I may have missed it but it seems that Pope Francis has not accepted the Million Dollar Vegan challenge, which is part of a global campaign to get celebrities to go vegan during Lent, earn a million dollars for the charity of their choice, while doing their bit to combat climate change and save the planet.
The campaigners were hoping Francis would accept because of the message it would send to a billion Catholics around the globe. I can’t read the Pope’s mind but I suspect that, if he really has turned it down, he has an understandable problem with the very message.
A problem? How could he possibly have one? This Pope has gone farther than he’s needed in taking sides in the climate change debate. Francis has emphasised the need for global ethics while also underlining the adjustments needed in our personal lives.
From literally the start of his papacy he’s made it a point to show he was in conversation with ordinary people, so how can he have a problem with a petition delivered by a 12-year-old girl, Genesis Butler?
Let’s begin with the science. There’s no doubt that our current meat-rearing practices are responsible for a significant segment for the environmental harm associated with climate change (never mind the cruelty linked to industrialised meat production).
According to that thorough thinker (and Bill Gates’ favourite author) Vaclav Smil, some of the claimed environmental harm is exaggerated but it remains true that the global North should significantly reduce its meat consumption. Saving the planet, however, doesn’t require us to cut out meat altogether, let alone fish as well.
Such distinctions matter, when you’re pope and claiming to set an example. For one thing, Francis is 82 and will be aware of the needs of the elderly.
The longevity expert, Valter Longo, states that while meat protein and dairy products should feature minimally in our regular diets, we should eat fish once or twice a week. After turning 65, the component of protein in our diets should increase, and for most elderly people (who unlike a pope will not have expert guidance at their beck and call) that would be through animal products and fish.
The vegan campaign is based on a secularised notion of Lent, which over the past several years has caught on even among non-believers
Plus, maybe it was always tricky to ask an Argentine of Italian origin to turn vegan. Did anyone imagine a tango-loving, mate-drinking pope would not see the other side of the coin – the impact on economy and popular culture – of asking people to turn away from grass-fed beef, Parma ham and fresh burrata?
Then there’s the issue of character. Francis has simple, even austere tastes. He’s like Julius Caesar who, despite the sumptuous food in his palace, remained attached to a simple breakfast of crusty bread, oil and honey. Like Caesar, Francis also expects the men around him to be modest in their appetites. However, for both men there is a firm line between simplicity and rigid austerity.
Caesar expected his officers to remain lean, like him, but he feared men who were thin, seeing in them an unbending character. Likewise, Francis has expressed his suspicions of any morality that is too rigid, saying it is likely to carry the baggage of unresolved emotional issues.
Going vegan for a month – really vegan – means scrutinising your chocolate digestive biscuits for traces of animal fat. You need to make sure your wine is ‘ethical’, in the sense of not having had any fish guts used to enhance its lustre. If you’re pope, trying to send a pro-vegan message, and then get caught out on such details, you’re suddenly a hypocrite; but if you turn down a biscuit or a glass on the grounds of purity, you’re a sanctimonious prig.
There’s nothing wrong with the Million Dollar Vegan message in itself. The campaign is an admirable initiative. But its message was developed for celebrities, not popes. Celebrities can afford to temper any puritanism in their diet with a sprinkling of deadly sins, apart from gluttony. Their reputation can be saved by a modicum of wrath or sloth displayed before the paparazzi, or at least cunningly planted reports of lust and greed in the gossip pages.
Popes don’t have that respite. A pope would betray his teaching office by being puritan. He cannot afford to look like he’s fetishising a diet or even promoting an idolatry of unbending willpower. Francis, who wears his historical learning lightly, will be aware of the Church’s spiritual doctors who warn their followers to beware of the piety that leads to damnation.
Once again, the problem is not the message. It’s who says it. The vegan campaign is based on a secularised notion of Lent, which over the past several years has caught on even among non-believers.
It’s an understanding of Lent understood as detoxification from sweets, fast food, smartphones and Twitter. It’s fasting and abstinence for a religion of self-improvement.
The Christian Lent is based on a religion of resurrection, which is a call to greatness, not anything as timid as improvement. Fasting doesn’t glorify deprivation. It’s meant to confine appetites to the essentials, without the frills of piety or artificial needs, to confront what it means to be human and, at the end of it all, to relish the scents and flavours of the feast, which usually included roasts.
None of this means that there isn’t considerable overlap with the vegan campaign. For example, the Christian Lent always linked fasting to alms-giving – that your fast should help needy people eat. But it’s overlap, not an identical focus.
We cannot discount Francis’s ability to take up the challenge without blurring his own message. But if he hasn’t taken it up, we shouldn’t be mystified. At a time when the very point of Lent has faded for many Christians, the last thing he’d want would be to justify it for reasons that are important and useful but, for him, beside the point.
This is a Times of Malta print opinion piece