Saving the Planet, One Pastoral Letter at a Time

When Bishop Terence Patrick Drainey of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Middlesbrough retired, he was not replaced. Instead, Pope Leo XIV decided that the Bishop of Leeds, His Excellency Marcus Nigel Ralph Stock, would assume responsibility as apostolic administrator to the Diocese of Middlesbrough as well as his role in Leeds and his role as apostolic administrator to the Diocese of Hallam.

Consultations are ongoing into a merger of the three dioceses into what can only be described as a ‘super-diocese’. The logic of this move is unclear but, clearly, His Excellency is a very busy man. A pastoral letter – these are issued by bishops to be read and made available at a specific Mass – has been issued this year regarding the Future of the Diocese and this was preceded by a Pastoral Letter for the First Sunday of Lent 2026.

The previous incumbent in Middlesbrough, Bishop Drainey, often used his column in the diocesan monthly newspaper the Voice to push the climate emergency agenda. Sadly, it seems that Bishop Stock may be similarly afflicted.

There is so much to choose from that is relevant to the Catholic Church – such as the hordes of priapic Mohammedans swarming up our beaches (an issue on which the Catholic Church is markedly out of touch with the concerns of the general population), the persecution of Catholics and other Christians in predominantly Muslim countries and the suppression of freedom of speech of Christians in our own country. October is the Month of the Holy Rosary, an instrument of devotion which has frequently been credited with major Christian victories in the Crusades. But that might seem a tad Islamophobic in the current political climate.

The bishop’s most recent pastoral letter deals with none of these issues. Instead, his Pastoral Letter for the Season of Creation (available to read in full in the Voice) addresses the Season of Creation, which is described as an “annual ecumenical month of prayer and action for the protection of the environment and our common home”. With apologies to traditional Roman Catholics for the lack of a trigger warning over the inclusion of the word ‘ecumenical’, I think you can guess what the letter is about. More trigger words follow.

Referring to the most execrable and scientifically illiterate of papal encyclical letters by the late Pope Francis, Laudato si’, and hot on its heels the disappointing first encyclical letter of Pope Leo – which I have described in these pages as Magnifica Verbositas – Bishop Stock tells us: “In order to flourish and grow as human beings, we must listen to the ‘cry of the poor’ and the ‘cry of the earth’.” I can envisage what the “cry of the poor” is, but what on earth is the “cry of the earth”? Does anybody read this stuff before it goes out?

Next up in the pastoral letter, Bishop Stock tells us that “The Catholic Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales” – never a good start to any paragraph – “has developed guidance for us in a teaching document on the environment, the Call of Creation.” Not a page-turner, I imagine. He continues, saying we must “take the action that is needed to repair our relationship with God’s creation”. I refer you to the last sentence of the above paragraph.

It appears that this episcopal environmentalism is not some new or passing fad, because the bishop informs us that: “Two years ago, I encouraged all parishes and schools to work towards CAFOD’s ‘Live Simply Award’ as a way of ‘protecting this world which God has entrusted to us.’” CAFOD (the Catholic Agency for Overseas Development), for those who do not know, is essentially the political wing of the Catholic Church and has form for using the ‘climate emergency’ to persuade Catholics to give money to good causes. Finally, the bishop urges “every parish, working individually or together in a deanery, to form a small team to begin the Live Simply initiative”. I don’t imagine parish priests have been inundated with enquiries.

Of course, the Catholic Church and its bishops have a right to comment on secular matters, especially where they pose an existential threat to humanity. Thus, wars, famines, beginning- and end-of-life issues and addiction are well within its remit. But climate change is demonstrably not an existential threat to humanity. Every prediction since the 1970s of New York being under water, the polar ice caps melting and the ozone layer being punctured – leading to us all dying of sun-induced skin cancer – has proved false. The best indicator of future performance is past performance; on that basis alone, the climate catastrophists fall short.

It hardly matters whether you are a climate change denier (I am not one) or have gone the ‘full Greta’: Catholics should be urging their leaders to drop this climate emergency nonsense and focus on their job of saving souls and bringing people into the Church. Bishop Stock, I am assured, is a ‘good man’ and I have no doubt about that. He is only doing what the hierarchy of the Church above him – all the way up to Pope Leo – is doing.

Perhaps he has been instructed to focus on environmental issues. Perhaps Pope Leo and the Catholic bishops think that focusing on the environment will pack the pews. If so, they should look at France, where record numbers of young people are converting to the Roman Catholic Church. You can bet that they are not doing so because of guilt-inducing sermons on climate change and living simply. They are being attracted to the Church because of traditional values regarding personal relationships, the family and – much to the chagrin of the modernists among the Catholic bishops – the Traditional Latin Mass. Funny that!

Professor Roger Watson is a retired academic, editor and writer. He writes regularly for a range of conservative journals including the Salisbury Review, the European Conservative and the New Conservative. He has travelled and worked extensively in the Far East and the Middle East. His Substack can be found here.