Posted on 06/19/2015 7:05:39 AM PDT by all the best
Pope Francis’s new encyclical “On Care for Our Common Home” has been released to much acclaim from the mainstream media. One German news source declares “Papal encyclical could break climate change deadlock.” “Pope Francis' views on climate change present a moral challenge to many 2016 GOP contenders,” declares US News and World Report. Not in many decades has a papal document been so easily used as a tool for political and electoral ax-grinding.
Indeed, we would not normally cover a papal document at mises.org at all. Benedict’s “Caritas in Veritate,” for example, was published without any mention in free-market circles.
On the other hand, this pope is far more political than most modern popes. This new encyclical, combined with his first one, “Evangelii Gaudium,” contains numerous assertions about public policy that stem from a particular historical and political worldview.
And what is the worldview of this pope? Well, it is a vision that is relentlessly pessimistic. According to Francis, the world is very nearly falling down around us. The poor are getting poorer, he claims. The inequalities between rich and poor are worse than ever, he says. Pollution is making us sicker than ever, he implies. And the basic requirements for sustaining human life are becoming more inaccessible than ever. These claims serve a purpose: to illustrate that the rise of industrialization and market economies (a modern phenomenon) are the cause of these social and environmental ills.
Francis’s Worldview Does Not Fit the Facts
In painting a picture of a world that Francis says resembles "an immense pile of filth," Francis is ignoring a wealth of empirical data through which his assertions can be shown to be simply and factually wrong.
(Excerpt) Read more at mises.org ...
His call for “bold cultural revolution” is right out of Mao’s “Little Red Book”. Who needs Scripture when you have Das Kapital? Pope Francis (former?) Vicar of Christ has now placed his hope for salvation in the works of men, not in the Redeeming Blood of Jesus! He calls for a centralized top-down all-powerful (certainly authoritarian) global political system. .. the church now to be replaced with a “global political authority”. God is fired and Karx Marx hired! We seem headed for essentially Tower of Babel II.
"Mises Institute" ping to read later
It’s pretty tough to be a believing Christian and not be pessimistic. Though we don’t know exactly when the End Times will be, it’s pretty obvious that they’re approaching. Rather like if you see a pregnant woman someplace; you don’t know exactly when she’ll give birth, but you know she will fairly soon. That’s the condition the world is in right now.
N.B. I’ve heard the Antichrist can’t be a Muslim, because Islam at least tips its hat to Jesus as Messiah (if only to the Jews). So it has to be someone who denies this entirely.
I hadn’t paid that much attention to how much of a gloombox Francis seemed to be. But you’re right, this kind of behavior seems to be a hallmark of dropping faith in the promises of the Lord that he is supposed to be representing. A Roman Catholic I am not, but a Christian I am, and I lament it whenever a witness gets lost in worldliness.
The Pope is a Chavista.
There is absolute no reason the AC cannot be a muslim.
- Russian commies going underground and re-inventing themselves as the “Green movement” pushing climate alarm
- Marxist Obama elected POTUS
- Pope Benedict mysteriously resigns, first Pope in 500 years to do so
- Pope Francis takes his place, a South American Marxist
- Pope Francis jumps on the global warming band-wagon with his Marxist brethren
I suspect ALL of this is inter-connected. I do not like to think this way, but currently I have much more reason to believe that Pope Francis is utterly evil than to believe he is a force for good.
That was a great article. Thanks for posting.
It’s not about saving the world, it’s about the saving the souls.
Francis is a Jesuit. That says everything.
A Catholic Leader NEVER promotes confusion and NEVER blurs the Truth. Educated Catholic Leaders NEVER put the earthly things above the Soul and Eternity with God while ignoring the Truth. The Marxist solutions he advocates are irrational and evil, and will destroy all freedom (total dehumanization when Christianity should be the most humanizing (Natural Laws.)
Of course, the leaders of the Church are human and not perfect, but the people involved in counseling this pope (and they are numerous) need to be fired and removed. Marxist Catholic is an oxymoron because of subsidiarity and Natural Law (God’s Laws/Science/Biology/Reason) being the basis of the Catholic Canon which is in line with the Holy Bible.
As the Pope St. Pius X warned in Pascendi (1907)——the infiltration was INSIDE the Catholic Church. This has been proven, since before VII with all the confusion and blurring the Truth and many books which talks of mafia/Freemason/Luciferean ???? takeover of the Vatican Bank (worth billions).
Faith, Hope and Charity are the Theological Virtues which are essential for ALL Catholics and without these Virtues, you should not be allowed to be elevated to pope or a leader in the Church. Clean out time. You can judge them by their “fruits”. (Irrationality is a BIG clue).
In the 19th century, the Catholics decried the twin evils of “liberalism” and “socialism.” The former represented liberal, democratic capitalism, as associated with Northern and Protestant Europe; and the latter Marxism. At the time, the Catholics favored Monarchy. (Some people claim that the Catholics favored a middle ground. The term “Semi-socialism” was invoked by some.)
In the early part of the 20th century, the Catholics threw their lot in with Fascism. Peron’s Argentina, Mussilini’s Italy and Franco’s Spain were the examples. The Catholics considered the democratic countries to be weak, and unable to resist soviet communism. The Catholics remained neutral through WWII (the last war in which the Catholics took a side was the Spanish Civil War).
Skipping over the papacy of John Paul II (a difficult thing to do), during the past half century, the Catholics have thrown their lot in with populist democratic socialism, hardly distinguishable from old-style Marxism, and completely aligned with eco-”post-capitalist,” left-wing parties such as Syriza of Greece and Podemos of Spain. This pope calls capitalism “the new tyranny” (when he should say the “renewed” tyranny, since the mainstream of Catholic social teaching has always been anti-capitalist. The only problem with saying that is that Catholic social teaching is now a revival of there other old tyranny.
There is a liberal tradition within Catholicism, just as with Islam. It has not been the mainstream. Aquinas, Erasmus, Lord Acton and John Paul II would be rolling over in their graves.
He seems to me like a relentless Peronist.
Ok, per Francis, lets make all the new water purification technology that is being funded by grants in the third world illegal.
It is evil technology that is enabling healthy population growth.
Absolutely.
No one 'wants' to be poor, but the real treasure is in Heaven, and that is where our hearts are to be directed.
The problem is who the pope is listening.
Francis is the first and only Pope that has been against the Magisterium of the Church on the constant condemnation of communism and opened the doors of the Vatican to the theologians who corrupted the Gospels with the doctrine of Marx. Most importantly, the Pope has backed his words with actions. During his visit to Brazil in 2013, the Pope held meetings with Liberation Theologians on preparing a new doctrine for the church.
By the fruits you will know the tree, by their advisers you will know the leaders.
Pope Francis is more radical and dangerous than Obama. As soon as he took power he rescued from the trash bin of History the Marxist liberation theology after was proscribed by John Paul II and Benedict XVI. Francis called the most radical of its leaders, Leonardo Boff, who was silenced by H.H. Pope John Paul II, as one of his adviser for his encyclical that tries to give moral support to the global warming hoax, but instead Francis destroys his credibility and demeans the respect for the Catholic Church.
Father Gustavo Gutierrez, father of the liberation theology embraced by Francis, explained: “What we mean here regarding liberation theology is the involvement of the revolutionary political process”. (10) Gutiérrez also explains the sense of this involvement: “Only by going beyond a society divided into classes. (…) Only eliminating private property of the wealth created by human work, will we be able to lay down the bases for a more just society. It is for this that the efforts to project a new society in Latin America are tending more and more towards socialism”.
“Socialist societies are very ethical, clean, physically and morally. If it weren’t for his materialist doctrine it could be argued that they carried out the ethical teaching of the social doctrine of the Church.” Leonardo Boff on his return from a trip to Moscow, cfr.ABC, 16-VII-87, p.45
“The national planning of the Society of Jesus in the United States should, following the example of China, become an international planning. Towards the convergence of problems in all areas of the world around a single theme: the construction in different times and forms of a world Communist society.” Strategic document of a group of Dutch Jesuits - in collaboration with other Jesuit revolutionaries—published for internal debate in the official journal of the society of Jesus in the United States, National Jesuit News, April 1972.
Another of Francis’ top advisers is German Prof. John Schellnhuber, a well-known Malthusian and climate radical, and the director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University. Jeffrey Sachs is a longtime promoter of environmental measures, especially contraception and abortion, for purposes of population control. He was invited to Rome to participate in the Holy See’s climate-change summit in late April. Pope Francis made a very demeaning comment criticizing as rabbits the Catholic mothers that are blessed with many children. The mother of St Catherine de Sienna gave birth to 25 children. St Ignatius was the youngest of 13 children. How many more future Saints would be denied to live by Pope Francis’ birth control policy emulating Mao’s.
Francis rescued Marxist liberation theology from the trash bin of history, now he wants to exhume Mao’s Cultural Revolution.
In Pope Francis’ call for a “bold cultural revolution” to confront climate change, he is using classic Marxist terms (Mao’s Cultural Revolution and Marxist liberation theology) to promote a political agenda aimed toward the advance of “collectivism, redistribution of wealth, and global government.”
At one time Jesuits were held in high esteem. They were the crème de la crème of the Intelligensia of the Catholic church. They slowly evolved into the mirror image of the know-it-all liberal professors who are poisoning our childrens’ minds in our universities. Makes me very sad.
“Papal encyclical could break climate change deadlock.”
Papal Encyclical could very well empty the pews of Catholic Churches around the World. I think there are many things of great importance to occupy the Interest of the Pope, for the rest of his time in Office. Leave Science to the Scientists.
Take care of the Faithful.
AMEN.
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