The encyclical letter Laudato Si is available here on the Vatican website. Is war on the horizon? Are arms dealers preparing even now to make the next mark?
57. It is foreseeable that, once certain resources have been depleted, the scene will be set for new wars, albeit under the guise of noble claims. War always does grave harm to the environment and to the cultural riches of peoples, risks which are magnified when one considers nuclear arms and biological weapons. “Despite the international agreements which prohibit chemical, bacteriological and biological warfare, the fact is that laboratory research continues to develop new offensive weapons capable of altering the balance of nature”.[John Paul II, Message for the 1990 World Day of Peace, 12: AAS 82 (1990), 154.]
The weapons exist. We know it.
Politics must pay greater attention to foreseeing new conflicts and addressing the causes which can lead to them. But powerful financial interests prove most resistant to this effort, and political planning tends to lack breadth of vision. What would induce anyone, at this stage, to hold on to power only to be remembered for their inability to take action when it was urgent and necessary to do so?
To answer the question: an insulation from those who would complain, a hope that blame can be spun and reassigned through allies in the media, a focus on short-term gain, and the likely motivation for people on any level: denial–the chief self-focused tool for addicts and a lot of other people. Maybe addiction isn’t far off from a lot of us.
Catholic Sensibility 