5 - The Other Seamless Garment: Laudato Si’ on the Human Relationship to Created Nature

Summary

This chapter explains in philosophical terms what Pope Francis means by “the technocratic paradigm.” It shows how this paradigm is at work not only in technological mastery of nature but also in the very methodology of modern science that aims at such mastery. It shows the connection Francis sees between the way scientific method constitutes its objects by a process of “extraction from nature” and the implicit logic of the extractive and exploitative economics of infinite growth. It also shows the connection Francis recognizes between these attitudes and mentalities and the ideology of gender fluidity and freely chosen sexual identity as they come into conflict with the natural relationship of male and female in procreation and its expression in marriage. The chapter concludes by describing how the contemplative attitude toward nature of Saint Francis, structured by receptivity to the Creator’s grace, serves in the encyclical as an alternative to the imposition of a paradigm on the created order.