Pope Francis’ social teaching offers a dire and needed warning about the twin calamities of economic inequality and climate change, said Cardinal Joseph Tobin of Newark, New Jersey, and Columbia University economist Jeffrey Sachs at a Sept. 5 seminar at Fordham University’s Lincoln Centre campus here.
“The system’s gangrene cannot be whitewashed forever,” said Tobin, quoting the Pope’s candid remarks via video to the 2017 World Meeting of Popular Movementsheld in Modesto, California. Support independent Catholic journalism. Become an NCR Forward member for $5 a month.
Sachs agreed that the Pope’s sometimes-scathing statements on capitalism are a needed counterweight to American overconfidence that unfettered capitalism can provide a pathway out of the dual crises of climate change and economic inequality.
Sachs, director of Columbia’s Centre for Sustainable Development, described Francis’ encyclical on the environment, “Laudato Si,’ on Care for Our Common Home,”as“oneofthegreat messages of our time” that “tells us things we will not hear from any other place.” But before the critique of capitalism and church social teaching could be discussed, the metaphorical elephant in the room — the continued onslaught of sex abuse issues afflicting the church — was addressed.
