One part of Pope Francis’ new encyclical that isn’t getting much press coverage is how aggressively he confronts the hot-button issues of abortion and population control, saying that we cannot effectively care for the environment without first working to defend human life.

CNA/EWTN News is reporting on the Pope’s anxiously awaited encyclical, Laudato Si, which means “Praise be to You.” Officially released today, it takes its name from St. Francis of Assisi’s prayer, “Canticle of the Sun” which praises God through the elements of creation such as the sun, moon, and “our sister Mother Earth.”

The nearly 200-page document is separated into six chapters and deals with issues such as global warming, pollution, species extinction, and the impact of global inequality on natural resources.

“A very solid scientific consensus indicates that we are presently witnessing a disturbing warming of the climatic system,” the Pope writes, and cites “a constant rise in the sea level” and an increase in extreme weather events.

Man and other factors are the causes of this warming, he says, but cites scientific studies which indicate that “most global warming in recent decades is due to the great concentration of greenhouse gases…released mainly as a result of human activity.”

We need to care for our planet by recognizing the need for changes of lifestyle, production and consumption in order to combat this warming, or at least the human causes which are aggravating it.

He goes on to make a strong case for the need to respect human life, an aspect of the encyclical which is getting very little attention.

“ . . . (A) sense of deep communion with the rest of nature cannot be real if our hearts lack tenderness, compassion and concern for our fellow human beings.”

He calls it “clearly inconsistent” to combat the trafficking of endangered species while remaining indifferent toward the trafficking of persons, to the poor and to the decision of many “to destroy another human being deemed unwanted,” the Pope stated.

To have this attitude, he said, “compromises the very meaning of our struggle for the sake of the environment.”

He also clearly states that concern for the protection of nature is “incompatible with the justification of abortion.”

“How can we genuinely teach the importance of concern for other vulnerable beings, however troublesome or inconvenient they may be, if we fail to protect a human embryo, even when its presence is uncomfortable and creates difficulties?” he asks.

Francis also waded into the topic of population control which is used by many as a way of dealing with the problem of poverty.

“Instead of resolving the problems of the poor and thinking of how the world can be different, some can only propose a reduction in the birth rate,” Francis wrote.

To blame a growing population for these problems rather than the “extreme and selective consumerism on the part of some, is one way of refusing to face the issues.”

He called such scapegoating “an attempt to legitimize the present model of distribution, where a minority believes that it has the right to consume in a way which can never be universalized, since the planet could not even contain the waste products of such consumption,” the Pope said.

“When we fail to acknowledge as part of reality the worth of a poor person, a human embryo, a person with disabilities – to offer just a few examples – it becomes difficult to hear the cry of nature itself; everything is connected.”

He also encouraged care for the body, stressing the need to accept it in its truest nature by “valuing one’s own body in its femininity and masculinity” and by joyfully accepting the special gifts of man and woman.

An attitude which seeks “to cancel out sexual difference because it no longer knows how to confront it” is unhealthy, he said.

He points out the important role the family plays in achieving a true integral human and environmental ecology because this is the place where life is welcomed and protected and where human growth is developed.

“In the face of the so-called culture of death, the family is the heart of the culture of life,” he said.

Family life is where children first learn how “to show love and respect for life; we are taught the proper use of things, order and cleanliness, respect for the local ecosystem and care for all creatures.”

Click here to read the entire document.

© All Rights Reserved, Living His Life Abundantly®/Women of Grace®  http://www.womenofgrace.com