The Lord’s Encyclical
I was pleased to read Fr. Clovis Boff’s scolding of the Latin American bishops in an open letter in July: “Souls long for the supernatural, yet you persist in giving them the merely natural” (the theme of theological liberalism, broadly speaking). He, a repentant Liberation theologian, ought to know; he has seen this at its worst.
But I am also pleased to announce that I have received from the Lord Jesus himself his own Encyclical on the Environment (Quid Proderit), to which Fr. Boff, who has also read it, is referring—and which bishops are especially responsible for teaching to their people, instead of laboring hard over, and distracting them with, secondary matters. This says it all with utmost economy: “What does it profit a man if he gain the whole world and lose his own soul?”
One does not understand the Lord at all if he thinks this refers only to the acquisition of pecuniary wealth. The churches are lost until they have true pastors, who understand such things and teach them to their people.
S. M. Hutchens is a senior editor and longtime writer for Touchstone.
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