Pope Francis and the common good

One can hope that Pope Francis’ visit to the United States leaves a lasting mark. Perhaps he can do for the world what Martin Luther King Jr. did for our country, which is to inspire people of all faiths, colors and nationalities to focus on our common humanity and our common future.

The humble pontiff’s focus on the underlying moral dimensions of global problems is as welcome as rain on a parched land.

In the two and half years he’s been pope, Francis has assumed a role of global leadership that was once the purview of the secretary general of the United Nations. He has come to lead not just the 1.2 billion Catholics of the world, but the 7.3 billion of us who hope to leave an inhabitable and equitable planet to our children and grandchildren.

In his encyclical on climate change, Laudato Si, and in his speeches this week, he has presented a fearless accounting of our failings and their consequences, and challenged us to confront the connections between greed, over-consumption and apathy on the one hand, and compassion, humility, and hope for our planet on the other.

He is a man of science as well as faith, and recognizes the peril of climate change as an existential threat to civilization, and more immediately, to the poor of the world who are most vulnerable to the changes a warming climate brings. In Laudato Si, he contends that “environmental deterioration and human and ethical degradation are closely linked,” and points out: “Never have we so hurt and mistreated our common home as we have in the last two hundred years.”

And though he minces no words in calling out the “techno-economic paradigm” of unbridled global capitalism as culpable for much pollution and environmental destruction, he is not, as some have charged, truly anti-capitalist. In both Laudato Si and his speech Thursday to the joint session of Congress, he says: “Business is a noble vocation, directed to producing wealth and improving the world. It can be a fruitful source of prosperity for the area in which it operates if it sees the creation of jobs as an essential part of its service to the common good.”

Nonetheless, he notes, “if politics must truly be at the service of the human person, it follows that it cannot be a slave to the economy and finance.” And he writes in his encyclical that “economic interests easily end up trumping the common good and manipulating information so that their own plans will not be affected.”

This, clearly, is a problem that is a principal cause of both growing income inequality and stubborn resistance to meaningful action to protect our climate, which, as Francis points out, “is a common good, belonging to all and meant for all.”

On issues ranging from immigration to the arms trade and abolition of the death penalty, Francis called for creating a “culture of care,” a consistent focus on the common good and a return to the Golden Rule of doing unto others as we would have them do unto us.

Francis clearly sees the complexity of relationships between issues, between people and nations, and between the past and the future. But his clarity on the moral foundation needed to solve our most intractable problems is simple, universal, and urgently needed.

This story was originally published September 24, 2015 at 2:30 PM with the headline "Pope Francis and the common good."