t get economic policy from my bishops or my cardinals, or from my pope. … I think religion ought to be about making us better as people, and less about things that end up getting into the political realm.”
In a CNN interview, Turkson called Bush’s comments “unfortunate,” and then went on to say:
“… if you go to his pastors for moral opinion, or moral judgment, what is morality about, if not about our conduct, our decisions, our conscience, and the choices we make? And we don’t make those choices in a vacuum. We don’t express and live morality in a vacuum. Morality has to do with the decisions and choices we make in certain concrete situations, including economic situations. …
“So the thing about, ‘I go to my pastors and bishops for moral decisions,’ and then not expecting them to bring religion into business and all of that — I think it’s a very unhappy distinction that is made,” Turkson said.
“Because it’s not real. So I would wish that we stop marking this artificial separation between moral issues, theological issues, and business issues.”
In an analysis of the encyclical, NFU said “Pope Francis illustrated this in Laudato Sí, by making connections between agricultural practices and ecological crises, such as water contamination and deforestation, but also unjust structures in the food system, which can be unfairly stacked against the interests of rural communities and the common good. In each instance, farming was examined through a moral lens, with the well-being of the human person as the focal point.”
In the 178-page document, the pope used farm-related terminology more than 30 times, NFU added.
Ennis said the pope’s broad, holistic portrayal of agriculture “reminds farmers that they are called to a vocation, a way of life, and not just a way to make a living."
NFU President Roger Johnson welcomed the attention to agriculture and climate brought on by the pope’s message.
“Family farmers and ranchers are on the front line in climate change and their stewardship of the land and management of our scarce resources is critical to the health of our planet,” he said.
“Pope Francis’ encyclical and its implications for agriculture resonate with St. Pope John Paul the Great’s comments to American farmers during his visit to Des Moines, Iowa in 1979, when he said that farmers are called by God to be thankful, generous and good stewards of his creation,” Johnson added.
The Heartland Institute, a conservative U.S. rural group, sent a delegation to “offer to the one-sided, alarmist views Pope Francis was getting from the United Nations and the Pontifical Academy of Sciences” in April, the group noted in an email Wednesday.
Based on a leaked version of the document, the Heartland Institute released a series of statements from members of its delegation.
“People worried about putting food on the table, clothes on the back, and a roof over the head can’t afford to care or do much about air, water, and solid waste pollution. Gathering enough twigs and branches to cook tonight’s measly meal and heat a miserable hut take precedence over any concerns about deforestation, soil erosion, and biodiversity loss,” said Calvin Beisner, founder and spokesman of the Cornwall Alliance for the Stewardship of Creation, and one of the members of Heartland’s delegation.
“Wealth enables people to afford better environmental stewardship,” Beisner continued.
“Pope Francis should champion economic development as a solution both to poverty and to environmental degradation. Unfortunately, at least as regards climate change, the leaked draft of the new encyclical does the opposite.”
“Pope Francis’ heart is in the right place, but he made a grave mistake by putting his trust and moral authority behind agenda-driven bureaucrats at the United Nations who have been bearing false witness about the causes and consequences of climate change for decades,” Jim Lakely, director of communications for Heartland.
“The data observed since the birth of the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in the 1990s does not support the hypothesis that the emission of carbon dioxide to power the modern world is causing a climate crisis,” Lakely said.
“Simply put, someone at the Pontifical Academy of Science should have told Pope Francis that every calamity the UN bureaucrats predicted for decades has not come to pass.
“Pope Francis’s goal of preserving God’s earthly kingdom for future generations is shared by every ‘skeptic’ of man-caused global warming,” Lakely said.
“But he will not preserve it by putting his moral authority behind a U.N. agenda that considers it a sin for the poor to use affordable, ever-cleaner fossil fuels to power their lives. More than a billion of the poorest people in the world would remain in abject poverty for generations if they are to rely on windmills, solar panels, and other unreliable and expensive sources of energy.”
- Vatican — Encyclical Letter Laudato Sí of the Holy Father Francis on Care For Our Common Home
- The Washington Post — Top cardinal says Jeb Bush is wrong about the link between faith and politics
- The Heartland Institute — Participants in Mission to Vatican Comment on Pope Francis’ Encyclical on the Environment
- The Guardian — Pope’s encyclical on the environment: key questions answered
