Papal Perspective on Life and Freedom

Popular opinion on political support of “culture of life” issues that frequently assumes John Paul II would have had a distinctly different emphasis than Pope Francis may be mistaken.

The "Angels Unaware" boat by Canadian artist Timothy P. Schmalz 

David Albertson recently found himself rereading John Paul II’s 1995 encyclical, Evangelium vitae (The Gospel of Life), during the weeks between the leaking of Justice Samuel Alito’s draft opinion and the shooting in Uvalde.

Pope Francis has drawn criticism for reasserting an integral ethic of life—linking the climate crisis to the dignity of the unborn, for instance—and for resisting the reduction of political responsibility to a single issue. Many of Francis’s detractors assume that John Paul II would have endorsed their current strategy: to trade support for Republican neoliberal economics in exchange for the appointment of pro-life justices, by anti-democratic means if necessary. (Albertson & Preziosi, 2022)

Albertson found the text of Evangelium vitae suggests something quite different. John Paul II offers a probing social analysis of the “culture of death,” in the course of which he articulates some critical principles for a future politics of life. To be sure, the encyclical focuses rightly and above all on abortion and euthanasia. But only an inattentive reader could imagine that those are the only evils John Paul II was worried about. The encyclical offers a structural understanding of contemporary threats to human life, of which abortion is the signal, but by no means sole, instance. Evangelium vitae has many themes.

An insight of the encyclical identifies that the root of the culture of death is an economic system backed by a legal regime. The economic system is the commodification of human life, which calculates its value exclusively in terms of efficient profit accumulation (i.e. neoliberal capitalism). (Albertson & Preziosi, 2022)

John Paul II asks Christians to examine how goods are distributed in our society and who exerts power within that distribution. For example, he examines what links together not only the recent increase in abortion and euthanasia, but also technological investments in artificial contraception, artificial reproduction, and prenatal eugenics.

 

The link, he concludes, is a certain approach to assessing the value of human life. If we read his analysis carefully, we can depict the main features of the ideology he describes: an excessive concern with “efficiency” (12), a reduction of human beings to disposable “biological material” (14), “the utilitarian motive of avoiding costs which bring no return” (15), and the lack of “fair production and distribution of resources” among countries (16). The goodness of life is reduced to “economic efficiency” and “inordinate consumerism” (23). Human dignity is replaced by “the criterion of efficiency, functionality and usefulness” (23). Human beings become commodities, “reduced to the level of a thing” among other things (34). (Albertson & Preziosi, 2022)

In the encyclical, John Paul II asserts that absolute freedom also includes freedom from the social bonds of truthfulness, or freedom to invent alternative facts.

 

Once freedom becomes so debased that it justifies “the destruction of others,” then “the person ends up by no longer taking as the sole and indisputable point of reference for his own choices the truth about good and evil, but only his subjective and changeable opinion or, indeed, his selfish interest and whim” (19). (Albertson & Preziosi, 2022)

According to John Paul II, the erosion of truth itself is the final result of valorizing personal liberty, rejecting solidarity, and excluding the weak, sick, and poor from moral obligation by the rich and powerful. “At that point, everything is negotiable, everything is open to bargaining,” he writes, and “social life ventures onto the shifting sands of complete relativism” (20). In this situation, the state becomes a “tyrant” and democracy creeps toward “totalitarianism.” Instead of providing a secure home in which all live together, the state guarantees “the right to dispose of the life of the weakest and most defenseless members” by taking the side of the most powerful partisans (20). (Albertson & Preziosi, 2022)

David Albertson expresses a theme of the encyclical that the culture of life—and with it, democracy and truth itself—can be sustained only when solidarity with “the weakest and most innocent” takes priority above all else, especially an idolatrous claim to absolute freedom.

References

Albertson, D., & Preziosi, D. (2022, July 13). American Idols. Commonweal Magazine. Retrieved July 18, 2022, from https://www.commonwealmagazine.org/american-idols 

Culture Wars between the Abortion Lines

The time since the overturning of the Roe v Wade decision by the Supreme Court of the United States has provided an opportunity for more subtle and nuanced opinions to surface in contrast to the polarized and single focus arguments of culture war politics.

Christopher White reports that theologians and Vatican officials told the National Catholic Reporter that the differences between American and Vatican responses to the high court's June 24 ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization reflect different approaches to how Catholic leaders navigate one of the thorniest policy matters in public life today.

Kim Daniels, co-director of Georgetown University’s Initiative on Catholic Social Thought and Public Life, and a member of the Vatican's Dicastery for Communications,  said the Vatican's response to the Dobbs decision "tracks Pope Francis’ approach throughout his pontificate."

the pope's approach includes "reinforcing that all human beings have an inviolable dignity, including unborn children; resisting ideological blinders by recognizing that issues of life and human dignity are all interconnected; and calling for solidarity with the vulnerable, including public policies that promote social and material support for women and children in need."

"Pope Francis’ approach," "offers a model for how Catholic and other pro-life leaders can rise to the challenge: by moving past politics as usual, witnessing to a consistent ethic of life, and making solidarity with women and children in need a defining priority." (White, 2022)

Therese Lysaught, a professor at the Neiswanger Institute for Bioethics and Health Policy at Loyola University Chicago and a corresponding member of the Pontifical Academy for Life, said that U.S. bishops' conference statement in response to Dobbs reflected the way life issues were approached under Pope John Paul II, rather than Francis. She said that John Paul's 1995 encyclical Evangelium Vitae "advances a deeply polarized ideology of the 'culture of death' against which Catholics must fight by obeying the moral law or, better, changing the civil law."

"Although John Paul II wrote important social encyclicals, 'life' issues remained siloed from 'social' issues under his pontificate and were reduced to a few topics — almost exclusively abortion, euthanasia, and issues related to sexuality — framed almost entirely in the language of commandments, laws and absolutes," 

"Pope Francis' tone has been very different," 

"He has tried to redirect the church’s attention from an obsessive focus on law," she observed, and "has consistently shown how the distinction between 'life' issues and 'social' issues is a false distinction."(White, 2022)

Similarly, Lysaught said that under Francis, the church is seeking to be a "healing presence amidst the messy realities of the world" rather than engaging polarizing issues as part of a culture war.

In the aftermath of the Dobbs decision, Lysaught said, statements coming from Vatican officials "strike a tone of carefulness and prudence regarding the ambiguities and complexities of the issue" of abortion. She said they "reiterate Pope Francis’ clear and consistent statements on the morality of abortion while situating it within a broader spectrum of life issues, emphasizing the need for fundamental socioeconomic changes, and foregrounding the need for dialogue aimed at social healing."

Lysaught characterized the U.S. bishops' statement after the Dobbs decision as treating those wider commitments as an "afterthought … buried in one sentence in the penultimate paragraph."

"The [bishops'] statement triumphs the victory of one side of an ideologically polarized issue, continuing that polarization," she added, saying that after a decade of the Francis papacy, many U.S. church leaders have failed to embrace his vision.(White, 2022)

The attempt to “fight” an argument in the culture wars so often hides opportunities for positive co-operation on addressing the many social issues impacting women, prisoners, immigrants, elderly, and the economically disadvantaged.

References

White, C. (2022, July 12). Reading between the lines of Vatican response to Supreme Court overturning Roe. National Catholic Reporter. Retrieved July 12, 2022, from https://www.ncronline.org/news/reading-between-lines-vatican-response-supreme-court-overturning-roe 

Rapid Transition of Electricity Grid Needed Now

In response to the challenge to act quickly to reduce the GreenHouse Gas emissions that are increasing temperatures on the planet and increasing the intensity and frequency of  storms, wildfires and floods, we need to begin to engineer a transition of the grids that supply electricity.

Electricity Engineering and Decarbonization

A series of articles in the Economist indicate the ability to use renewables for the lion’s share of a grid’s supply, coupled with the fact that renewables have been made cheap and are getting yet cheaper, is the basis of a decarbonisation strategy all but universally accepted by those determined to stabilise the climate.

Make the power on electric grids emissions-free, cheap and copious. Start electrifying all processes that now require fossil fuels—such as powering cars, or heating homes and steel foundries—where electrification is clearly possible. It does not deliver everything that is needed. But it delivers a lot. (Electrifying Everything Does Not Solve the Climate Crisis, but It Is a Great Start, 2022)

 Lithium-ion batteries, the cost of which has crashed due to a mixture of innovation and economies of scale, have provided by far the greatest recent advances in “grid scale” electric storage.

After a 90% decline in the cost of battery packs between 2010 and 2021, reckons Citi, a bank, America is now seeing more megawatts of capacity added to its grid in the form of batteries than in the form of natural-gas combined-cycle turbines. Enormous banks of such batteries already provide up to four hours of dispatchable power to California’s grid operator on demand. When Californian utilities asked companies to come up with technologies for an eight-hour buffer the winning bids all used lithium. (Decarbonisation of Electric Grids Reliant on Renewables Requires Long-Duration Energy Storage, 2022)

Saul Griffith offers an optimistic—but realistic and feasible—action plan for fighting climate change while creating new jobs and a healthier environment that is to electrify everything. His book, Electrify: An Optimist's Playbook for Our Clean Energy Future. Published by MIT Press, it makes the point that what we cannot afford are plans that make no progress because we are wasting time arguing over these issues before we begin, or because we are over-investing in technologies that can’t scale up sufficiently.

There will be trade-offs. More nuclear means fewer batteries but more public resistance and, most likely, higher costs. More solar and wind means more land use. What we cannot afford are plans that make no progress because we are wasting time arguing over these issues before we begin, or because we are over-investing in technologies that can’t scale up sufficiently. The real test, given the urgency of our climate situation, should be, “Is it ready to go to scale today?” We need to act now. (Griffith, 2021, p73) 

Fereidoon Sioshansi writes in a recent book, “Variable Generation, Flexible Demand” that “we need to automate things, essentially bypassing the customers.”

Solar Power and Storage

New der-enabled smart grids are an excellent way of doing this. Customers can set preferences as to what they need charged up and when.

as they do in a new scheme offered by Octopus Energy Group, a British provider. After that they let the system do as it wants—an approach the company says can, among other things, lower the cost of charging an electric vehicle (ev) by 75%. Such savings by consumers equate, at some point, with savings for the suppliers in terms of electricity they did not have to ship down congested transmission lines. (Getting the Most Out of Tomorrow's Grid Requires Digitisation and Demand Response, 2022)

Dr. Jonathan Foley, a climate & environmental scientist, writer, speaker, and the Executive Director of Project Drawdown, the world’s leading resource for climate solutions comments that “quick wins” can come from rapid and cost-effective improvements in efficiency.

Efficiency in Buildings

There are enormous opportunities to be more efficient with electricity.

(especially in buildings and industry), food (where ~30–40% is wasted globally), industrial processes, transportation (higher fuel efficiency, more alternative transportation), and buildings (improved building envelopes, building automation, and reduced refrigerant leaks). In addition, we will have to rapidly shut down fossil fuel energy sources and deploy renewable energy systems across the planet as quickly as possible. But given the enormous physical infrastructure and capital involved, this will inevitably take time. Even the most aggressive scenarios of this energy transition require the 2020s and 2030s to complete. (Foley, 2021)

Jackie Forrest, executive director of the ARC Energy Research Institute and co-host of the ARC Energy Ideas podcast comments that while the combined home solar and battery systems are still rare, sales are starting to increase in places such as Texas and California. These states have suffered from extended power outages from extreme weather. Instead of sitting in the dark, people with home solar and battery systems can reliably use their own electricity, day and night.

 While the two states have been experiencing most of the extreme weather-related power outages lately, climate change is expected to make these disruptive events more frequent and widespread over the coming decades. So to ensure safe, reliable and affordable power, it is likely that more homeowners will want to install solar panels and battery systems in the future. (Forrest, 2022)

ENGINEERING DESCRIPTION	ACRONYM
Distributed energy resources	PSH
electric vehicle .	TW and TWHrs
long-duration energy storage	DERS
pumped-storage hydropower	EV
The system needed to be able to deliver 1.5-2.5tw and store 85-140twhrs	LDES

 Can you Match the Description and the Acronym?

A quick look at the acronyms used in these articles indicates that the specialized knowledge of engineers, technologists, technicians, and trades people will be crucial to rapid implementation of these systems. 

References

Decarbonisation of electric grids reliant on renewables requires long-duration energy storage. (2022, June 23). The Economist. Retrieved July 2, 2022, from https://www.economist.com/technology-quarterly/2022/06/23/decarbonisation-of-electric-grids-reliant-on-renewables-requires-long-duration-energy-storage 

Electrifying everything does not solve the climate crisis, but it is a great start. (2022, June 23). The Economist. Retrieved July 2, 2022, from https://www.economist.com/technology-quarterly/2022/06/23/electrifying-everything-does-not-solve-the-climate-crisis-but-it-is-a-great-start 

Foley, J. (2021, February 20). To Stop Climate Change, Time is as Important as Tech. GlobalEcoGuy.org. Retrieved July 11, 2022, from https://globalecoguy.org/to-stop-climate-change-time-is-as-important-as-tech-1be4beb7094a 

Forrest, J. (2022, May 23). Opinion: Blackouts could drive a return to home solar. The Globe and Mail. Retrieved June 1, 2022, from https://www.theglobeandmail.com/business/commentary/article-blackouts-solar-panels-electricity/#_=_ 

Getting the most out of tomorrow's grid requires digitisation and demand response. (2022, June 23). The Economist. Retrieved July 2, 2022, from https://www.economist.com/technology-quarterly/2022/06/23/getting-the-most-out-of-tomorrows-grid-requires-digitisation-and-demand-response 

Griffith, S. (2021). Electrify: An Optimist's Playbook for Our Clean Energy Future. MIT Press.

Consistent Ethic of Life in COVID and Culture Wars

Some recent research has brought to mind that an ethical approach that offers the view of the individual as possessing inherent dignity and as inherently social with responsibilities to other individuals and to society was at play during our battle with the Covid epidemic.

Challenges in Health Care

People chose to wear masks, practice social distancing, and be vaccinated for self protection and more significantly for the health and safety of others, especially the most vulnerable in society. Attempts to foster this type of ethical behaviour in society include those of Cardinal Joseph Bernardin, who in a lecture at Fordham University, on Dec. 6, 1983, first articulated what he referred to as the "consistent ethic of life." 

The following statements attempt to present some non-controversial truths about life processes that concern people who consider making ethical decisions about human life and well being.

Abortion interupts a process that is very likely to result in birth.

A sentence of capital punishment initiates a process that is likely to end in an execution.

Medical Assistance in Death approval initiates a process that is likely to end in an early death.

Dr. Ron Hamel, senior director, ethics, Catholic Health Association, St. Louis writes about problematic personal and social attitudes in medical health that he feels the "consistent ethic of life" may help correct.

Fourth, the consistent ethic of life is corrective in that it brings to light problematic personal and social attitudes — individualism, a utilitarian assessment of persons, privatization of moral choices, excess autonomy, the commodification and commercialization of health care, the technological imperative, and the like — often associated with various technologies and aspects of the health care system. These attitudes are threats to human life and dignity and are, therefore, unacceptable. In their place, as an alternative, the consistent ethic offers a view of the individual as possessing inherent dignity and as inherently social with responsibilities to other individuals and to society.

In sum, Bernardin's consistent ethic of life as a moral vision underscores the fundamental importance of human dignity and human life, sensitizes to threats to human life and well-being, brings these threats to the foreground, inspires alternative attitudes, approaches and practices, and motivates for profound change. (HAMEL, n.d.)

During COVID, the individualism that declared “my body, my choice” around infection precautions and vaccination, fortunately, had less acceptance than the decision by the majority to protect society and reduce hospitalisation and death by adhering to COVID restrictions.

The most vulnerable in our society, thankfully, continue to remind us that an utilitarian assessment of persons, based perhaps on their usefulness to the maintenance and increase of our GNP, is a direction we have rejected in our condemnation of autocratic regimes and atrocities against human life.

We have wrestled with the impact of our moral choices more intensely in COVID times as we have moved to understanding the limits of our freedom and autonomy come into play when we negatively impact the life and health of others. 

An epidemic may also bring into view the economic costs of sustaining human life. The requirement that we try to base treatment on medical need rather than the ability of the patient to contribute to the cost of treatment mandated that money be injected by the government into the care of COVID patients.

Prior to our societal and personal experience of COVID, Ryan P. Burge researched attitudes in the United States about social movements supporting anti-abortion, anti-death penalty, and anti-assisted suicide policies.

Public opinion has shifted over time. Opposition to the death penalty was relatively consistent over the last 30 years; since the early 2000s, it has reached almost 40 percent. The other two issues saw a significant shift between 1977 and 2000. Though opposition in both cases has been increasing again in the new millennium, overall the American public has become more supportive of allowing a woman to receive an abortion for any reason as well as allowing terminally ill individuals to end their lives (both by 20 to 25 points more). (Burge, 2017)

Survey of Attitudes in the United States

The overturning of Row v Wade by the Supreme Court of the United States has made “we” versus “them” conflicts more prominent as the “culture wars” challenge our attempts to discern courses of action that provide health care and social supports for women discerning a potential birth in their future.

Justice Systems deal in the three R’S, Retribution, Restitution, and Rehabilitation. The process initiated by a sentence of Capital Punishment needs to respond with ethical treatment respecting the dignity of the person and the benefits to society of recognizing rehabilitation.

Perhaps the utilitarian view of care for people approaching death has allowed loneliness, neglect, or lack of financial or comfort resources to outweigh the social and psychological benefits to the dying person and the people who care for them by fully experiencing the mystery of death.

Reducing the human experiences of birth, reconciliation, and death to individual decisions with utilitarian outcomes, in accord with “my truth”, denies the deeply social meaning of the connection of our lives to the lives of others and the opportunity of community to enrich our life. The “consistent ethic of life” emphasises our responsibilities to other individuals and to society. This emphasis has been essential in our progress against COVID in recent years and may introduce some common ground for support for people in search of a better life.

References

Burge, R. P. (2017, September 12). Almost No One in the US Believes in a 'Consistent Ethic of Life'. Christianity Today. Retrieved June 27, 2022, from https://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2017/september-web-only/consistent-ethic-life-abortion-euthanasia-death-penalty-gss.html 

HAMEL, R. (n.d.). Twenty-Five Years Later: Cardinal Bernardin's Consistent Ethic of Life. Catholic Health Association. Retrieved June 27, 2022, from https://www.chausa.org/publications/health-progress/article/november-december-2008/twenty-five-years-later-cardinal-bernardin%27s-consistent-ethic-of-life