The president does us a (perhaps unintentional) favor by not letting anyone off the hook.
Well, we now know Donald Trump is not mayor of Paris. This is one of the many outtakes from the past week that further distract us from actually making our lives better, working for the common good.
The president made the mayoral comment in his opt-out remarks in the Rose Garden to emphasize his Making America Great mantra/message/mission. Whether you enthusiastically agree with his move or ardently oppose it, consider this: Don’t let the president let you off easy. All of us, not just elected politicians, have a responsibility to the planet and to each other.
It was just about a week before when the president and the first lady visited Pope Francis at the Vatican. Among the gifts exchanged: The pontiff gave the Trump a copy of Laudato, Si!, his letter on creation. It’s widely described as being about climate change, which in many ways misses the point entirely. The encyclical marks the pope highlighting an opportunity for all people of good will to see all of creation as worthy of good stewardship on the part of man. The oceans and the skies, yes, but the human body and soul, too. So many of our most controversial issues, too — including human life at its most vulnerable and marriage and family.
In Laudato Si!, Pope Francis cites the pope emeritus, Benedict:
He observed that the world cannot be analyzed by isolating only one of its aspects, since “the book of nature is one and indivisible,” and includes the environment, life, sexuality, the family, social relations, and so forth. It follows that “the deterioration of nature is closely connected to the culture which shapes human coexistence.” Pope Benedict asked us to recognize that the natural environment has been gravely damaged by our irresponsible behavior. The social environment has also suffered damage. Both are ultimately due to the same evil: the notion that there are no indisputable truths to guide our lives, and hence human freedom is limitless. We have forgotten that “man is not only a freedom which he creates for himself. Man does not create himself. He is spirit and will, but also nature.”
Or to quote a another wise man I spent time with this week, “Our lives are not our own.”
Francis continued: “With paternal concern, Benedict urged us to realize that creation is harmed ‘where we ourselves have the final word, where everything is simply our property and we use it for ourselves alone. The misuse of creation begins when we no longer recognize any higher instance than ourselves, when we see nothing else but ourselves.’”
To our supposedly spiritual but not religious times, he writes:
A spirituality which forgets God as all-powerful and Creator is not acceptable. That is how we end up worshipping earthly powers, or ourselves usurping the place of God, even to the point of claiming an unlimited right to trample his creation underfoot. The best way to restore men and women to their rightful place, putting an end to their claim to absolute dominion over the earth, is to speak once more of the figure of a Father who creates and who alone owns the world. Otherwise, human beings will always try to impose their own laws and interests on reality.
He also writes about Saint Francis. “I do not want to write this Encyclical without turning to that attractive and compelling figure, whose name I took as my guide and inspiration when I was elected Bishop of Rome,” he says, continuing:
I believe that Saint Francis is the example par excellence of care for the vulnerable and of an integral ecology lived out joyfully and authentically. He is the patron saint of all who study and work in the area of ecology, and he is also much loved by non-Christians. He was particularly concerned for God’s creation and for the poor and outcast. He loved, and was deeply loved for his joy, his generous self-giving, his openheartedness. He was a mystic and a pilgrim who lived in simplicity and in wonderful harmony with God, with others, with nature and with himself. He shows us just how inseparable the bond is between concern for nature, justice for the poor, commitment to society, and interior peace.
In the way Pope Francis lays it out: All of creation — you and the person you see next today — is an invitation to see how “God speaks to us and grants us a glimpse of his infinite beauty and goodness.” And he goes to Scripture for his framework: “‘Through the greatness and the beauty of creatures one comes to know by analogy their maker’ (Wis 13:5); indeed, ‘his eternal power and divinity have been made known through his works since the creation of the world’ (Rom 1:20).”
The Trump Paris opt-out is not entirely about a climate treaty.
The point is: The Trump Paris opt-out is not entirely about a climate treaty. As has been noted before this column, even environmental activists on the left had their problems with this accord. The outrage in response to his decision may once again expose our perennial problem: seeing the federal government and nebulous international forces as the source of our salvation. The decisions you and I make today have a power tremendously more powerful than we realize on most days.
Whatever your view of his move, consider it an opportunity to reflect on how we can begin again not wedded to political agendas, but insistent on using our freedom for so much more. The climate treaty wasn’t ever going to make us look around and see everything as gift calling us to better stewardship. If the president reads the encyclical he might see that. A nation of people who claim to care about some of the most fundamental things would do well to lead the way.
READ MORE:
Donald Trump, the Paris Climate Agreement, & Congress
“Intersectionality:” Trump’s Paris Decision Creates New Buzzword
Trump’s Paris Accord Withdrawal & the Left’s Unhinged Freakout
— Kathryn Jean Lopez is a senior fellow at the National Review Institute and an editor-at-large of National Review. Sign up for her weekly NRI newsletter here.