Posted on 06/15/2015 3:10:19 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
It takes a big ego to run for president. How else could you keep a straight face while telling everybody: “I’m the best person in the entire country to be the next president of the United States?”
But if it takes a big ego to fun for president, it takes an even bigger ego to run against — the Pope! Meet Rick Santorum. Desperate to find one issue that separates him from the rest of the Republican pack of clowns, Roman Catholic Santorum has decided to attack Pope Francis for daring to speak out on climate change.
In a radio interview with talk show host Don Giordano, Santorum said the Pope has no business talking about climate change. The Pope would be better off “leaving science to the scientists,” the recurring presidential candidate volunteered, “and focus on what we’re really good on, which is theology and morality.” And, above all, Santorum advised, the Pope should stay out of politics: “When we get involved with political and controversial scientific theories, then I think the church is probably not as forceful and credible.”
A couple of days later, Santorum doubled down, insisting that while it was not OK for the Pope to express his opinion on climate change, it was OK for him, a politician, to do so because: “Politicians, whether we like it or not, people in government have to make decisions with regard to public policy that affect American workers.” Besides, Santorum told Fox News’ Chris Wallace, the Pope had more important things to worry about: “I think there are more pressing problems confronting the earth than climate change.”
To which, we should all shout out: “Pray tell, what? Name one issue that’s more important than climate change!” Santorum’s wrong about this issue on so many levels he should be ashamed to show his face in public. Let’s start with the fact that Pope Francis is, indeed, a scientist. He has a degree in chemistry and worked as a chemist before joining the Jesuits.
Even were he not a scientist, Pope Francis is still on solid ground talking about climate change because it is the most critical environmental issue of our day, and Christians have long considered protection of the environment a moral duty. Taking his cue from the first book of the Bible — Genesis 2:15: “The Lord God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it” — the Pope believes God put us on this beautiful planet, not to destroy it, but to protect it for ourselves and future generations.
As a Catholic, Santorum should also know better than to suggest that popes should stick to strictly theoretical or theological issues. In their encyclicals, popes have always talked about controversial issues of the day. Paul VI spoke out against the Vietnam War. Pius XII condemned the Nazi invasion of Hungary. And, perhaps most famously, Leo XIII in Rerum Novarum (1891) affirmed the right of workers to form labor unions and receive a living wage.
Most importantly, Santorum’s wrong to assert that there’s no clear science on global warming. If he refuses to open his eyes and see shrinking glaciers, he might check with the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, which reports that 97 percent of scientists agree that climate change is “unequivocal,” is a serious threat to the planet, and is “very likely” caused mainly by human activity.
Scheduled for release on June 18, the Pope’s encyclical will be entitled “Laudato Si,” or “Praise Be,” a line from the “Canticle of Creatures” by St. Francis of Assisi, the Pope’s patron saint. And it could not come at a better time: just six months before the international conference on climate change in Paris this December, and four months before the Pope’s September 24 address to a Joint Session of Congress.
In it, according to Vatican sources, Pope Francis will argue that the health and beauty of God’s creation is now seriously threatened by climate change — and that action to fight global warming is now a moral imperative for all 1.2 billion Catholics worldwide, and for all people of faith.
And that’s why Rick Santorum doesn’t want the Pope to talk about climate change. Because when he calls climate change “the moral issue of our time” — that means Santorum, Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz, Bobby Jindal, and other climate change deniers are, by definition, immoral. And that’s why Santorum doesn’t want the Pope to talk about climate change. Because now to the list of grievous sins — theft, murder, adultery — will be added: denying climate change. Rick Santorum? Guilty!
“So you believe in Anthropogenic Global Warming?”
Wasn’t it Tancredo handing the left ammunition?
The pope ought to stick to religion only. He dirties and discredits himself being allied to Marxist causes.
Then, the sun is heretical.
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