Papal Address To Congress Summary

Reflection on the Papal Address to Congress

Taylor Bernosky

Monmouth University

Abstract

This paper reflects on the papal address to congress focusing on the Pope’s concern for climate change. The article used will relate the ethics and politics of climate change in relation to the papal visit. The paper will then relate that article to the readings and topics discussed in our Scientific/Political Climate Change course.

Reflection on the Papal Address to Congress During Pope Francis’s visit to the United States, he addressed a joint session of Congress. In his speech he touched on some of the current topics in American politics such as abortion and same-sex marriage. He talked about them in such a way that he did not refer to the topics by name, but related the context to them. However, the one topic that he did refer to specifically was climate change. When referring to climate change he said that Congress has a very important role. He said that there needs to be an effort to redirect

It is very scary that there are representatives elected into Congress that reject climate change or its degree of severity, and won’t listen to the scientists who have dedicated their research to this problem. Even some of those who do believe about climate change to a degree, say that it is too expensive of a problem to handle or that we shouldn’t worry about our country instead we should be worried about China who is more of an offender. This relates to the “Up and down with ecology – the “issue-attention cycle” “ article that we went over in class; in that once people discuss the cost of something it deters people’s interest (Downs, 1972). This is what some of the Republicans in Congress are trying to do – take the focus off of climate change by saying that it is too costly or deflecting the