When it comes to American Catholic opinions about climate change, a recent poll shows a major gap between whites and Latinos. The Public Religion Research Institute reports that by margins of approximately 20 percent, Latino Catholics are likelier than white Catholics to believe that there is such a thing as global warming; that it’s “due to human activity”; and that it “constitutes a crisis or a major problem.” What’s causing this discrepancy? A false god, suggests writer Patricia Miller.
“White Catholics don’t accept the scientific consensus on climate change because it clashes with their other god: the free market,” declared Miller in a Thursday piece for Salon. “Over the last 15 years…much of institutional American Catholicism has become hopeless[ly] intertwined with a conservative, liberation [sic] ideology that has trickled down to Catholics in the pews. Leading bishops like New York’s Cardinal Timothy Dolan have been quick to reassure Catholics, who are increasingly trending Republican, that their anti-redistributive ideology is A-OK even in the Francis era.”
From Miller’s article (bolding added):
Pope Francis’ much-anticipated climate change encyclical, released last week, is every bit as strong as environmentalists and other proponents of dramatic action on climate change had hoped…
Many are predicting that the encyclical will be a game changer that will mobilize religious groups and galvanize lagging western nations, particularly the United States, to address climate change…But there are ominous warning signs already that a significant percentage of American Catholics — the very faith constituency that should be most receptive to the pope’s message — may turn a deaf ear to Francis. This means that not only are they unlikely to give up their SUVs, but also to support policies to address climate change or the candidates that back them.
…[The PRRI poll showed that] Hispanic Catholics are the most concerned about climate change of any single religious group…followed by the religiously unaffiliated…White Catholics are the least concerned of all Americans…lower even than notoriously science-rejecting white Evangelical Protestants…
Why are white Catholics rejecting the climate consensus even as they have become increasingly progressive on other hot-button issues like same-sex marriage?...
A 2013 study from Stephan Lewandowsky and colleagues offers some insight in the particular Catholic rejection of climate change. They found that religious individuals with a strong belief in a free-market ideology were likely to reject “scientific findings that have potential regulatory implications, such as climate science, but not necessarily of other scientific issues”…
In other words, white Catholics don’t accept the scientific consensus on climate change because it clashes with their other god: the free market. Over the last 15 years, since George W. Bush made common cause with the U.S. Catholic bishops, much of institutional American Catholicism has become hopeless[ly] intertwined with a conservative, liberation ideology that has trickled down to Catholics in the pews. Leading bishops like New York’s Cardinal Timothy Dolan have been quick to reassure Catholics, who are increasingly trending Republican, that their anti-redistributive ideology is A-OK even in the Francis era…
And leading conservative Catholic thinkers have been laying the groundwork for a rejection of the encyclical by suggesting that science-related issues are outside the pope’s wheelhouse…
The Catholic GOP presidential candidates are already echoing the idea that they don’t have to listen to the pope on this issue, despite the fact that Laudato Si is a formal teaching of the church with the same authority behind it as the pope’s teachings on abortion, which they have long claimed that Catholics can’t dissent from…
Only time will tell if Laudato Si will be to conservative Catholics what Humanae Vitae was to liberals—the document that taught Catholics to ignore the pope.
Taking on the Church from a lefty perspective is a Miller specialty. For example, on her LinkedIn page she comments, “My book, Good Catholics…tells the story of the remarkable individuals who have engaged in a fifty-year struggle to assert the moral legitimacy of a pro-choice position in the Catholic Church, as well as the efforts of the Catholic hierarchy to suppress dissent and translate Catholic doctrine on sexuality into law.”
