The Exhausting Papacy of Francis

Earlier this week, the Catholic men's reading group I've been meeting with for several years discussed Pope Francis' "Laudato Si'". There were fifteen men in attendance, including three priests, and while not everyone had been able to read the entire encyclical, it was a lively and compelling discussion. On a couple of occasions I was reminded of my October 2013 editorial, "Pope Francis: The Good, the Baffling, and the Unclear", because it was quickly evident that the men thought the encyclical had good doses of all three stuffed inside its some 40,000 words. Many of them—including myself—thought that the strongest parts were the overtly theological and spiritual sections, notably paragraphs 228 and following. We generally agreed that the criticisms of technocratic visions of utopia, scientistic agendas, and consumerist societies were excellent. Surprisingly, most didn't seem too put off by the passage on climate change, perhaps because it was essentially old news; they might not agree, but they weren't too worked up over it after hearing about it ad nauseam for many months, if not longer.