Posted on 09/22/2015 6:49:31 AM PDT by shortstop
Pope Francis doesn’t hate you.
But he does hate your lifestyle, your country, and the economic principles upon which your life is built.
Today, the Holy Father will come to America, the nation which personifies all the evils he sees in the world, the country that is the obvious target of his invective and condemnation.
As he condemns capitalism and consumerism, denounces things like air conditioning and private automobiles, and condemns people who, by overconsumption, engage in what he calls social and racial oppression, he’s talking about you.
You know that, right?
Yesterday he was in Cuba, where he had no criticism for the regime that has locked up people for being Christian. Today he is in America, where he has criticized our way of life from top to bottom.
Most irksome to him is our country’s contribution to supposed manmade global warming. He accepts unquestioningly that the climate is changing and that that change is driven by man’s use of fossil fuels and that stopping that change is a major moral responsibility of the Catholic Church.
Consumption of natural resources, as demonstrated by modern society, he reasons, is destructive of the earth and morally wrong. Internal combustion and the burning of coal to generate electricity all make gases that, the pope says, destroy the earth and allow one people – you – to unrighteously oppress another people – everyone else.
The generation of those gasses is, then, a sin.
And the pope wants you and the United States to stop sinning, to stop consuming more than others and to stop having more than others. Income equality, a lot less electricity, elimination of fossil fuels, and no more air conditioning.
Apparently using air conditioning really ticks God off.
Which raises the question: Why did God make coal?
And oil?
Seriously, if the use of coal and oil is sinful, and presuming God made the earth, then why did he make so much coal and oil? Do hydrocarbons in nature exist merely to tempt man, to test his abilities of self-restraint?
Is a vein of West Virginia coal something akin to pornography, a forbidden fruit that must never be touched? The oil beneath the arctic, did God put that there to see if we would be pious enough not to use it? Do natural resources exist only to tempt us, a creation perhaps of the devil, as opposed to God?
And if it is miserably hot with intense humidity and you turn on the air conditioning to comfort a fretting child or to ease the circumstance of someone else afflicted by the heat, are you sinning?
Only in Pope Francis’ world.
And that is a world in sharp contrast with reality, to say nothing of the teachings of his two predecessors – Benedict XVI and Saint John Paul II. The Roman Catholic Church has gone from one of its most conservative pontiffs of modern time, to one of its most liberal. Imagine how Benedict XVI must be kicking himself, as the Francis papacy was created by the almost-unprecedented retirement of a sitting Benedict XVI.
I believe the pope is mistaken, both about wealth and global warming.
The resources of the earth are in the earth not to tempt us, but to bless us. God created a world replete with coal and oil because he knew of the needs of humans over time. He knew of our current population, and its need for energy and food – two things fossil fuels make possible. He also knew of the populations we shall yet produce, and of their needs.
Natural resources are a gift from God, to be used with thanksgiving, but certainly to be used. And those who argue that the blessings of God should be left in the ground, unused to better the lives of his children, are not doing the work or speaking the truth of God. And they are certainly not helping God's children -- the family of man.
And the blessing of the poor does not come about by the debasing of the rich, but by the lifting of the poor. Technology, a frequent target of the pope’s criticism, is not a curse, it is a blessing – a blessing from God. And just as the advance of technology – in every area – has blessed American life, its continued advance and application around the world will lift the lives of other peoples.
You do not enhance the lives of Third Worlders by attacking the lives of Americans. You enhance the lives of Third Worlders by applying the principles that enriched America to the situations of Third Worlders.
First among those is faith in and fidelity to God. Second is a belief in individual freedom and determination – including the freedom of the marketplace known as capitalism.
The pope is mistaken in condemning America and its lifestyle. Yes, the United States has moral woes which weigh it down, and has great need of repentance. But these are found in its morality, not its marketplace, finances and prosperity.
The pope is preaching a gospel of Marx that depicts America as the hated 1 percent, the oppressive source of the world’s woes. That is consistent with the liberation theology of his youth, but not the realities of the world.
Because the realities of the world are that in the traditional values and priorities of the United States we find not the source of mankind’s problems, but the solution to mankind’s problems.
I hope the pope is open minded enough to recognize that.
an you voice your discontent without the vile language?
Not in this case. I describe vile people using vile language. Besides, for this imbecile, it's so appropriate.
So be it. It’s a great big world out there.
WHY do so many Catholics JUDGE this pope so severely?
I will pray for your unbelief.
Father Guido Sarducci was a better role model and defender of the church than the current red Pope.
Plus, he smoked Camels.
Further, I think the so-called “Francis effect”, that supposedly is leading legions of lapsed Catholics back to the Church, is an urban legend. Pope Francis does get high marks from Catholics who stopped attending Mass years ago, but have they started actually going to church every Sunday again? Not in any parish in the NYC area, I assure you. The main message non-Catholics and lapsed Catholics take away from Pope Francis is his “Who am I to judge?” remark that (I hope) was meant to refer to homosexuals who are trying to live chaste lives, but has been widely cited as evidence that the Church doesn't really take its old rules about homosexuality — and contraception and divorce, etc. — seriously anymore.
This site must keep you busy with all the spelling corrections you’d have to do in a day. I think most people here can translate the occasional typo, so I have a friendly suggestion. Why don’t you read what I wrote and comment on that instead?
Well Shortstop, it happened so....I’d say they were 100%.
Good article.
I Strongly disagree with your appeal to continue donating to the Catholic church, or school. If this Pope wants to preach poverty then let the church lead the way.
If the Pope is wrong about economics and science(man made global warming)then what is the possibility that he is wrong on spiritual matters? There, I said it, the cat is out of the bag.
I was born Catholic, but has since claim to be Christian, as I suspected the church did not follow the teachings of Christ. This Pope reaffirms the core belief of the Catholic Church.
Wrong, since the duty of RCs is to follow their leaders who interpret what is written for them, and not be as Prots who seek to ascertain the validity of teaching by examination of the warrant for it.
And leadership elected the pope, which is an infallible decision (says Ratzinger), and treat even public proabortion, prosodomite pols as members in life and in death.
They are your brethren, and Catholicism is much liberalism overall , while we see RCs constantly promoting their church as the only one true one.
The unchangeable teachings of the Church?
HMMMmmm...
How DARE you point out the mindset difference between most Catholics and most Protestants!
Elsie, this Pope speaks less about the Gospel than he does about left-wing politics. As for the “unchangeable teachings of the Churchâ€, his push to streamline the annulment process — and to make it free! — do the opposite of supporting the Church’s “unchangeable†teaching that marriage is indissoluble.
It appears that way.
I can’t wait to see how his remarks in America are ‘translated’.
My thoughts exactly.
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