Splitting bits and pieces of a major encyclical devoted to man as custody of our natural treasures and beauty and turning it into an Al Gore defense of climate controls is absurd. He speaks of a throwaway culture of consumerism that empties itself of Christ, the very creator of our earthly planet. Can anyone turn a blind eye to the degradations of the rain forests and the oceans? The senseless slaughter of wildlife: ivory trade in elephant tusks? dolphins? or seal cubs for fur and profit? This is not a liberal or conservative issue. It is very much a Catholic issue in the sense that natural reserves are for use by all of God’s inhabitants.
Now the MSM would like to hijack the message as Francis being an avid supporter of climate change caused by normal human activity and this of course is what they do. But for those who read the encyclical carefully we don’t drink the kook-aid as strained through the opinion and news report filters of the NY Times.
Nobody’s hijacking anything, excerpt for Francis, who is trying to redefine the Catholic religion.
Forgive me for considering the sinful slaughter of children in the womb of far greater concern than the fate of dolphins and seals. Where is the encyclical condemning abortion and euthanasia?
The encyclical Laudato si', which makes sweeping claims based on junk science rather than empirical evidence, is an embarrassment to the Church, and these words of St. Augustine seem particularly appropos in describing its unfortunate effect:
"Usually, even a non-Christian knows something about the earth, the heavens, and the other elements of the world, about the motion and orbit of the stars and even their size and relative positions, about the predictable eclipses of the sun and moon, the cycles of the years and the seasons, about the kinds of animals, shrubs, stones, and so forth, and this knowledge he holds to as being certain from reason and experience. Now, it is a disgraceful and dangerous thing for an infidel to hear a Christian, presumably giving the meaning of Holy Scripture, talking nonsense on these topics; and we should take all means to prevent such an embarrassing situation, in which people show up vast ignorance in a Christian and laugh it to scorn. The shame is not so much that an ignorant individual is derided, but that people outside the household of faith think our sacred writers held such opinions, and, to the great loss of those for whose salvation we toil, the writers of our Scripture are criticized and rejected as unlearned men. If they find a Christian mistaken in a field which they themselves know well and hear him maintaining his foolish opinions about our books, how are they going to believe those books in matters concerning the resurrection of the dead, the hope of eternal life, and the kingdom of heaven, when they think their pages are full of falsehoods on facts which they themselves have learnt from experience and the light of reason? Reckless and incompetent expounders of Holy Scripture bring untold trouble and sorrow on their wiser brethren when they are caught in one of their mischievous false opinions and are taken to task by those who are not bound by the authority of our sacred books. For then, to defend their utterly foolish and obviously untrue statements, they will try to call upon Holy Scripture for proof and even recite from memory many passages which they think support their position, although they understand neither what they say nor the things about which they make assertion [quoting 1 Tim 1:7]."