Free Republic

I was born into a sternly Presbyterian culture. Politically, I’m more Orange than Donald Trump’s skin tone. But today I am on my knees giving thanks to the Pope. He has produced the most powerful political document of the year, taking on the greatest challenge of our times. His first encyclical, Magnifica Humanitas, deals with the changes which will be wrought to all our lives by artificial intelligence in the months and years ahead. AI will transform our economies and societies massively and irrevocably; it will change what it means to be human; it may even mark the end of...

Pope Leo XIV published his first encyclical, Magnifica Humanitas, May 25, warning that artificial intelligence (AI) and other technological advances pose moral challenges that could reshape humanity’s understanding of truth, work, relationships, and human dignity.“Humanity, created by God in all its grandeur, is today facing a pivotal choice: either to construct a new Tower of Babel or to build the city in which God and humanity dwell together,” the encyclical, subtitled “On Safeguarding the Human Person in the Time of Artificial Intelligence,” opens.Pope Leo signed the encyclical May 15, the 135th anniversary of Pope Leo XIII’s 1891 encyclical Rerum Novarum,...

Otober 14, 2020 (LifeSiteNews) – Bishop Athanasius Schneider has expressed grief over Pope Francis’ latest encyclical Fratelli Tutti, noting that it “lacks a clearly supernatural horizon,” misrepresents St. Francis, and furthers the theological confusion Pope Francis created with his Abu Dhabi statement.   Reflecting on the time of St. Francis where the saint was called by Christ to rebuild the Church, Archbishop Schneider says, “Today the Church of Rome finds herself in a similar situation of spiritual collapse, due to the spiritual torpor of a majority of the Shepherds of the Church, the excessive absorption of the Pope himself in temporal affairs, and...

In Fratelli Tutti, the new encyclical of Pope Francis released yesterday, pro-life Catholics are confronted with a political emphasis that ignores abortion. In line with U.S. bishops who have eschewed the fight for the right to life of unborn children, Pope Francis has explicitly excluded abortion from the political concerns laid out in his latest encyclical. In paragraph 188 of Fratelli Tutti, Pope Francis says politicians’ “biggest concern should not be about a drop in the polls, but about finding effective solutions to the phenomenon of social and economic exclusion, with its baneful consequences: human trafficking, the marketing of human...

Pope Francis’ new encyclical, Fratelli tutti: sulla fraternità e l’amicizia sociale (“All Brothers: On Fraternity and Social Friendship”) will be issued on October 3, the Vatican confirmed Saturday. According to Church Militant, the encyclical is “a sequel to his controversial Abu Dhabi pact with Grand Imam Ahmad al-Tayyeb last year, and will cite Abu Mazen [Mahmoud Abbas], Palestinian backer of terrorism, as an example of ‘peace’ and ‘fraternity.’” No, this is not the Babylon Bee; this is real. It gets even worse. According to Vatican News, “The theme of fraternity is also present in [the Pope’s] constant embrace of migrants,...

Pope Francis on Wednesday gave President Trump a copy of his 2015 encyclical letter on the environment and climate change. Trump responded to the gifts by saying: "Well, I'll be reading them," according to pool reports. The Trump administration has been pushing to roll back Obama-era regulations on the environment. Trump on Wednesday met with Pope Francis at the Vatican. At the beginning of the meeting, the president said it was a "great honor" to be meeting with the pope. The meeting lasted about 30 minutes. Trump said after its conclusion that it was a "fantastic meeting." Trump in March...

Official Documents of the Holy and Great Council of the Orthodox Church Back Encyclical of the Holy and Great Council of the Orthodox Church ΕλληνικάEnglishрусскийfrançais ENCYCLICAL OF THE HOLY AND GREAT COUNCIL OF THE ORTHODOX CHURCH Crete 2016 In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit With a hymn of thanksgiving, we praise and worship God in Trinity, who has enabled us to gather together during the days of the feast of Pentecost here on the island of Crete, which has been sanctified by St. Paul, the Apostle to the Gentiles, and his...

LAUDATO SI’ A letter from Pope Francis on the Care of our Common Home “Praise be to You” (“Laudato Si”) – Pope Francis’ environmental letter --- is a different kind of encyclical, and invites a different kind of response from most of its predecessors. In this essay I hope to put the spotlight on the ways this encyclical is unprecedented, and also selectively highlight its positive contributions to Catholic Social Thought. Historically, encyclicals were any official teaching letters concerning Catholic doctrine on faith and morals. They were sometimes addressed to bishops in a particular area, or sometimes to the bishops...

Today at Mass, the priest for some reason brought up the prophet Amos. I was fairly sure I knew where this was going, but stayed for the end. When he passed through slavery and war to get to our Pontiff's call for worldwide totalitarian government to redistribute income (isn't slavery the ultimate income redistribution?)I had heard enough and left. I haven't left Mass in the middle since the Sunday after 9/11/2001 when Father Jack at Our Lady of Guadalupe railed about "the corrupt men who control Alan Greenspan". Pope John Paul fought against totalitarianism and for the freedom of all...

Since my buddy Chris Ferrara has, perhaps before anyone else in the English speaking world, done a thorough examination of the pope’s environment encyclical, “Laudato Si,” I will confine myself here to some observations of a different sort and to proposing a few questions for consideration – to talking around it, so to speak. A great many people, long before the document was issued yesterday, have been asking whether it should have been written at all. Is this appropriate for a pope? Why was it necessary? Why, of all the possible topics, did Pope Francis choose this one? Has he...

Having wasted over an hour of my life, I now can say that I have read Laudato Si. It is the Pope’s latest verbose tome of an encyclical, which: espouses global warming alarmism, calls for international organizations to police climate change, and waxes poetic about people leading animals to God. In short it is as if Al Gore, Karl Marx, and Teilhard de Chardin wrote an encyclical. What’s worse is that because it came from a Pope, otherwise sane and rational people are actually taking it seriously.

As expected, the Vatican released Pope Francis’ much-anticipated encyclical on the environment this morning, and as anticipated, it demands a radical departure from the current status quo. Titled Laudato, Sí in honor of his namesake St. Francis of Assisi, the Pope calls for a “bold cultural revolution” in apparent ignorance of the horrors meted out in the previous century under that rubric, to combat evils in the present time, both imagined (or at least highly speculative) and real. The main focus for the media will be on the pontifical call to arms on climate change, but there’s at least...

BONN, Germany (Reuters) - Pope Francis is likely to have a major impact in spurring U.N. negotiations on global warming with an encyclical on the environment next week, the U.N.'s climate chief said on Thursday. "Pope Francis is personally committed to this issue like no other pope before him," Christiana Figueres told a news conference at June 1-11 talks on a deal to combat climate change due to be agreed in Paris in December. The encyclical, a letter sent to bishops, due next Thursday would add a moral dimension to work on climate change for many believers, who would view...

A Vatican insider asserts that Pope Francis has scrapped the draft of his encyclical letter on the environment and sent it back for major revision. The letter was slated for publication in early summer, but now may not be ready until much later, he suggests. Citing sources within the Santa Marta residence where the Pope lives, veteran Vatican journalist Sandro Magister has written that “Francis has scrubbed the draft” of the text presented to him by Argentinian Archbishop Víctor Manuel Fernández, perhaps foreseeing that Cardinal Gerhard Müller of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith “would have demolished it” once...

Why is the head of the U.S. Bishops meeting with the White House and the Director of the liberal Center for American Progress? What goals could they possibly share? Is there anything Catholic about that pro-gay, pro-death power group? As the Obama administration tries to position itself as a world leader on climate change ahead of United Nations talks, it's engaging a powerful ally: the Catholic Church. Pope Francis has been moving the Church into a more aggressive posture on climate change, citing the moral need to protect the planet and its citizens. With countries preparing their own climate plans...

Well, His Holiness Pope Francis has not yet issued his encyclical on the environment, but already it is attracting a great deal of attention. Fr Alexander Lucie-Smith makes a good case in his article suggesting that such an encyclical is perhaps not such a great idea. I'm with him on that, but of course there are various interests and various groups for whom such an encyclical will most likely be a 'godsend'. During this post, I am going to be as balanced and level-headed as a conspiracy theorist fruit-cake can be, but I am confident that within the next year,...

Unexpectedly, I came across a reference to NBC re-making Rosemary’s Baby into a four-hour mini-series; press reports suggest that shooting has already begun this month. With this news, a fear began to grip as my thoughts returned to the original.Strange tales grow up around movies. Like many before and since, Rosemary’s Baby has had its fair share. There is one, however, regarding that 1968 movie that to this day, continues to disquiet, revealing as it does a tale seemingly darker than that which transpired upon the screen.Sharon Tate was one of the “faces” of the 1960s—like Christie and Bardot;...

Most Rev. Alexander SampleArchbishop of Portland As most readers are surely aware, Pope Francis has issued already his first papal encyclical letter to the whole Church. It is entitled Lumen Fidei (The Light of Faith). Our Holy Father openly acknowledges in the first paragraphs that the work on the encyclical was largely that of his predecessor, Pope Benedict XVI. Pope Francis humbly adds that he took up the work of Pope Benedict’s almost completed draft of the letter and “added a few contributions of [his] own.” But make no mistake; this encyclical is that of Pope Francis.The encyclical is...

ROME, July 5, 2013 (LifeSiteNews.com) – In his first encyclical letter, released this morning, Pope Francis has reiterated that marriage is a union of one man and one woman for the procreation and nurturing of children.

FULL TITLE Relevant: Benedict XVI finishing the encyclical on Faith to be signed by Pope Francis New encyclical on the poor: "Beati Pauperes"? Following his recent visit ad limina with the bishops of his region, the Bishop of Molfetta (Apulia, Italy), Luigi Martella, spoke of the conversation they had with the new Pope, including the following: Then, he spoke to us about Benedict XVI with such tenderness: "When I met him for the first time in Castelgandolfo, I noticed that he had a very lucid memory - he said -, even though physically challenged. Now he is clearly better." In...