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This is my favorite article of 2021 so far (thank you to @willie_macdade for sending it my way). It’s about how the Catholic Church has the largest land holdings (outside of nation states) in the world—and how they can use them to address climate change. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/02/08/how-a-young-activist-is-helping-pope-francis-battle-climate-change
I grew up Catholic. I even got confirmed. I had a falling out with the Church when they stripped Mom of her role as a Eucharistic minister for marrying Dad (a previously divorced man). Disgusting, short-sighted bureaucracy. Married >40 years. Still pisses me off.
Anyway, I thought I was done with the Catholics. Until college—I majored in Religion and wound up taking a seminar on the papal encyclicals my senior year. They’re essays from popes on all kinds of issues. They range from rote to sublime.
Read John XXIII’s “Peace on Earth” for a taste of what the Catholic Church at its best looks like—humanitarian, idealistic, hopeful, just. It talks about the need for a living wage, the right to protest, the right to healthcare, the fundamental dignity of being human.
Pope Francis wrote in his 2015 encyclical On Care for Our Common Home:
“Young people demand change. They wonder how anyone can claim to be building a better future without thinking of the environmental crisis and the sufferings of the excluded.”
“Young people demand change. They wonder how anyone can claim to be building a better future without thinking of the environmental crisis and the sufferings of the excluded.”
This story also has a little bit of everything—that Dana Tomlin features in this story also delights me. He has been a mentor to countless influential people in the mapping world, including @rcheetham, one of the most important mentors in my life. He’s a genuine mensch.
Anyway—I hope Molly sticks with it. I think it’s past time for the Holy See to put its money where its mouth is on the issue of climate change.
P.S. I usually don’t tell people I’m Catholic or that I majored in Religion in college, because it tends to give people the impression I’m religious, which I’m not. But I still have a soft spot for the nicer parts of organized religion (which this article reminded me of).
