Flourishing in Crisis

This chapter examines the tradition of Roman Catholic social teachings. Of particular interest and power is Pope Francis’s environmental encyclical, Laudato Si’, which connects and condemns both ecological and economic crises, exposes the weakness of technocratic thought, and offers a theological paradigm to replace it. The chapter also examines the social teachings on flourishing, those doctrines’ pertinence to environmental care, and the Church’s response to the contemporary ecological crisis. Finally, this chapter underscores the Catholic social teachings’ profound connections between poverty and ecological crises, and it pushes that tradition provocatively, in dialogue with non-Catholic environmentalists, to more fully consider animals and gender.