“Pope’s climate decree to declare God a green socialist”. Peter Foster, Financial Post:
A long time ago, the British satirical magazine Private Eye would occasionally append a humorous phonograph record. One such had a track that started “And now, The Pope speaks out on The Pill.” There followed the voice of one of Dr. Who’s Daleks declaring “I-am-the-Pope. You-will-obey.”
A lot has happened to the Catholic Church since then, although not in its views towards contraception. In the wake of horrendous sexual scandals and a continued decline in membership, the Church has turned to an Argentinean “progressive,” Pope Francis. He does not have very progressive views on contraception, abortion, or gender bias, but he is onside with homosexuality. More important, he will soon deliver an Encyclical – a lengthy epistle of more than usual moral heft — on the progressive issue of our age: projected catastrophic man-made climate change.
The timing of this encyclical is hardly random. It is obviously designed to call Catholics to pressure their governments to “take action” at the UN’s 21st Conference of the Parties, COP, in Paris later this year. In this light, the recent announcement of the Pope’s role in President Obama’s decision to ease relations with Cuba becomes more intriguing. Have the White House and the Vatican been cooking up other schemes of mutual progressive interest?
Obviously the Pope will not be able to claim to speak ex cathedra, that is, with divine authority, on climate science, although most alarmists will regard that as a shame. Some have suggested that he is “pro-science” because he has come to terms with the Big Bang theory and Evolution, but unfortunately Francis has also confirmed himself to be economically challenged, a defining characteristic of progressivism.
The contents of the Encyclical were adumbrated in a recent joint statement from the Pontifical Academy of Sciences and the Pontifical Academy of Social Science. One has only to look at some of the signatories to know what its conclusions will be. They include Jeffrey Sachs, the UN development guru famous for orchestrating development disasters; Naomi Oreskes, who is famous for a monstrously mendacious study denying that scientifically-qualified climate skeptics exist; and Sir Martin Rees, a former President of the Royal Society who not only strongly supported the conclusions of the egregiously-biased Stern Review, but also led a campaign against ExxonMobil.
The statement reads like any UN document, full of condemnation of the capitalist system, and pointing to a “better world” brought about by more global “cooperation” and “participatory democracy” (that is, democracy from which those who don’t think the right way are excluded). In practicality it ranks with hoping for another miracle of loaves and fishes: productivity from wishful thinking. It aims not merely at stabilizing the climate but “giving energy access to all.”
Energy access being, of course, a natural “right” — as is health care, etc. — even though for that “right” to be considered such, one must necessarily accept the premise that if you are a doctor or work in the energy sector, you belong to the volk, who have every right to rob you of your liberty and labor for the Greater Good.
Such a paradigm, naturally, will require an enforcement measure, which is why so many progressive Utopias wind up as totalitarian police states. But evidently that doesn’t matter to this Pope, who is doing to the Catholic Church what liberation theology did to many Christian denominations: cheapen it, politicize it, and make its formal structure irrelevant as a force for real cultural liberalism (in the classical sense).
It’s sad, but it’s hardly surprising: we’ve been heading down the road to relativism for years — in fact, accepted beliefs about how language works (which are logically incoherent) have assured this — so the fact that yet another institution has been coopted by leftists (in thought if not in name) as part of their Long March, is to be expected.
What the co-opting isn’t, however, is some unchangeable force of nature, some historical materialism that is a immutable as fate. That’s just what proponents want you to believe so that in the end, their standing as the world’s masterminds goes unchallenged and is merely accepted as part of the natural order.
And indeed, it was that way for a long time. Until the formation of USA proved that the whole narrative of leftism / authoritarianism was built on a foundation of straw.
The west is not dying, therefore, so much as it seems committed to suicide. Luckily, not all of us are willing to drink the Kool-Aid. For which we will never, ever be forgiven by those doling it out and those willing to take a chug.
papal encyclicals and cher’s twitters are getting really hard to tell apart
Will Christians who take their theological humility seriously take notice of the Pope’s abandonment of any rigorous principle of humility as he steps over-confidently into a politico-scientific imbroglio? Let the Cardinals who elected this man think on their error, for this Pope appears to be beyond such thinking.
sdferr, his immediate predecessor Benedict was truly a scholar. It seems the College wanted to elect someone more personable like JPII, though JPII was a thoughtful man and scholar, as well. Unfortunately, by electing a Jesuit from South America, it pretty much guaranteed that this pope would be influenced by liberation theology and all its baggage. We’re finding out how much on a daily basis it seems. It least the adage, “more Catholic than the Pope” is back in play.
And maybe bears don’t shit in the woods now.
No wonder he and Pharaoh Barakhenaten Obazymandias get along so well. Pope Frank wants to fundamentally transform the Catholic faith.
Greetings:
I grew up in the Bronx of the ’50s and ’60s and was the beneficiary of 13 consecutive years of Catholic educations (with no do-overs). When it came time for me to make an attempt at a college education, I intended to attend an Augustinian university pretty much based on my experience with the order during my high school years. My father, whose was also my primary financial backer, thought I would benefit from letting the Jesuits make their contribution to the shaping of my character and intellect, but he realized it would be a bit of a sell. So, his argument came out as “You’ll like the Jesuits. They’re like God’s Green Berets.”
Well, that problem sure seems to have been solved.
Jesuits are the church’s lawyers. Nowadays that means public defenders and ambulance chasers as much as any other kind.
Hence, Pope Frank.
I know there’s been a lot of speculation about how bad it’s going to be, but how ’bout we wait until it comes out before the recriminations and lamentations start?
Of course, to really parse the thing, you’ll have to be fluent in latin.
How much speculation? A lot? ( I suspect not, actually, but only a little.)
What of any speculation that — contrary to the encyclical being bad or merely potentially bad — it will be all that is good and light, a wonder among the nations? Any of that out there in the world to be seen? Is that sort of celebratory speculation something we’d call the “joint statement from the Pontifical Academy of Sciences and the Pontifical Academy of Social Science” referred to in the article? Or on substance — due to access to an unpublished document — is the “joint statement” nothing more than a factual account of praise owed to matters we haven’t seen? Ah well, no matter.
True, and it wouldn’t be the first time a recent papal proclamation didn’t live down to its proggy pre-hype.
Still, Pope Frank is nobody’s Green Beret.
IF the report cited turns out to be correct then I intend to start referring to him as the Anti-Pope.
Or, perhaps, the Last Pope.
…The work of the devil will infiltrate even into the Church. One will see cardinals opposing other cardinals… and bishops confronting other bishops.
The priests who venerate me will be scorned and condemned by their confreres; churches and altars will be sacked; the Church will be full of those who accept compromises and the demon will tempt many priests and religious to leave the service of the Lord.
The demon is trying hard to influence souls consecrated to God….
http://campus.udayton.edu/mary/resources/akita_apparition.html
Seeing as how Pope Francis didn’t say almost any of the stuff the press says the Pope said (animals go to heaven, atheists go to heaven, capitalism is evil, etc), I’m willing to wait for the actual Encyclical and Ad Majorem Dei Gloriam’s translation. He’s done some work in the past to suggest that the Vatican’s English (and only English) translations are more progressive than they ought to be.
But I do get leery when the Vatican gets more involved in what governments ought to be doing than about what the Church Militant ought to be doing. Unless it’s declaring a new Crusade. Then I’m down with it.
I’m willing to bet it goes something like this, “God gave man dominion over the wild things, he would want us to be responsible stewards of the planet. If there is AGW, then we should do what we can to remediate it.”
For what it’s worth, I was educated by Piarists, Jesuits, and Augustinians. I liked the Jesuits the best, the Piarists were drunks, the Auggies were accountants, but those Jebbies could argue like sumbitches. I had a particular Jebbie who was brought to our school to teach as a form of punishment for spending way too many years in Central America preaching “Liberation Theology”. He was forced by the SG to spend a year explaining how “Liberation Theology” was wrong. He was a great guy, miserable about what he had to teach, really fun to talk to. It sunk in though, I’m still in touch with most of the guys from that class, and we’re all raging FuckYouarians. (FuckYouarian, n. 1. A person of a FuckYouian political ideology. 2. A person when told something or to do something replies with a robust, “FUCK YOU” and votes accordingly.) God I miss the 80s.
It’ll be bad and poorly thought out, like St. John Paul the II’s economic encyclical from the 1980’s, which argued against Industrial age abuses 90 years too late.
Tangos in the square during Advent, not mentioning Jesus in an address to the UN (while driving past a Cathedral in its jubilee year to get there), and all but ignoring ISIS: Pope Francis isn’t doing a good job.
And I’ll spare you all the really scandalous stuff I read on Catholic blogs.
Let’s count the ways that Catholicism cooperates with Communism:
1. both are impatient with the human animal and want to engineer him into the “New Man.”
2. both rely on centralized, shaming cultures to enforce obedience
3. both despise electoral politics (ie. democracy) and only sparingly tolerate it when it suits their purposes.
4. both pretend to eschew profit motive, preferring to huddle instead in “non-profits” both to conceal their capital donors from discovery and to maintain the appearance of meek humanitarianism.
5. both hunker-down in the dysfunctional cities: it seems that both gain succor from the detrimental results of human over-crowding.
6. both posit ecclesiastic motives for their excesses: one’s hierarchy erects idols to “Science” and “Social Justice,” and the others’ to “God’s Will,” and “Social Justice.”
Is it any wonder that old-money Socialists and old-money Catholics mingle so comfortably in our East and West-coast cities? It is probably because they’re cut from the same friggin’ cloth!