Free Republic

Pope Francis confirms he will attend UN’s COP28 ‘climate change’ conference in Dubai The Pope's participation in the UN's Dubai climate change conference is an historic first, and is a signal move in his support for the Paris Agreement. Pope Francis has announced he will attend the upcoming climate change “COP28” conference in Dubai in December, in a historic first. In a television interview with Italian news outlet TG1, Pope Francis confirmed previous reports that he would participate in the upcoming COP28 conference being held in Dubai. “Yes, I will go to Dubai,” the Pope declared. “I think I will...

Spanish Archdiocese Celebrates ‘Sexual Diversity’Universal Church disagreesMADRID (ChurchMilitant.com) - The Office of Social-Pastoral Work of the archdiocese of Madrid parroted on its website the LGBTQ slogan of "living unity in diversity," a mantra propagated by the Jesuit-administered Community of Christian Life (CVC).Almudena Cathedral, archdiocese of Madrid The websites of the archdiocese and the CVC notably bear the rainbow colors of the LGTBQ flag. CVC claims to be inspired by Pope Francis' apostolic exhortation Amoris Laetitia. Quoting the controversial document, the website states, "The Church makes her own the attitude of the Lord Jesus, who offers His boundless love to each...

[Barf Alert] Assisi summit to focus on pope’s challenge to ‘pathological’ economy ROSARIO, Argentina – An Argentine priest and activist says a major summit set for November in the iconic Italian city of Assisi, the birthplace of St. Francis, will showcase the vision of the pope who took Francis’s name for a sweeping, person-centered reform of the “pathological” state of the global economy.“Pope Francis from Evangelii Gaudium to Laudato Si has extended an invitation to implement a new economic model that puts the human person at the center and that reduces unjust inequalities,” said Father Claudio Caruso, who leads Cronica...

Stop Worrying, The Climate Has Always Changed! When it comes to climate change, even the Church acts like an atheist. December 2019 When it comes to climate change, even the Church acts like an atheist! The full second part of a series published in October by La Nuova Bussola Quotidiana (The New Daily Compass). Original title. Our sub-heads.Stop Worrying, The Climate Has Always Changed! RICCARDO CASCIOLI Our investigation continues into how the incessant propaganda campaign on climate change has distorted the public’s perception of reality. The first victim of climate change is nature, or to be exact, what we think...

[Gag Alert] In the Year of “Laudato Si’” It’s Party Time for Everyone, Except for “My Lord” In these times of global shortages, those who hold the purse strings in the Vatican - the Jesuit Juan Antonio Guerrero Alves and Cardinal Reinhard Marx, prefects respectively of the secretariat for the economy and of the council for the economy - have issued urgent calls to the heads of the curia to be “sober” and to “cut the costs of conferences, travel abroad, external consultancy.”But the celebrations for “Laudato Si’” are evidently an exception. Yesterday, Sunday May 24, the fifth birthday of...

[Catholic/Orthodox Caucus] Do not act with tyranny towards God’s creation, Pope Francis says 'Let us say ‘no’ to consumerist greed and to the illusion of omnipotence, for these are the ways of death,' the Pope said In a message for Sunday’s World Day of Prayer for Care of Creation, Pope Francis encouraged Catholics to make simple changes to their lives so that God’s creation is treated with respect.“Too many of us act like tyrants with regard to creation. Let us make an effort to change and to adopt more simple and respectful lifestyles!” he said in the September 1...

Climate should be 'a central priority' for US church, says Bishop McElroy Omaha, Neb. — During an advocacy-focused breakout session at last month's "Laudato Si' and the U.S. Catholic Church" conference, a room of 30 Catholics were asked to list organizations and people within the church they perceived as engaged on the issue of climate change. Visit National Catholic Reporter's Online Classifieds to learn about job opportunities, events, retreats and more. Almost every corner of the church — colleges, hospitals, women religious, Pope Francis, aid organizations, even bishops' conferences of other countries — was represented in the 20 or so...

In presenting the Vatican Conference held July 5-6 to mark the third anniversary of Laudato Si, the Dicastery for the Service of Integral Human Development announced that it has become “plastic-free” as a way of giving good example to everyone. But is this the witness that Christ has asked for?Last week, from July 5-6, a large international conference was held at the Vatican which wanted to make a big deal about the third anniversary of the publication of the encyclical letter Laudato Si. The title of the conference was “Saving Our Common Home and the Future of Life on Earth.”...

Pope Francis reaffirmed the Vatican’s support for the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) at a June pontifical conference on human trafficking that featured an address by abortion and population control advocate Jeffrey Sachs. “We can also count an important and decisive collaboration with the United Nations,” the Holy Father told the Judges Summit Against Human Trafficking and Organized Crime, organized by the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences. Added the pope: “I am grateful for the fact that the representatives of the 193 UN member states unanimously approved the new Sustainable Development Goals.” In his turn, Sachs, a Harvard-educated economist, bestselling...

NEW YORK, September 25 (C-Fam) World leaders broke out into applause 27 times during the Pope’s address to the UN General Assembly today, including when he called for the defense of the “right to life,” and called the family the “primary cell of any social development.” Pro-life and pro-family advocates welcomed the speech as an improvement upon the more subtle references to their causes during the Pope’s address to the U.S. Congress. Culture of Life President Robert Royal called the UN talk a powerful and explicit defense of human life and natural marriage even though the words “abortion” and “homosexuality”...

You know what? I get it. I really do get the outrage over a Minnesota dentist’s $50,000 vanity kill of Cecil the Lion. With elaborate measures in place for his protection, the dentist finished Cecil off with a rifle after ineptly wounding him with a compound bow, which left the animal bleeding for days as the intrepid hunter and his professional guides tracked it down. Then he hacked off the beast’s head so he could take it home and mount it in his study. A fair fight, if you please! A man-versus-beast, put-your-life-on-the line, kill-or-be-killed sort of encounter with the...

The purpose of Pope Francis’ Laudato Si is to promote “ecological awareness,” “ecological conversion,” and to advance responsible “ecological citizenship”. Everything else in the document – everything else – is meant to serve this final goal. Even the most “Catholic parts” of the document at the end – where there is mention of the Eucharist, the Blessed Trinity, Our Lady, St. Joseph – ­are not for the sake of leading people in devotion to these Divine goods as ends in themselves, but to provide a basis to spur us toward ecological awareness and ecological conversion. Laudato Si is a blatant...

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.

There is an undeniable majesty to the papacy, one that is politically useful to the Left from time to time. The same Western liberals who abominate the Catholic Church as an atavistic relic of more superstitious times, who regard its teachings on abortion and contraception as inhumane and its teachings on sexuality as a hate crime today are celebrating Pope Francis’s global-warming encyclical, Laudato Si’, as a moral mandate for their cause. So much for that seamless garment. It may be that the carbon tax, like Paris, is worth a Mass. The main argument of the encyclical will be no...

I have started Laudato Si, Pope Francis’s newly release papal encyclical on global warming, and it’s something of a slog. As one of my colleagues put it, popes never seem to use one word when 500 will do. I feel somewhat free to take things slowly when analyzing these documents. There’s something about an institution that’s been around for 2,000-odd years that makes you feel less beholden to the 24-hour news cycle (or the 5-minute news cycle of the Twitter era). But I’m ready to make one preliminary observation, which stands out with particular clarity in the early sections. These...

Here are some comments on the leaked version of Laudato Si’. As everybody knows, the final version may be different than the leaked version. Even if so, the comments I make are valid concerning the material we have. I also only concentrate on the section devoted to “climate change,” a.k.a. global warming.  The document is long and will take time to digest.Laudato begins its climate portion by claiming a scientific “consensus exists that indicates that we are very firm in presence of a worrisome warming of the climate system.” This isn’t so. Many scientists—real climatologists, that is;  see this video...

222. Christian spirituality proposes an alternative understanding of the quality of life, and encourages a prophetic and contemplative lifestyle, one capable of deep enjoyment free of the obsession with consumption. We need to take up an ancient lesson, found in different religious traditions and also in the Bible. It is the conviction that “less is more”. A constant flood of new consumer goods can baffle the heart and prevent us from cherishing each thing and each moment. To be serenely present to each reality, however small it may be, opens us to much greater horizons of understanding and personal fulfilment....

Pope Francis’ second encyclical “Laudato Si” was released this morning by the Holy See…and it’s pretty epic.  It’s on ecology, the environment, creation, and much, much more!  Despite some in the media reducing its contents to whatever is socio-politically controversial (ahem…climate change) there’s much more to this encyclical than what the media will no doubt focus on.  Here are 10 things in Laudato Si (“Praise be to you”) you won’t hear about from the media…and this is just the tip of the iceberg!  1. Transgenderism “The acceptance of our bodies as God’s gift is vital for welcoming and accepting the entire...

Before anything else… don’t just bash the new encyclical.   Some people are having rancisull-fledged spittle-flecked nutties today.  I suspect that some of them are people who are happy only when they are unhappy.Dear readers… take a deep breath.There are good things in it.   Yes, there are bad things in it too.   Pope’s don’t get all things right all the time.  Sometimes Popes are… GASP… wrong, especially when they stray onto unfamiliar turf.Also, let me say that Popes can and should write about the environment.   It is the Pope’s job to explain the theological and spiritual dimensions of...