Part the price for worshiping and serving those big, green,...
...expensive, Created Things?
Posted on 06/19/2015 5:36:03 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
Hopes that the pope’s encyclical will narrow the climate-change divide are likely to be dashed.
“The earth, our home, is beginning to look more and more like an immense pile of filth,” Pope Francis tells us in his encyclical Laudato si’. The encyclical had climate alarmists in a swoon for the pope’s deep dive into climate policy and taking a swing at skeptics for denial and obstructionism. But the encyclical has the merit of honesty in not maintaining any pretense of objectivity and balance. “Our goal is not to amass information or to satisfy curiosity” — the pope writes in an allusion to the disinterested quest for scientific knowledge — “but rather to become painfully aware, to dare to turn what is happening to the world into our own personal suffering and thus to discover what each of us can do about it.”
Like other environmental activists, the pope — who might now be considered the world’s leading green — is using global warming to prosecute a deeply ecological, anti-capitalist agenda. Designed to influence the outcome of the Paris climate talks in December, the Pope’s message would have been the same even if alarmist scientists had not misinformed him that the planet had been warming in recent decades, when there has been little or no warming for nearly two decades. “Our concern cannot be limited merely to the threat of extreme weather events, but must also extend to the catastrophic consequences of social unrest,” the pope writes. “Obsession with a consumerist lifestyle, above all when few people are capable of maintaining it, can only lead to violence and mutual destruction.”
We are living in a period of “deep crisis,” he says, and the document is littered with warnings of impending ecological crisis. In 1971, Pope Paul VI had spoken of an “ecological catastrophe” caused by the explosive growth of industrial civilization and stressed the urgent need for “a radical change in the conduct of humanity.” That change didn’t happen — and neither did the catastrophe. But then, as the present pope concedes, “things do not look that serious and the planet could continue as it is for some time.”
Laudato si’ is a throwback to the limits-to-growth debate of the early 1970s. The idea of unlimited growth, says the pope, is based on the lie (menzogna in the original Italian) that there is “an infinite supply of the earth’s goods,” demonstrating the pope’s fallibility when it comes to understanding economics and innovation. As John Paul II wrote, in developed countries, wealth is about the possession of know-how, technology, and skill — but the current pope is a fan of the precautionary principle, which would block technological advance. The pope suggests containing economic growth by “setting some reasonable limits and even retracing our steps before it is too late.” It is the Club of Rome (a think tank founded in 1968 to limit population growth and “to stop the suicidal roller coaster man now rides”) without abortion. Self-evidently, population growth without economic growth can only result in growing immiserization.
Parts of the encyclical read like a reactionary diatribe against industrialization and the modern world. “Never have we so hurt and mistreated our common home as we have in the last two hundred years,” the pope says. He is against urbanization (“we were not meant to be inundated by cement, asphalt, glass, and metal”), the culture of consumerism (prioritizing “short-term gain and private interest”), social media (“their influence can stop people from learning how to live wisely”), and even newer and more powerful air-conditioning irresponsibly promoted by businesses stimulating ever greater demand (“an outsider looking at our world would be amazed at such behavior, which at times appears self-destructive”). Perhaps the pope realized he’d overdone it. “Who can deny the beauty of an aircraft or a skyscraper?” he asks, after quoting John Paul II on the benefits of science and technology and his immediate predecessor on mankind’s urge to overcome our material limitations.
Much of the pope’s prescription is reheated rhetoric from the 1970s and the U.N.-sponsored New International Economic Order on systems of governance for the “global commons” and the North’s exploitation of the South’s resources. The Declaration on the Establishment of the New International Order portrays unregulated businesses as predatory and destructive. Technology linked to business interests promotes the throwaway society, it says. Unlike nature, which recycles, “we have not yet managed to adopt a circular model of production capable of preserving resources for present and future generations.”
John Paul II experienced Communism and saw at first hand its degradation of the human spirit and its total failure as an economic system, and he understood the link between the two. Muddled, confused, and contradictory as all this is, it is mild in comparison with Paul VI’s 1967 encyclical Progressio populorum. Paul VI endorsed expropriation of large estates, denounced unbridled liberalism as creating a tyranny, argued that richer nations’ “superfluous wealth” should be given to poor nations, attacked free trade, and advocated government planning. However, the comparison with Francis and John Paul II is stark. The Polish pope experienced Communism and saw at first hand its degradation of the human spirit and its total failure as an economic system, and he understood the link between the two.
In his 1991 encyclical Centesimus Annus, John Paul II asked whether capitalism should be the model for Third World countries seeking a path of economic and civil progress. The answer depended on the definition of capitalism:
If by “capitalism” [it] is meant an economic system which recognizes the fundamental and positive role of business, the market, private property and the resulting responsibility for the means of production, as well as free human creativity in the economic sector, then the answer is certainly in the affirmative.
By contrast, the first pope from the Third World shows no understanding of why Argentina is one of the biggest economic failures of the second half of the 20th century. In 1900, Argentina’s GDP per capita (measured in purchasing power parity) was more than 50 percent higher than Italy’s, where the pope’s father had been born. On being elected in 1946, General Perón was surprised by Argentina’s huge gold and foreign-currency reserves: “We have the Central Bank full of gold and we don’t know where to put it any more” Thanks in part to the Second World War, Argentina’s GDP per capita at that time was four-fifths higher than Italy’s. Within three years, Perón had solved the gold storage problem. Inflation was over 50 percent and the Central Bank’s gold reserves had been blown. In 1959, Italy overtook Argentina, and by the end of the century, Italy’s GDP per capita was more than double Argentina’s.
The pope’s green Peronism is hardly going to persuade American conservatives to join his climate crusade. Indeed, the pope invites disagreement with his views. “The Church does not presume to settle scientific questions or to replace politics,” the Pope writes in Laudato si.’ “But I am concerned to encourage an honest and open debate.” Surely everyone can agree with that.
— Rupert Darwall is the author of The Age of Global Warming: A History.
The Pope should have run for a political office ‘in the world’... He could have hung with Al Gore... and Clinton - gone to orgy island with the boys...
One puts their faith in politics when they have no faith in God.
He should get out of Rome more often.
>>>>We need to revoke Catholic Church’s tax exempt status in the United States.
Your statement doesn’t go far enough to do what must happen.
Maybe you could work with the SPLC and HRC to have it declared a hate group by the Obama administration.
>>>>The pope has no business involving himself in partisan politics.
You know, you’re absolutely right. Pope Pius IX, Leo XIII, Pius XI, Pius XII, John XXIII, and John Paul II should have kept their noses of of politics when they condemned socialism and communism. Hopefully Bergoglio will apologize for those unfortunate statements. (/s)
In seriousness, since I doubt that you object to those statements, and I doubt that you object to previous popes’ statements about other political topics, like speaking on same sex “unions”, abortion, or private property rights, I’m sure you wouldn’t mind it if they speak.
But I think that we could all agree that if he’s going to open his fool mouth, it should be that he speaks as a man of God, not as a leftist tool pushing what is either a pantheistic new age religious agenda or an atheistic agenda.
The rural areas don’t want another load of welfare takers. There are not enough jobs on farms to support them, and we are all full up already.
Once a Pope steps away from using the Bible to preach/teach to Catholics about the rules by which they should live their lives, then I definitely object to them “speaking” on the issues you mentioned.
The pope is and should be free to address his flock on abortion, same-sex unions, private property rights, ‘global warming’, or whatever.
However, when he begins lecturing governments about those issue, he has crossed a line and become a political partisan. And political partisans should not be tax exempt.
It's worse than that. Catholicism is opposed to Holy Scripture, the inspired Word of God. Once a supposedly Christian faith subverts the Word (this certainly includes the mainline Protestant churches), they are apostate and subject to all the evils of the world - the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes and the pride of life.
They stop being Christ's Church and start being a humanistic fellowship bent on solving the problems of the world instead of preaching the Word and letting the Holy Spirit do His work in people's hearts.
This kind of fellowship is like a foundering ship to which the rats flock instead of abandoning her.
I believe that the the Catholic church, i.e. her parishes, her clergy and her teaching, are all filled to overflowing with Satan and his workers of evil. If the Catholic church were to miraculously turn to Christ and reject worshiping Mary and the "saints", the teaching of the nonexistent Purgatory, worshiping icons and relics, engaging in pagan rituals, etc., she would no longer be "The Catholic Church", but would simply and humbly be Christ's Church.
Like any other human being he is entitled to his political opinions.
What he is not entitled to do is to stamp an official Imprimateur on them and couch them as being Scripturally-based Church teaching.
>>My late uncle was a Jesuit. He was far from a Communist.
Was he a banker?
Imagine that. A capitalist bank - owned by the collective and run with the principles of “from each according to their ability, to each according to their need”.
I wonder how long it would take before the needs of the many outweighed the ability of the few...
And who is John Galt?
It’s all about the gold. Have you e dr gone inside a Catholic Church? They have gold everything and everywhere. The little dry bread disks are kept in a gold dish in a gold vault and the wine is kept in a gold vault and drank from a gold chalice. The priest’s have gold threads woven into silk robes and the wear a gold hat. Every gold thing was bought with money that is given to the “poor”. I sat my entire formative years watching my parents tossing dollar bills into a basket that was attached to a long handle and stuck out in front of them three times in an hour. One time around was never enough for the basket. Then I had to wear clothes that were handed down from my older brother who was fat. I think God was telling me something even inside of his own supposed house.
This pope wants everyone to be poor. We should be guilty of greed and avarice if we can enjoy life. We should never have sex unless we are trying to produce more catholic children. Give whatever we have to the “poor”.
>>>>However, when he begins lecturing governments about those issue, he has crossed a line and become a political partisan. And political partisans should not be tax exempt.
OK, so then the Church should have lost it’s tax exempt status when Gregory XVI condemned the slave trade back in 1839? http://www.papalencyclicals.net/Greg16/g16sup.htm (of course he was mostly reiterating the words of Paul III written 300 years earlier)
Since there was no income tax then, maybe that’s too early. perhaps the Church should have lost tax exempt status in 1937 when atheistic communism was condemned (http://www.papalencyclicals.net/Pius11/P11DIVIN.HTM) or perhaps when, in the same year, he ordered his encyclical Mit Brenneder Sorge (http://www.papalencyclicals.net/Pius11/P11BRENN.HTM) to be read at all masses. Talk about interference with government!!!!
Do you favor a French solution, like their 1905 law on the Separation of Church and State?
Part the price for worshiping and serving those big, green,...
...expensive, Created Things?
>>It’s all about the gold.
Uhuh.
And the Jesuits do love their M.B.A.'s
The brainworks of the "cult-ure"/farm deserve the milk and apples... don't they?
The problem is that Francis only listen to those who share his political socialist agenda
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, who 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.”
That is a few million dollars of rolling stock, used a few weeks a year.
I grew up on a farm. My Dad supported us with 800 acres, and 6,000 head of hogs. Today, we would not be able to live.
You need upwards of 3,000 acres to make it a full time life. I don’t even know how much livestock you would need. Most of the packers use sister corporations for that stuff now.
That is why this is so nuts. If we all went back to the lifestyle that the Pope and others wanted, most of the world would be paying a logarithmic scale more for food.
“The rural areas don’t want another load of welfare takers. There are not enough jobs on farms to support them, and we are all full up already.”
Come now. You can’t possibly be saying Catholics are parasites.
If they come, they are obeying El Pope´
What are they going to do there?
HUD has been shipping welfare takers to the rural towns for a long time. There are places where I grew up that have almost 100% unemployment now.
The farmers are starting to build fences to keep people out. There isn’t enough jobs there to support a massive influx of people.
Precisely.
Perhaps they should have lost their tax exempt status in 1937. I was not even alive in 1937 to opine on the matter.
Right now, today, it is my opinion that they should lose it now.
Global Warming on Free Republic here, here and here
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