The Role of Government in Laudato Si’
By William L. Patenaude
Pope Francis issued his second encyclical Laudato Si’ in June 2015. This encyclical, with the subtitle “On Care for Our Common Home”, focuses on the earth’s urgent environmental challenges. The Holy Father not only enjoins individuals to come together to shape the future of the planet but also places demands on governments to do their part.
In praising international agencies and non-profit organizations for their work in the Amazon, for instance, Pope Francis rightfully applauds efforts to ensure that government fulfills “its proper and inalienable responsibility to preserve its country’s environment and natural resources, without capitulating to spurious local or international interests.” (LS 38). He also makes a general call for pressuring governments to “develop more rigorous regulations, procedures, and controls” for the protection of local, regional, and worldwide ecosystems (LS 179).
To be fully appreciated, however, these expectations require a complete reading of Laudato Si’ with its Christian understanding of the human person and its “everything is connected” call to nurture and protect both our common home and each other. The role of government must certainly include rules and regulations and the will and means to enforce them. But Catholic environmental advocates must pray for and work towards something greater—something that cannot be legislated or litigated—a culture in which all people, including those who govern, can hear, embrace, and apply Pope Francis’s call for encounter, dialogue, and, ultimately, the Christian understanding of love.
“Today, there is urgent need for politics and economics to enter into a frank dialogue in the service of life, especially human life.” (LS 189) Pope Francis also elaborates on the public-sector implications of this in Fratelli Tutti, his encyclical on fraternity and social friendship, which proposes that government leaders should “be the first to make the sacrifices that foster encounter and to seek convergence on at least some issues. They should be ready to listen to other points of view and to make room for everyone.” (FT 190)
Elected officials and government staffers—including environmental regulators, such as myself—rarely receive education in the philosophy of governing. Moreover, expectations within the environmental regulatory sector are generally driven by the intersection of the natural sciences and the legal profession, which are then amplified by the demands of external entities such as the media and advocacy groups. What can result is a culture that seeks merely to strictly enforce rules and regulations. But enforcement taken with no prior effort to know and support the regulated community can be a self-defeating strategy.
Early in my career at the Rhode Island Department of Environmental Management, I was assigned the management of a federal technical assistance program. This immersed me in what today I understand as a culture of encounter. As I collaborated with other state training colleagues who were also embedded in regulatory programs, as well as those within my own agency, I soon took for granted a particular goal of this dual enforcement/assistance approach, which is to inspire regulated communities to do what is right even when no one is looking.
Looking back on three-plus decades regulating the men and women of the water-pollution control industry, I can attest that oversight agencies that provide robust training and development opportunities (or, as I like to say, that provide inspiration and familiarity with concepts such as the common good) position themselves to become better stewards of their fellow human beings and thus better stewards of whatever resource they’re charged to protect.
In Laudato Si’, the Holy Father is calling us to such heightened stewardship but by loftier means than secular realms may think to embrace. Ultimately, Laudato Si’ urges us to move beyond mere technical or litigious approaches to environmental and human crises—approaches that can compartmentalize individuals and even whole sectors of society. Rather, our goal must be nothing less than a culture that offers the knowledge and inspires the choices needed to save ecosystems, families, and, most especially, souls—and to do so, with the grace of God, one encounter, one relationship, and one conversation at a time.
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William L. Patenaude is a mechanical engineer who has worked for the Rhode Island Department of Environmental Management for thirty-two years. He is a board member of the Saint Kateri Tekakwitha Conservation Center and a founding member of the Global Catholic Climate Movement.
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