Pope Urges Environmental Reforms

June 18, 2015
Bill Donohue comments on Pope Francis' encyclical, Laudato Si:

Pope Francis wouldn't be Pope Francis unless he was confounding his critics. Conservatives will recoil at his left-leaning politics, anti-market impulse, embrace of global policies to combat climate change, and his  doomsday scenarios. Liberals will recoil at his condemnation of population control, embryonic destruction, and abortion; they will also reject his insistence on "valuing one's own body in its femininity or masculinity," asking us to "joyfully accept the special gifts of the sexes" (#155).

The pope paints a bleak picture saying that the earth "is beginning to look more and more like an immense pile of filth." This may explain why he thinks—he actually calls it a "fact"—that "people no longer seem to believe in a happy future" (#113). Similarly, he does not say that we have a right to the pursuit of happiness, but a right to happiness itself (#43).

The pope's love for God's creation is genuine, and his urgent call for environmental reforms is welcome. But some will no doubt question his assertion that carbon dioxide is a pollutant (#24). Pollutants are generally regarded as human additives, not constitutive properties of humankind. His condemnation of air conditioning will also make eyes roll: he does not blame AC usage on consumer demand but on capitalists seeking to make money (#55).

Some of the problems he identifies are universal and resistant to reform. He decries population density in urban areas—the two are inseparable—and he bemoans the fact that "we still have not solved the problem of poverty" (#27). Whether it is poverty or environmental destruction, the pope fingers the pursuit of profit as the culprit, not governmental policies.

At one point (#61), he asks us to reject "doomsday predictions," yet later (#161) he says: "Doomsday predictions can no longer be met with irony or disdain." Better editing would have avoided such a serious inconsistency. No matter, the pope has given everyone much to consider.

So who is the Pope condemning if not the Left?

Ignore the rise of Muslim extremism and the murder of Christians, but come out strong on the dangers of global warming. Got it.

Here’s the deal. Pope Francis, while the Vicar of Christ gloriously reigning, is not a terribly bright man. What brings Jorge Maria Bergoglio’s intellectual shortcomings into even starker relief is the fact that his predecessor, Benedict XVI Ratzinger is not only a bona fide genius, but also … still alive. Francis is a mediocre intellect, poorly educated, and a member of an order (the Jesuits) that is so far-gone that it should be suppressed. Layer on top of this the generation of which Francis is a product: perhaps the most godless, evil, blind generation in human history, and add in the fact that while being poorly educated in the age of the hippy, he has also lived his entire life in South America, which has been more steadily and overtly influenced by Marxism, both in the secular world as well as in the Church, than either Europe or North America over the last fifty years.

Jorge Maria Bergoglio is the first “affirmative action” pope – which is a different thing entirely from nepotism. The College of Cardinals, again, not exactly a collection of the smartest men in the world – remember Tracksuit Timmy Dolan, dinner host of antichrists and celebrant of “gay” Masses, a man whose capacity for intellectual nuance is on par with a box of hair, is not only a cardinal, but the head of the U.S. Bishop’s conference – went into the conclave wanting to elect not the best man, not the brightest intellect, not the most competent manager. No. The criteria were racial and geographical. “Um, we need to have a pope from the Western Hemisphere. We need to have a pope from a Spanish-speaking country. We need to make the Latinos feel good and keep the Latino money flowing, because they are the only ones not contracepting themselves into extinction.”

And, if this culture of stupidity persists, then mark my words: they will elect a black African next time for no other reason than “affirmative action”.

“The most evident mark of God’s anger, and the most terrible castigation He can inflict upon the world, is manifest when He permits His people to fall into the hands of a clergy who are more in name than in deed, priests who practice the cruelty of ravening wolves rather than the charity and affection of devoted shepherds. They abandon the things of God to devote themselves to the things of the world and, in their saintly calling of holiness, they spend their time in profane and worldly pursuits. When God permits such things, it is a very positive proof that He is thoroughly angry with His people and is visiting His most dreadful wrath upon them.” ——Saint John Eudes

Quoted:
"I am so confused with this Pope..... I've been fighting to defend him but it is harder & harder to do. I believe that the Holy Spirit picked this Pope for a reason."

The Holy Spirit doesn't pick the pope......men do (cardinals....like Timothy Dolan  ).  That's why you are "confused". Once you accept that we have a bad pope (we get them from time to time), life makes more sense. Not every utterance from a pope is infallible - and it is wrong to consider them as such.

Upon my first look at Pope Francis’ Encyclical on the Environment, I was dismayed. Sure enough, it had all the usual leftist nostrums and buzzwords on climate change, sustainability, global action, evolutionary biology and such. It offered all the very approaches that historically (and particularly in the last hundred years) have centralized power in a small elite who enrich their cronies, impoverish little folks, and use that power to wage war on people of faith. It touted these tired nostrums as if they were fresh, new ideas that will solve the problem instead of the tried and true formula for misery, impoverishment and environmental degradation.

On second look, I noted that – unlike the loud functionaries at the Vatican these last few weeks – the Pope noted with humility that he lacked final authority on matters of science and public policy – that debate must be open and robust. It certainly nagged at me that those Vatican functionaries who have been behaving as thuggish enforcers in a protection racket answer to him – and that if the Pope truly means that debate on those issues should be open and robust, he probably ought to tell his functionaries to give a more nuanced contribution to that debate than contemptuously sneering at those who disagree with them to shut up. It might have been nice to invite a scientist who had a different view to participate instead of shutting them all out if you wanted an actual discussion rather than a pre-ordained conclusion. The behavior of Vatican officials in this matter has been scandalous.

On the third look, I noted that on the matters on which he has actual authority, the Pope was dead on. He spoke powerfully on the sanctity of life and the necessity to preserve the human ecology. I was consoled that on matters clearly within the purview of his authority, he was in unbroken solidarity with the teaching of all his predecessors – and even expressed that teaching in some intriguing new ways.

On fourth look, I realized that events of the next few years will resolve the scientific and policy matters. Whether the Pope is right or people like me are right on those matters he touched on that are not directly within the scope of his authority, we shall see soon enough and, in either case, the urgency of it will dissipate.

The needful province of the clergy is to speak on First Things and Last Things; the meaning of life and what our proper ends should be. It is the responsibility of the laity to fashion proper means to seek those ends. Since Church officials are actually men, they have opinions on these transitional means; opinions which, like the rest of us, are political and ideological in nature – and are either well-formed or poorly formed. But those opinions are not necessary to their duty. If well-formed, they may enhance the credibility of the faith to non-believers and those on the margin. If ill-informed, they can bring the shadow of disrepute upon the faith among non-believers and the ill-informed, and even dishearten many of the faithful. But they are ancillary to the hierarchy’s mission.

Francis is not the first Pope to mix mere political opinions into Encyclicals that speak authoritatively on First and Last things. He is not even the fifth or the tenth. The most famous modern example was Pope Leo XIII’s discussion of the proper interplay of labor and capital in modern economies, Rerum Novarum, issued in 1891. It was the first major attempt to deal with the change in circumstances from feudal agrarianism to industrial capitalism. Some of the political ideas necessary for a proper exploration of the subject turned out, over time, to be a bit clunky and poorly focused. One hundred years later, Pope John Paul II refined the political though when he issued Centesimus Annus. St. John Paul made clear he was building on the spiritual thought and authority of his predecessor, while modifying the merely political elements that had not stood up. I’m not sure it ever even occurred to St. John Paul to note that the political elements were transient, while those that spoke to First and Last Things are ever eternal. In fact, that is largely what Encyclicals and Magisterial teaching are for – to sharpen the clarity of our view of those things and fit them properly to the times. It is often necessary to reference political currents of the time to do so effectively, but the political currents, whether well or poorly cited, do not enhance or detract from the eternal truths incorporated in the documents. Like waves on a windy day, political opinions rise or fall in a frothy, curling churn and then are gone…usually forgotten in the mists of time. The articles of faith defined in Encyclicals, however, are the lifeblood of the Church, pulsing with the ever-present rhythm and unchanging power of the tides.

...Yes, Pope Francis makes what I think are clunky and ill-considered political, economic and scientific assertions, but on First and Last Things, he is completely in lockstep with two millennia of consistent Christian witness. He speaks of a “human ecology;” that the words family, marriage, and gender have specific, fixed meanings. They are not waxen concepts to be molded into whatever one wishes them to mean. While progressives are busy saying “black lives matter” (or whatever group is most useful to them for the moment), the Pope says, “Life Matters,” and that the taking of innocent life is always grave. It is something the progressives dare not say, lest it threaten their “right” to casually execute unborn infants.