If the Left Should Understand ‘Laudato Sii’ is Propaganda, Then So Should the Right

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A certain type of shepherd

A certain type of shepherd

At Catholic Vote Carson Holloway speculates:

I was about to say that people are eagerly anticipating Pope Francis’s encyclical on the environment, but maybe they are no longer needing to anticipate: According to this news report the encyclical has been leaked to an Italian newspaper.

It is interesting to think about who would leak it and why.  The Vatican condemned the leak and noted that the leaked version is not the final version.  Maybe there are things in the leaked draft that are not going to be in the final version, but that the leaker wants to put “out there,” so to speak, as having the apparent  (although not the genuine, official) support of the pope.  But this is the kind of thing about which somebody on the outside (like most of us) can only speculate.

It is also interesting to see how the news coverage leading up to the encyclical betrays–as usual–considerable misunderstanding of Catholicism by the news media.  There is an article on the Breitbart website that says that the “political left is hoping for a document that ties belief in global warming to a religious obligation.”  To be fair to the political left, the Breitbart article does not name any leftist who has openly expressed this hope.  But even if this is a total misapprehension on Breitbart’s part, it is interesting that the Breitbart writer could make a claim like this.

It isn’t necessary to cite an example of leftist writers hoping for the Pope to tie global warming to a religious obligation.  That is exactly what Laudato Sii is all about, and there isn’t one voice in the mainstream press who doesn’t see it.

Such a claim seems to show a very limited understanding of Catholicism and the nature of the pope’s teaching authority.  The standard formulation holds that the Church has a teaching authority in relation to faith and morals.  But global warming does not pertain to faith or morals.  I don’t mean to say that there are no moral obligations in relation to global warming.  If it is happening, and if it is caused by human beings, and if something can be done to stop it, then there might be a moral obligation to takes steps to stop it.  But only “might,” because such an obligation would depend on the consequences of those steps.

It’s not unfair to expect non-Catholics to assume that the Pope’s words on Global Warming have some moral and religious weight.  That’s because historically his words did.  To most of the post-Christian world the Catholic religion is just years of papolatry, so they are expecting ‘the faithful’ to simply fall in step.

In fact you will be hard-pressed to find even knowledgeable Catholics who would agree that the Pope has zero authority to preach worldwide emergency response to apocalyptic global warming propaganda.   Instead, most writers will fall over themselves to find some justifiable interpretation for the Pope’s outrageous ideas.

The one who really should understand his own moral jurisdiction, and yet does not, is Pope Francis.  Western society is entirely unprepared for such a ruthless, materialistic, and un-Catholic sounding Pope.

Whether global warming is happening or not is an empirical, scientific question, which is not the sort of question over which the pope has the authority to settle.  You would think that the left would appreciate this, since they have complained in other contexts of the Church trying to insert itself into science.

This writer seems to forget that the Leftist machine doesn’t operate on consistent intellectual truths.  It is about power and winning.

I am not, by the way, saying that the pope has no business speaking about global warming (as some Republican politicians have said recently).  If the pope really thinks global warming is happening and is being caused by human beings, and if he really thinks it can be stopped, then he might have an obligation to issue a warning and a call to action.  But this call would not be an act of teaching authority, it seems to me, but a kind of grave pastoral and political advice.  Every Catholic would be bound to listen respectfully to this, but would not, I think, be bound to agree with it.

There are so many ‘ifs’ and ‘buts’ in this article!

I’ve heard this ‘listen respectfully’ phrase quite a bit these days.  Aren’t we bound to listen to anyone respectfully…unless of course they have left us with little to respect about themselves or their words?

It is hard to see how belief in global warming could be linked to a “religious obligation” in the way the Breitbart article suggests.

Well, that’s the whole point: to make Catholics, of whom the vast majority have been convinced by the media to abandon the teachings of the Faith and line up their souls for Hell, believe yet another lie.  Why should it be so hard this time?  Pope Francis has the entire West behind him.

Heresy drives the Francis pontificate. By their fruits you shall know them.  The question is, how long will we continue to act like these schemes belong to our Faith and our Church?

 

 

 

Notre Dame Hosts Uni-Pole Conference Against ‘Catholic’ Polarization

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Putting principles over politics

Putting principles over politics

At RNS news, Jacob Lupfer writes:

Americans of all stripes bemoan political polarization. For people who claim to derive their political values from their religious traditions, polarization raises vexing questions. More than perhaps any other group, faithful Catholics struggle to reconcile their church’s teachings with the platforms of the two major parties.

Do all Americans bemoan polarization?  I thought only liberal politicians did that as a backhanded form of attack?  They want a uni-party.

And what is so difficult about reconciling Catholic teaching with politics?  That’s only hard if you’re unfaithful.  There’s no liberal policy that a good Catholic can endorse without enabling stealing, cheating, oppressing, killing, immorality, or hatred of God.

Last week at the University of Notre Dame, an ideologically diverse group of Catholic leaders gathered to discuss how political polarization affects Catholic life in the United States. Under the theme “Naming the Wounds, Beginning to Heal,” the conference sought to change the tone of political engagement by priests, lay people and the hierarchy.

Ideologically diverse?  If you took part that meeting you were either an actor or an enabler.

Conservative evangelicals can be faithful Republicans because their churches affirm the GOP’s social conservatism and sexual traditionalism but they speak only timidly on matters of economics, deferring to and accepting (if not outright sanctifying) market forces. Mainline Protestant denominations’ political teachings align neatly with the Democratic Party’s platform. This includes robust support for abortion rights and, increasingly, same-sex marriage.

Free markets are not something Southern Baptists ‘sanctify’ as if they were animists.  A free market is just people giving their time and property to each other.  If you don’t think that’s moral, then you must believe stealing and oppression is.

People have a God-given right to give and exchange what’s theirs.  They are obligated to use their gifts in a Christian way, but it is not your place to force them.  True charity (love) requires freedom.  Liberals don’t value love so they don’t understand freedom.  They want control, ‘equality,’ and materialist results.  The truths behind a free market are natural rights, not un-Catholic idols.

Moderate evangelicals, black Protestants, and Eastern Orthodox traditions cut across the two major parties. But since the Catholic Church spans the breadth and depth of America’s political landscape, it is important for Catholics to model Christian political engagement in a context of partisan and ideological polarization.

What?!

Robert McElroy, the newly installed Catholic bishop of San Diego, gave a brilliant speech last year about the moral dilemmas of partisanship. While acknowledging the parties’ role in nurturing mass participation in politics, he cautioned against the ways both parties can be hostile to human dignity and the common good.

No polarizing ‘partisan’ there, McElroy.

For the Christian citizen, parties pose a paradox. It is a good thing that we have ideologically distinct parties that will, when in power, pursue different policy goals. But when partisans — whether elected officials or ordinary voters — abandon their religious principles in order to fall in line with their party, Christian political engagement ceases to exist.

Nothing serves the interests of political parties more than interest groups that use religious rhetoric to promote secular ideologies and add, “Thus saith the Lord.” And Washington is full of them.

So is the American hierarchy.  Mr. Lupfer closes:

Polarization challenges Catholics more acutely than it challenges many other religious adherents. They should seek ways to promote fuller expressions of their church’s humane teachings in both parties. In elevating principles above party loyalty, they can witness to their faith and model authentically Christian political engagement.

But you must have principles in the first place.

 

 

 

Easter Sunday Occupiers: There’s nothing good or Catholic about liberalism and you know it’s true.

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..and you will see the awful horror (sitting) in the place where (they) should not be.

..and you will see the awful horror (sitting) in the place where it should not be.

My entire life I’ve been treated to explications on how Church teaching is neither Left nor Right, Liberal nor Conservative, neither Democrat nor truly Republican.  It’s something higher, something ‘above,’ yes?  It’s something other than, or outside politics; something of God, of theology.  That’s garbage.

There’s nothing good or Catholic about liberalism and you know it’s true.

I was presented with an Easter family discussion where someone I love reiterated how it’s so wrong to use ‘religion’ as a reason to kill.  It hurt me to have to defend the Church at the expense of this person’s ego, but unfortunately he was stuffed full of television and the New York Times, so his world was full of false facts and plied assertions.  Garbage in, garbage out: the hermit’s rule is one of a clear mind and a pure heart.

Religion is not only a reason to kill sometimes, it’s a reason for everything –  but that religion must be Catholicism.  Everything done, every choice made, has either a reason or an excuse.  This depends on whether it’s wrong or right, loving or careless, prudent or foolish. Only an atheist would try to separate reason from religion as if it were possible.

The same applies to politics because it is about power.  Liberal churchmen like to pretend there is something true and good in big government but God has nothing to do with the usurpation of rights to life, property, and family.  Such statist ideas, which you find in print, television, and in some contemporary papal encyclicals, contradict the Magisterium and the teaching of social justice heroes Leo XIII and Pius XI.  Their ideas are new, and they represent a ‘rupture’  when taken independently.

Now we’re about to be oppressed with a global warming/sustainability encyclical. Don’t pretend it’s Catholic when you see it and don’t try to massage it.  Measure it against the context of all (not simply recent) Church teaching.

In general this is a very poor era of popes who either enforce or permit a smothered, collapsing, and dysfunctional Church; a Church where ‘Catholic’ seems to mean all kinds of Protestants and heretics – people who show up on Easter like they’re doing God a favor.

Such ‘catholics’ vote liberal.  Why confuse yourself by imagining there are any good reasons to do likewise?

An NBC affiliate reports:

The church attendance differences are most stark when you look at Catholics.

Yes, Mr. Obama won the overall Catholic vote in 2012, but Mr. Romney beat the president handily among Catholics who attended church at least weekly – 57% to 42%. In fact, those figures matched exactly the margins Mr. Romney had over Mr. Obama with Protestant Christians.

But among more casual Catholics, those who attend church less than once a week, Mr. Obama defeated Mr. Romney with similar ease – 56% to 42%. (There are similar differences among protestant voters, though Mr. Romney won both regular church attendees and less-frequent churchgoers.)

The message in these numbers? There will not only be more people in the pews around this weekend in your house of worship, there will probably be a different body politic.

Those Easter-people aren’t united to the Church Militant, and unless something changes, will not be united to the Church Suffering or Triumphant. Hence, they aren’t the Church.

The Vatican will count them as Catholics, the press will trumpet their politics, the Synod on the Family will survey them, and the Pope will chase them because they are truly his people; but they aren’t Catholics.  They’re just liberals, and until we purge the Church of their ranks in the laity and the hierarchy, she will continue to wilt, and society to blacken.

To close, here is an Easter church-going family with whom Pope Francis and the U.S. Bishops find much in common.