Take your medicine.  It's good for you.

Take your medicine. It’s good for you.

The world renowned ‘conservative’ Princeton Catholic, Robert George, has published a statement in advance of the Pope’s Global Warming Encyclical.  It represents the sort of willful blindness of which atheists accuse Christians.

As we await the papal encyclical that will be published this week, my plea to Catholic friends is to receive it in a spirit of willingness to listen and to be taught by the Holy Father. Do not approach it by simply looking for what one agrees with or disagrees with on matters of climate science or anything else.

One should always listen unless one wants to be deaf, but to be taught one must use discernment, discretion.  One must consider the source.  This is just wisdom, reason.  One would hope to agree with the truth and disagree with falsehood.  Must we suspend those criteria for papal letters Dr. George?

The gift of the papal magisterium to us, the faithful, is just that: a gift–a charism. We are to receive it as such.

Is ‘Laudato Sii’ a gift from God or from Pope Francis?  Can such a ‘gift’ be both?  What if this particular gift were a ticking time bomb or a syringe filled with poison?  How should we receive it then?

We can, and no doubt each of us will, appreciate the fact that different teachings or aspects of the teaching contained in the document will be proposed at different levels of authority. That is virtually always true of teaching instruments of this sort. But there will be plenty of time to sort all that out. It should NOT be our first priority. Our first priority should be to open ourselves to learning what is to be learned from the Holy Father’s reflections on the physical and moral ecology in the context of the Church’s witness to, and proclamation of, the Gospel.

How is it that Dr. George understands what our priorities of thinking should be?  How can we approach the Global Warming Encyclical without considering its level of authority?  If, as Catholics, we are now forced to believe monsterous, destructive, and oppressive lies, we must know, yes?  Why is it that liberals always want to tell you not only what to think but how, and where you must close your eyes to reality?

We are about to hear the voice of Peter. Our first and most important task is to listen attentively and with open-hearted willingness to be taught.

The arrogance of these brainiacs is astounding.  What do they know about hearts anyway?  I’ve never had an open heart in my life.  It still works.

Oh most Holy Pope Francis.  I shall be attentive to your Joe Biden Theology.  I shall open my heart with willingness!  Oh teach me!

Is this truly our Faith?

 

 

 

 

 

 

Don't be fooled into pretending it's real

Don’t be fooled into pretending it’s real

A day ahead of Ramadan, and of the final release of the Global Warming Encyclical, we have to ask, “At what point can we recognize that the things Pope Francis writes and says are not rooted in the Catholic Faith, but are merely blanket politically correct assertions?”  Pope Francis is really more like the “Pope Francis Show” than an actual Pope, isn’t he?

When I was a boy I used to laugh at the character of Archie Bunker.  He was so funny and he was in no way a hero.    Everyone on that show seemed realistic.  They always argued.  They were poor.  All In The Family was the top program for several years.

It wasn’t until much later that I realized that the point of Archie and Edith wasn’t our entertainment.  That show was created to confuse people.  It’s goal was the transformation of our culture – and it worked.

Much more brilliant than the acting and the punch lines was the creation of the characters.  Most of the thought went into building individuals who were normal, decent, and conservative, yet foolish, selfish, undisciplined, or ignorant.  That’s hard to do.  Archie and Edith were two people who would not actually exist.  That’s the whole point of television really, to create a false world. I no longer find that show very funny.

It’s in the same spirit I believe that the world is now treated to Pope Francis.  There is a lot of thought and preparation behind the character of Francis, and his performance is executed quite well.  The Pope Francis show may seem like a clumsy bull in a china shop but it isn’t slowing, or stopping to regroup.  It doesn’t think small.  It rolls up the whole world in its carpet.

Pope Francis has invited all faithful to welcome the Encyclical on the environment, entitled “Laudato si, on the care of our common home.”

Toward the end of his weekly General Audience in St. Peter’s Square, the Holy Father launched an appeal, saying, “Tomorrow, as you know, the encyclical on the care of the ‘common home’ that is creation will be published. This common ‘home,’” Pope Francis stated,  “is being ruined and therefore hurts everyone, especially the most poor.”

Is the world our common home or our commune?  Is it being ruined?  Where?  It looks beautiful to me, except perhaps on television, in suburbia, in a mall, or in most churches.  I don’t think Pope Francis is talking about ugliness though.  He’s talking about gases and Liberation Theology.

“Therefore, I would like to launch an appeal to responsibility, based on the task which God gave to man in creation: ‘to cultivate and protect’ the ‘garden’ in which humanity has been placed.”

“I invite all to welcome with an an open spirit this document, which places itself in the line of the Church’s social doctrine.”

What is an ‘open spirit?’  Isn’t that something a Christian should avoid?  Perhaps Pope Francis means being open to the guidance of the Holy Spirit?  I think he says that a lot, but I don’t think he means it much.  Pope Francis really just wants us to be open to sets of lies.

How many times lately has the Vatican been forced to tell us this heterodox piece of propaganda is in line with the Church’s social doctrine, and before it’s even formally released?

What is the Church’s social doctrine anyway?  Isn’t it basically drawn from several somewhat conflicting encyclicals of the more recent popes?  Is that dogma?  Inasmuch as any of those letters are inconsistent with the full magisterium of the Church, they must be rejected.  Ignorance of the past is no excuse.

 

Group of nine Communists, I mean comprehensible Christians

Nine Communists, I mean, comprehensible Christians

Why does Pope Francis keep talking about Communists?  I thought there weren’t any Communists any more.  Even China has a competitive market with worldwide manufacturing.  Russia has the most pro-Christian government in the world today, and Raul Castro loves Pope Francis so much he’s ready to seriously become a Catholic maybe.

(Vatican Radio) Pope Francis said Mass in the chapel of the Casa Santa Marta on Tuesday morning. Following the readings of the day, the Holy Father reflected on the place of poverty in the Gospel, saying that the Gospel becomes incomprehensible if poverty is removed from it, and that it is unfair to label priests who show a pastoral concern for the poor as, “Communists”.

How is it that the work of Christ is meaningless if it’s not all about the poor?  It’s not. It’s only ‘incomprehensible’ to Francis and to his “Yoda of Catholicism,” Gustavo Gutierrez.  Every faithful Catholic since Christ has understood the Gospels without this hysterical poverty crusade.  That’s a new thing.

Still, why re-attach the Communist label?

Francis brings this label up himself time and again in the hopes he can shoot it down.  Because it fits.  That’s the problem with liberalism.  Its labels are apt so they employ word police.  Just trying saying ‘Mr. Jenner,’ or noting that women can be lachrymose.

In the 1st reading, which tells  of how St. Paul  organized a collection in the Church of Corinth, for the benefit of  to the Church of Jerusalem, whose members were facing great hardship. Pope Francis noted that, today as then, poverty is “a word that always embarrasses.” Many times, he said, we hear: “But this priest talks too much about poverty, this bishop speaks of poverty, this Christian, this nun talks about poverty … aren’t they a little communist, right?” On the contrary, he warned, “Poverty is at the very center of the Gospel: if we remove poverty from the Gospel, no one would be able to understand anything about the message of Jesus.”

Straw Man: When priests or nuns speak of poverty no one calls them Communists.  They call them Communists when they promote statism, forced redistribution, and endless unjust policy goals in the name of ‘social justice.’  That happens all the time, and that is Communist!

Then Pope Francis repeats one of his slogans yet again.

When faith does not reach the pockets it is not genuine.

I’m no Communist.  I only want to reach into your pocket so you can be a real Christian!