Francis Offers Fierce Hope for Hard Times | Commonweal Magazine

Source: Francis Offers Fierce Hope for Hard Times | Commonweal Magazine

n Laudate Deum, Pope Francis returns to the climate crises he addressed in Laudato si’. That letter was written in the lead-up to the Paris climate accords, when optimism was building that the world’s nations would take meaningful action to address the crisis. Eight years have passed, too little progress has been made, and disasters caused or exacerbated by climate change occur with numbing frequency.

As an “apostolic exhortation,” Laudate Deum does not offer new teaching, but rather applies the teaching of Laudato si’ to current circumstances and calls for renewed action. Although it quotes Laudato si’ extensively, the new letter has a much darker tone. Francis addresses “my brothers and sisters of our suffering planet” and acknowledges that “our responses have not been adequate, while the world in which we live is collapsing and may be nearing the breaking point.”

This change in tone has been noticed. Contrast the response of the scientific journal Nature to Laudato si’—“Hope from the Pope”—with the response of the codirector of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, Johann Rockström, to Laudate Deum: “Science confirms Pope Francis[’s] despair…that we live on a ‘suffering planet’ and ‘may be nearing a breaking point.’”

Francis’s words are strong, but to describe them as “despair” is to misunderstand them. He writes from a tradition that understands hope and despair not as states of affairs or likely outcomes, but as dispositions toward action amid difficulty. In Aquinas’s formulation, hope is a desire for a bonum futurum arduum—“a difficult future good.” Hope is not a sense that things will work out; it is an action-generating desire that charts its path through danger and difficulties. These difficulties are recognized through hard seeing: a clear-eyed and courageous gaze that countenances disturbing realities.