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?

 

 

 

Communism, Global Warming, the Church, and You

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united nations

Is this a new Catholic Church? Wait, I don’t see kneelers.

At ‘Blog for Dallas Area Catholics’ Tantumblogo has no illusions about the origins and ends of the Global Warming offense.

Some of the very, very first laws the Bolsheviks put into effect upon taking power in the former Imperial Russia were laws not just allowing, but encouraging divorce, contraception, and abortion.  Why in heavens would that be one of their earliest moves?  What could they possibly have to gain from diabolical efforts?  Control.

The left, most admittedly in its pure and distilled form of communism, but in all its forms, seeks to control people on a level never dreamed of by the most benighted despots of the past.  They seek not just control over  your political activities, or your economic life, or of your social involvements, but all these things plus much more besides.  They seek to control your inner thoughts and your relationship with God.  The left, as I have argued many times in the past, is ultimately at war with the Christian God and has been for hundreds of years.

How is religion most intimately and effectively communicated from one generation to the next?  The family.  How can the left ever pry us stubborn God-botherers away from our magic talks with God unless they destroy the family and stand up the state in its stead?  And how can one destroy the family, anyway?  Well……turning sex into a competitive sport and loosing all the checks and balances God provided on human reproductive behavior was, and remains, a great place to start.  So you legalize divorce, fornication, contraception, and especially baby murder, and go from there.  As we have seen in this country, a few decades of such legalization will lead society to the precipice of self-destruction.  And even after the regime that foisted such evils on the people goes away, the evils remain for decades after.  Witness Russia today, with still one of the world’s highest abortion rates, and general death-wishing nihilism driving incredibly high rates of alcoholism and drug addiction, producing one of the lowest life expectancies for men of any largely developed nation.

Communism is nothing if not relentless.  They tried the direct method of competition with the more capitalist West and failed.  So now they are trying manifold other, less obvious but more insidious methods, like cultural marxism and environmentalism.  But these replacements are no different from their predecessor, and contain all the same assumptions and desires that the old Soviet state did – total control over the lives and thoughts of everyone on earth, the destruction of the family, the “death” of God.  Cultural marxism and environmentalism are of course as tied up in the sexular pagan death cult as the most fire-breathing Bolshevist of Stalin’s days.

Which brings me to the main point – this recent highly publicized and very important “climate conference” or “conference on sustainable development” at the Vatican.  Yes there have been highly unfortunate flirtations with the left wing socialists at the UN and in the environmental movement by the Vatican before, but never with such official approbation, and never with so much influence on official papal documents of doctrinal import. I say influence, because the Vatican itself widely reported that the meeting between Pope Francis and UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon, as well as the entirely one-sided conferences organized by the Pontifical Academy of Sciences and the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences, were oriented towards providing input for the upcoming papal encyclical on “climate change” and sustainable development.  As I noted in the link above, the conferences featured some of the most prominent pro-aborts and population control zealots in the world today.  That pro-abort maximalists like Jeffrey Sachs (abortion on demand at public expense and without apology) were given a platform to speak – even if “only” on a subject intimately related to their population control obsessions, “climate change” and sustainable development – is hugely scandalous in its own rite.  But to openly tie this platform with the upcoming encyclical is completely unprecedented.

You can read the rest here.

This ugly unity between the worldwide Left and the NewChurch, emerging at Benedict’s abdication, and clear since Francis walked out on the balcony; is impossible to ignore.  It is not the place of the Christ’s Bride to collaborate with these actors and enable their murderous worldy goals and frauds.  That is simply not Catholic.  It’s the opposite.

What do we do with this encyclical then?  What will it mean for our Church?

 

 

Francis Effect: Al Gore

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I'm startled and thrilled to the marrow of my bones by the clarity of this moral force.

I’m startled and thrilled to the marrow of my bones by the clarity of the Pope’s moral force.

At Climate Depot, Marc Morano brings up the tragic and relentless figure of Al Gore, yet another frightening admirer of the Vicar of Christ today.

Al Gore announced on April 29, 2015 that Pope Francis’s global warming advocacy could turn the former Vice President into a Catholic. Gore was speaking during the Dean’s Speaker Series at the University of California Berkeley.

Partial transcript of Gore’s remarks: ” I think Pope Francis is quite an inspiring figure really. A phenomena. I’ve been startled with the clarity of the moral force that he embodies. He kind of raises in a new context the old question: “Is the Pope Catholic?” (laughter)

“That’s a joke by the way.

They say every joke has some truth to it.  This one has too much for laughs.  Let’s unpack.

Pope Francis is inspiring: He is stirring my spirit, affecting me spiritually.

He is a phenomena: He has a supernatural quality which can’t be named or explained through science.

“I’ve been startled with the clarity of the moral force that he embodies.”: This is excellent liberal-speak.  On it’s face it is meaningless babble but it is stated for it’s intended effects.

Like St. Paul on his horse my high liberal intellect was struck and shocked somehow by Pope Francis.  We know that the Church is not only a source of moral laws, but a force which we have always attacked, and nothing more than a succession of popes wielding influence.  Pope Francis embodies that moral force since he is now the Church itself, only this time the force is clear and reasonable not murky and confused, and everyone can follow it.

“Well I’ve said publicly in the last year, I was raised in the Southern Baptist tradition, I could become a Catholic because of this Pope. He is that inspiring to me. And I know the vast majority of my Catholic friends are just thrilled to the marrow of their bones that he is providing this kind of spiritual leadership.”

So Francis embodies such a startling, thrilling NewChurch that even Al Gore is ready to join up. If we can get him, imagine what kinds of converts we can dredge up!  Keep watching those numbers.

Al Gore is no more a Catholic than he was a Baptist.  They don’t need him either, but he’d make a great bishop these days.