Conservatives can breathe easy. Pope Francis’ recently released encyclical on the environment, Laudato Si, was expected by many to be a progressive environmentalist manifesto where Francis would reveal himself to be a true man of the left, injecting a new progressive force into the halls of the Vatican. Unfortunately for leftist progressives, who routinely cherry-pick and mistranslate his statements to serve their political agenda, Pope Francis once again demonstrated himself to be, well, a Catholic after all.

As one reads through the 184-page encyclical carefully, it becomes clear that the guiding purpose and theme of the encyclical was really all about preserving and protecting God’s greatest and most important creation – humanity. Pope Francis was particularly concerned with the poorest in the world and the most vulnerable, including the unborn.

There is no question that the Pope made statements that will please progressives and cause conservatives consternation. For example, the Pope accepted the idea that humans are contributing with natural causes to global warming through carbon-based emissions and suggested reinforced international treaties may be one solution to that problem.

However, what the progressive left would prefer to ignore is that Pope Francis also warned against imposing international control to a degree that would undermine the sovereignty of nations, he reaffirmed the Church’s defense of private property, and he warned against viewing all human intervention in the environment as a threat. In fact, Pope Francis made it explicitly clear that acknowledging mankind’s integrated connection with the environment is not to “put all living beings on the same level nor to deprive human beings of their unique worth and the tremendous responsibility it entails.”

Perhaps the best example of Pope Francis’ overriding theme was when he called out the progressive left for its hypocrisy with regard to abortion. Francis asks, “How can we genuinely teach the importance of concern for vulnerable beings, however troublesome or inconvenient they may be, if we fail to protect a human embryo, even when its presence is uncomfortable and creates difficulties?” Good question.

Even the solutions Pope Francis suggested to curb environmental damage and degradation were primarily human- and culture-focused rather than primarily reliant on government’s ability to solve problems. He calls for a change in culture, which, by its nature, must be done voluntarily, not under force of government. Overly selfish obsessions with technology, gadgets, personal pleasure, and meaningless items, at the expense of interpersonal relationships and the family, all contribute to this “culture of relativism” that Francis so eloquently calls out as “the same disorder which drives one person to take advantage of another, to treat others as mere objects, imposing forced labor on them or enslaving them to pay their debts.”

At the end of the day, do we have a moral responsibility to be good stewards of the Earth? Absolutely! Conservatives and progressives alike should agree on that. The question is how to be good stewards in practice. Catholic Church tradition teaches that when it comes to matters of faith and morals, the Pope speaks with his greatest authority. On matters of scientific conclusions and political mechanics, Catholics are allowed to accept or reject the Pope’s personal conclusions in good faith and good conscience.

But one thing is certain about Pope Francis’ position after reading Laudato Si: While humanity faces many crises and problems, the biggest crisis we face today is the degradation of our own humanity, and if we are going to be intellectually honest when it comes to fixing the world’s environmental problems, we best start fixing ourselves and our families.

Marc Zarlengo is a practicing attorney in the Denver area. He is a practicing Catholic and member of St. Thomas More Catholic Parish in Centennial.