The Morality of Fracking: A Catholic Approach

As our modern world gets more complicated and contentious, it's good to know that Catholics have unchanging moral principles to guide us. Of course, learning to apply those principles is more an art than a science, which is how explicit Catholic social teaching got started -- Pope Leo XIII wrote Rerum Novarum to help Catholics, and others of good will, see how those unchanging principles applied to the peculiar conditions of the modern, industrialized world, and subsequent CST documents have also addressed topical concerns of their day.

No, thanks, Dave, I'd rather rely on
Catholic Social Teaching for guidance.

Environmental concerns often reveal the deep divide between the Catholic worldview and the view of those who fail to recognize any inherent dignity or transcendent value of human life (often privileging the needs and "rights" of animals, and even plants, over those of humankind). The resulting politicization of such concerns often obscures the moral principles at stake.

This recent article in Our Sunday Visitor addresses the moral conundrum in "fracking" (hydraulic fracturing) to extract natural gas from shale deposits, something occurring all over the U.S. these days (in my part of north Texas, for instance). It cites several Catholic dioceses that have gotten involved in the fracking debate:

“Our responsibility is to care for the ecology of the earth,” said Bishop Jeffrey Monforton, whose Steubenville, Ohio, diocese lies in the midst of Ohio’s fracking boom. “In any participation by the Diocese of Steubenville in the leasing of land for natural gas or oil exploration, care for the ecology of the earth is a benchmark concern.”

Bishop Montforton goes on to point out that there are social, as well as environmental, concerns to be taken into account, and states that he takes guidance from a 1981 document produced by the U. S. Council of Catholic Bishops on “the moral dimensions of energy policy."

Fr. Ron Lengwin of the Diocese of Pittsburgh says his diocese relies on principles enunciated in Pope Benedict XVI's encyclical, Caritas in Veritate (“Charity in Truth”).

In the encyclical, Pope Benedict XVI called the environment “God’s gift to everyone” that entailed a responsibility “towards the poor, towards future generations and towards humanity as a whole” (No. 48). The pope stated that the environment can be used “responsibly to satisfy our legitimate needs, material or otherwise, while respecting the intrinsic balance of creation” (ibid). 

Aside from environmental questions, other kinds of problems can arise when a fracking operation moves into a community, as a representative of the North Dakota Catholic conference notes:

“We have a lot of good going on here,” [Chris] Dodson said. “But we also have an increase in crime, we have roads that are terrible, we have probably incidents of human trafficking going on.”  

The article goes on to quote a spokesperson for the Diocese of Rochester (NY), who points out the way such operations can affect the cost of living of local low-income residents. She says that "the state ultimately should respect the Catholic principle of subsidiarity, and allow communities to look at the potential impact on their economies and then hold a referendum or a vote on whether to frack or not to frack."

This last point -- the impact on the community -- is probably the one most often overlooked in debates about economic benefits and environmental concerns. It's good to know that Catholic dioceses are not leaving the discussion to the environmentalists and economists, but scrutinizing the practice of fracking in the light of Catholic social teaching.

Catholic Social Teaching in a Nutshell

Mark Shea, over at the National Catholic Register, has an interesting way of putting Catholic Social Teaching in a nutshell:

Catholic social teaching is, in many ways, very simple. You can basically sum it up as, "If it's good for the family, it's good. If it's bad for the family, it's bad." ... [I]n the main, if you are puzzled by Catholic Social Teaching look at it in that light and pretty much everything snaps into focus.

This makes sense -- as we see in Rerum Novarum, the founding document of the Catholic Social Teaching tradition, one of the principles of CST is that "society" at its most basic level is the family. So, if it's good for the family (the smallest society), it's good for Society (the larger society, made up of families).

This means, among other things, that we must stop pitting concern about abortion and euthanasia against Catholic teaching on social justice as though they are opposites. ... [T]he great mistake we make is to take apart Catholic teaching -- including Catholic Social Teaching -- and just privilege the bits we like.

And we all have seen how destructive that can be. Read more.

Subsidiarity, Justice, and the Common Good

I've been very busy this week and haven't yet gotten around to writing my commentary on the middle section of Rerum Novarum, but we've already seen that one of the key doctrines developed in the encyclical is the doctrine of subsidiarity. Like many key doctrines, it is too often over-simplified and consequently misconstrued. As we read later documents, we'll be able to see how this doctrine gets elaborated as the social teaching tradition develops, but those who can't wait to know more might read a paper recently published online by Patrick McKinley Brennan of the Villanova University School of Law, entitled  “Subsidiarity in the Tradition of Catholic Social Doctrine,” which will soon be published as one chapter in Subsidiarity in Comparative Perspective, edited by Michelle Evans and Augusto Zimmermann.

In his abstract, Brennan says:

Subsidiarity is often described as a norm calling for the devolution of power or for performing social functions at the lowest possible level. In Catholic social doctrine, it is neither. Subsidiarity is the fixed and immovable ontological principle according to which the common good is to be achieved through a plurality of social forms. Subsidiarity is derivative of social justice, a recognition that societies other than the state constitute unities of order, possessing genuine authority, which which are to be respected and, when necessary, aided. Subsidiarity is not a policy preference for checking power with power. This chapter traces the emergence of the principle of subsidiarity to the neo-Scholastic revival that contributed to the Church's defense against the French Revolution's onslaught aimed at eliminating societies other than the state.

It seems to me he makes an important point: that social justice demands that all authentic societies (associations among people which “constitute unities of order”) be respected. The State's duty toward such societies is not to subsume them into itself, but to aid them when necessary.)We see this indicated very clearly in the middle section of Rerum Novarum.) These smaller societies -- including the family and the local community -- are themselves necessary to the common good, just as is the State itself.

I also find interesting the fact that he sees this doctrine emerging from the aftermath of the French Revolution (1789-99). The French Revolution, of course, infamously attempted to destroy all unities of order (such as the Church and the aristocracy) that might compete with the authority of the secular State, perhaps the first time in the Christian era that such a thing was attempted. I look forward to reading Brennan's paper.