Surprise: the students in this year's "Religion and Ecology" class are charmed by Pope Francis' Laudato Si - though they're even more surprised than I am by this. One thing that especially caught their interest was the critique of capitalism, notably the section entitled "The need to protext employment" (§§124-29). Most welcome and unexpected!
If we reflect on the proper relationship between human beings and the world around us, we see the need for a correct understanding of work; if we talk about the relationship between human beings and things, the question arises as to the meaning and purpose of all human activity. This has to do not only with manual or agricultural labour but with any activity involving a modification of existing reality, from producing a social report to the design of a technological development. Underlying every form of work is a concept of the relationship which we can and must have with what is other than ourselves. Together with the awe-filled contemplation of creation which we find in Saint Francis of Assisi, the Christian spiritual tradition has also developed a rich and balanced understanding of the meaning of work, as, for example, in the life of Blessed Charles de Foucauld and his followers. (§125)
Teasing out what is going on here we realized that Francis' "integral ecology" knows that human beings need to mix our labor with the world to lead a full life. Labor is the way we maintain the relationships with "what is other than ourselves" without which we are incomplete. Neither contemplation nor - God forbid - consumption can achieve this. Like the ideas we've otherwise mainly found in indigenous thinkers like Robin Wall Kimmerer, Laudato Si´ sees us as inescapably part of the world, if only we can discern the right ways to do it. A revelation in a Christian text: you can get there from here?!
