Oh, give me a break. So, you are one of the Catholics that believe everything the Pope does, regardless of talking on Scripture or otherwise, is infallible?
I thought that even the Catholic church said such thoughts were heresy, with the Pope only infallible on godly matters, not the rest.
Get real.
You wrote:
“Oh, give me a break. So, you are one of the Catholics that believe everything the Pope does, regardless of talking on Scripture or otherwise, is infallible?”
Where did marshmallow mention infallibility? Criticize what he said all you like, but why do you have to falsely claim he said something he never said in that post?
What marshmallow said - and he is absoultely right on this - is that the pope’s comments are rooted in the gospel not modern political conservativism. Look at what you posted:
“1. Reform of global institutions, including the UN, for “the management of globalization.”
Is it conservative? No. But is it compatible with the gospel message of charity? Yes.
“2. More widespread sources of wealth: not just banks but mutual societies, credit unions, and other new forms.”
To me that seems incredibly conservative - people doing it for themselves rather than waiting for high interest loans from corporate banks. What’s more conservative than doing it yourself and helping your neighbors?
“3. Strengthened trade unions to protect workers in the global market.”
The Church has been teaching that since the first days of trade unions - that’s well over a century of constant teaching and that means the Church has been very conservative in her teaching by changing nothing. That may not be the conservatism you want, but it is Christian nonetheless.
“4. Greater aid to developing nations to combat the “scandal of inequality.””
Charity. Christian. Period.
“5. Action on climate change, for economic and religious reasons.”
This is the only one I think is more of passing thing just because we know that climate change is natural more than manmade. The principle, however, of having some sort of coordinaed plan for dealing with the possible effects of climate chage makes perfect sense. Again, for the sake of charity is nothing else.
I think what is at work here is this: many of the anti-Catholics here, like yourself, have replaced Christianity in their hearts and minds with another gospel that is as much rooted in political conservativism as it is in Protestantism. Because of that many of you believe traditional Christian beliefs and practices are not Christian at all because they do not fit into a recently developed political conservatism. By the way, that political conservatism is largely a product of this continent. It would be almost entirely unrecognizable to the Protestants of 16th or 17th century Europe. There are mamy good points to it, but I long recognized two things about it:
1) As a fullfeathered thing, it doesn’t neessarily work everywhere and always because it is so American, and
2) I should never confuse it with Christianity itself. Always remember what CS Lewis warned us about in the Screwtape Letters: we shouldn’t pursue a Christianity that is: Christianity and...(add whatever you want here).
Infallibility is an interesting issue but I'm not sure what that has to do with the current encyclical. Nobody, including the Pope, is pretending that this was given under the seal of infallibility.
Has the subject changed?
Your original point was that the Pope's writing was not rooted in "true conservative thought", whatever that nebulous entity might be. My point was that it is based on the Gospel, which is not encompassed by any ideology derived from the human intellect, including, believe it or not, conservatism.