Guest essay by H. Sterling Burnett
Pope Francis evidently has decided to make fighting global warming an important papal cause in 2015. He praised the United Nations’ climate treaty efforts in Lima, Peru; the Vatican has indicated he will issue an encyclical letter to the world’s bishops; he is encouraging the world’s 1.2 billion Catholics to take up the battle against climate change; and he’s planning to address the next UN climate conference in Paris to pressure world leaders to adopt a strong climate agreement.
The Vatican Pontifical Academy of Sciences may be behind the pope’s rising interest in global warming as a moral and political cause. Its chancellor, Bishop Marcelo Sorondo, said, “Our academics supported the pope’s initiative to influence next year’s crucial decisions. The idea is to convene a meeting with leaders of the main religions to make all people aware of the state of our climate and the tragedy of social exclusion.”
Many Catholics undoubtedly support the pope’s efforts and, unlike many of his critics, I would argue the views of the pope, a significant moral leader, should be considered as climate policies are shaped. As the leader of the largest Christian denomination in the world, he is charged not just with saving souls but also with alleviating the suffering of the world’s least fortunate, and with leading the Catholic Church in efforts to make the world a better place.
Having said this, I also know moral imperatives and public policies should be grounded in the best-available science, in the reality of the human condition, and in the state of both the planet and the people. Concerning global warming, the pope evidently has been badly misinformed and led astray.
None of the disasters asserted by climate alarmists to result from global warming has come to pass. Hurricane numbers are down, deaths from natural disasters have declined, sea ice is on the rise, and crop production is increasing. Climate models have yet to be validated, missing the lull in temperature rise for the past 18 years and the declining rates of sea-level rise for the past decade. Instead, the gap between temperatures projected by climate models and temperature observed in reality grows yearly.
Investor’s Business Daily has speculated the Vatican is itching to tackle climate change, despite the above-stated facts, because,
[The] Vatican … has been infiltrated by followers of a radical green movement that is, at its core, anti-Christian, anti-people, anti-poor and anti-development. The basic tenets of Catholicism – the sanctity of human life and the value of all souls – are detested by the modern pagan environmentalists who worship the created, but not the creator. … Big Green believes that too many human beings are the basic global problem. People, according to this view, are resource destroyers. Climate change, they say, is due to the overpopulation of Mother Earth.
The pope would do well to question the sources of his information and to recognize his efforts should be focused on alleviating the poverty and suffering of billions of people in the world today. The best policy to accomplish that goal would be alleviating energy poverty worldwide.
As a CNS editorial stated,
Alex Epstein argues, rather than taking a safe climate and making it dangerous through the use of fossil fuels, we have been transforming a dangerous climate into a safer, more manageable one for human flourishing.
Humans have long fought a war with climate, and to the extent we’ve won it has been through the use of technology, most recently including, fossil fuels.
Note from Anthony:
As a Catholic myself, I’m disappointed in this stance, especially since it seems out of place with doctrines of the past where there Church denounced many issues of science through its history, only to later admit they erred, jumped to conclusions, and admitted such errors in judgment decades or centuries later.
For example, it only took the Catholic church 359 years to decide that Galileo was right after all, and that the Earth DOES in fact revolve around the Sun.
I plan to ignore the Pope and its science panel, as many are likely to do given their track record on getting science wrong in almost every case where science and religion have collided through history,
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I believe that ST Augustine to paraphrase ” The bible tells you how to get to heaven , not how the heavens are made ”.
Gees, don’t tell he is on the gravy train too.
This is exactly what the Catholic Church needs. That is, tie itself to a sinking pagan religion. Oy Vey.
Note from Anthony:
As a Catholic myself, I’m disappointed in this stance, especially since it seems out of place with doctrines of the past where there Church denounced many issues of science through its history, only to later admit they erred, jumped to conclusions, and admitted such errors in judgment decades or centuries later.
For example, it only took the Catholic church 359 years to decide that Galileo was right after all, and that the Earth DOES in fact revolve around the Sun.
I plan to ignore the Pope and its science panel, as many are likely to do given their track record on getting science wrong in almost every case where science and religion have collided through history,
Anthony…please read the actual history of the Catholic Church and Galileo….not the myth. The Catholic priest Nicholas Copernicus actually came up with the hypothesis that the earth and planets revolved around the sun. He died 20 years before Galileo was born. The Church had no objection to his hypothesis. It was also an Augustinian abbot Gregor Mendel who was the founder of genetics and Fr. George Lemaitre who first proposed the Big Bang Theory. The Catholic Church anti-science?…I don’t think so.
http://www.catholicleague.org/galileo-and-the-catholic-church/
Secondly….let’s us all actually wait for the Pope’s comments and not what people think he is going to say. The media has misquoted this pope more than any other pontiff. They have even put words in his mouth such as dogs going to heaven. He has ticked off both Rush Limbaugh and the New York Times. He must be doing something right.
You’ve left out the fact that it did NOT take the Church 359 years to decide that “the Earth DOES in fact revolve around the Sun.” [Anthony]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geocentric_model#Historical_positions_of_the_Roman_Catholic_hierarchy
Ordinary common sense should suffice to create a huge problem for the “359 years” claim. If the Church had espoused geocentrism or objected to heliocentrism at any time during the 20th century or much of the 19th century, this would be very well known.
mptc 58
You know, you have to pick your hill to die on. Anthony has a difficult position. He may well know the actual proceedings of the trials and know that the Church embraces science and always has. But Imagine him taking a position that reflects the truth? He’d be destroyed because the cartoon of the Galileo story is indelible amongst the ignorant. Anthony’s reputation would be carried off as anti-science should he parse the Galileo story precisely.
Leave the telling of the actual story of the trials of Galileo to us. Though the ignorant masses will say we are wrong, we have little to lose. After-all, Anthony is allowing us to inform the public by way of commenting.
Good work on the Mendel connection. I forgot that genetics was invented by a Roman Catholic monk. You’d better not tell Chip. He may suffer a psychotic episode at the collapse of his fantasy world.
Religion is for people who don’t have God in their heart. Why listen to a Pope when you can get it direct from the Head Office. HE has a plan for each of us. The messages will be different. The Pope has one message for all. Fn communist.
Pope Francis also said…”without the Church, Jesus is at the mercy of our imagination”. The prophet Mohammed made the same claim you are making.
I can see God in your heart M Simon. We all can.
Seconding the comments to Anthony from mptc58, can i also ask Anthony what evidence he can produce to support this statement:
“..there Church denounced many issues of science through its history, only to later admit they erred…”
Well, everybody knows about Galileo (although not everybody knows the real story) but what other ‘issues of science’ are you referring to? By the ‘Church’ I take it you are referring to the Catholic Church. It is easy to point to examples of individual Protestants (such as Archbishop Usher) getting it wrong but I think you will find difficulty in naming any other scientific issue than heliocentrism where the Catholic Church erred.
As for those who have referred to the Pontifical Academy of the Sciences, yes it is a sort of Vatican organisation but it is not the same kind of Vatican organisation as, say, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. The PAS does not speak on behalf of the Vatican. Its members don’t even have to be Catholic. eg. Stephen Hawking.
The pope (intentionally lower case) is a Jesuit, and as Socialist as the rest of that swill. May God give him the justice he and his enablers deserve for what they have done.
As an aside re Catholicism v Communism can I point you at the Don Camillo books.
Thank you for reminding me of them.
This Pope is no different from Pope Urban VIII, who had Galileo arrested. Like Urban he is falling in line with what is thought to be conventional wisdom on the subject. Galileo not only had trouble getting the Church to accept his ideas about the solar system, his observations were not good enough at that point to convince some other secular scientists of the day, who, like Galileo, were closely tied to the Church themselves. It’s not like Galileo was never wrong, either. In some other matters of science he was spectacularly wrong. Until their falling out over this controversy, which had more to do with Galileo insulting the Pope and everyone with his blunt and sarcastic style, Urban was Galileo’s patron and supporter.
If a skeptical positionon climate science is accepted by the mainstream you can be sure that the Pope will fall in line with that, too.
Well said Roderic.
Ecclesia taceat in scientia!
Klaus Olischläger
According to whom? Sounds like you are trying to silence debate.
The note makes no sense. If the Church was “wrong” to oppose the “scientific consensus” before, it has evidently learned its lesson now by embracing the “scientific consensus”. Aside – the Galileo thing is just nonsense.
mark matis (lower case intentional) is a bigot.
For those who wish to examine the matter of papal encyclicals (or any other papal proclamations) impartially, this will be of help:
http://www.firstthings.com/blogs/firstthoughts/2015/01/four-things-to-remember-about-the-popes-environment-letter
If you just wish to engage in Pope-bashing, Catholic-bashing or religion-bashing then I don’t suppose you’ll bother.
I was born and raised Roman Catholic. Nuns in grade school. Jesuits in high school.
I’m not one now. I’d like to say that was because I went the way of Martin Luther (a priest who studied the scriptures themselves) but I didn’t. Going to God and the Scriptures themselves came a few years later. There is no position or ministry of “Pope” or “vicar of Christ” in the Bible or the Body of Christ.
I don’t say that to raise anyone’s hackles but just to be honest about where I’m coming from.
I haven’t read all the comments but I’m sure that’s it’s been clarified that, according to RC doctrine, for a Catholic the Pope’s opinions or even personal beliefs about a particular subject are NOT RC church doctrine unless he is said to be speaking “ex cathedra”.
A Roman Catholic is free to ignore this opinion/belief.
Again, I strive to make my rule of faith and practice the Book itself. It says Christ is the Head and ” For there is one God, and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus;
6 Who gave himself a ransom for all, to be testified in due time (1Ti 2:5-6 KJV)
(2Peter 3:10,12 talks of a day when “the elements shall melt with fervent heat” but that heat ain’t going to be man-made.)
To sum up, the Pope is wrong is wrong about this and he has no spiritual authority to tell the RC church they must endorse the “Climate Change” hype or suffer any spiritual or actual consequences.
(To be respectful of others beliefs or opinions doesn’t mean that you always need to think, “Maybe they’re right?”)
Paul 767, Jerry Brown, diktator of my home state is also a Jesuit. A fanatical supporter of fluoridating our water without permission of the public while fluoride is known to be a dangerous neurotoxin. He is also an extreme Greenie and probably a Hegelian destabilizing termite like John Kerry.:)
Just send the Pope a letter with a link to this article:
His address:
His Holiness, Pope Francis PP.
00120 Via del Pellegrino
Citta del Vaticano
I would dearly love to be a fly on the wall in any discussion of this subject between the Pope and his Cardinal-Prefect of the Secretary of the Economy, namely the well known climate skeptic, Cardinal George Pell. Cardinal Pell made his skeptical views well known in his presentation to the Global Warming Policy Foundation, and is arguably the Number 3 man at the Vatican.
http://www.thegwpf.org/cardinal-george-pell-one-christian-perspective-on-climate-change-2/
Cardinal Pell is positively loathed by pretty much all Australian leftists.
Unfortunately, the Pope seems unable to spot a new pagan religion in the way that Cardinal Pell has little difficulty in discerning.
Regards.
This started off silly and has gotten sillier.
I don’t know how it turned it Bible school, but I’ll play along:
‘There is no position or ministry of “Pope” or “vicar of Christ” in the Bible’
Matthew 16:18 is as plain and direct as it gets.
Don’t forget verse 23.
Contrast verse 17 with verse 23, and you can see that his confession in 17 is the only reason for the blessing.
And no human has any power to grant heaven or deny it. v27
The NYT story Anthony somewhat painfully cites about his church and Galileo is wrong on almost every particular. In fact, until Hitler and Stalin, I believe the only scientist executed in the West – – maybe in the world? – – for being a scientist (although that word had not yet been coined) was Antoine-Laurent de Lavoisier, beheaded in the French Revolution on May 8, 1794.
Here’s a few fuller blogs about what really happened to Galileo, and why . . . .
http://www.quora.com/What-is-the-most-misunderstood-historical-event?share=1
That blogger cites this Numbers book as his first suggested reading, which other articles have also cited:
Ronald L. Numbers (ed.) [http://www.amazon.com/Galileo-Other-Myths-Science-Religion/dp/0674057414] Galileo Goes to Jail and Other Myths about Science and Religion (Harvard University Press: 2010)
See also http://www.newoxfordreview.org/article.jsp?did=0600-lessl
POP SCIENCE & FALSE HISTORY
The Galileo Legend (a professor of rhetoric at the University of Georgia)
by Thomas Lessl
The New Oxford Review, June 2000
Lessel also cites Numbers
Then there’s http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/205503/starry-enviro/jonah-goldberg%5D
January 13, 2003 at 8:45 AM
Starry Enviro? The cases of Björn Lomborg and Galileo.
by Jonah Goldberg
“Kneecapping a denier” ought to ring a few bells on this site ;).
It was the adherence to the Greek and Roman writers in the Roman Church that was the source of ossified thinking during the Middle Ages. Learning and science could only begin to advance by “stripping off” scholastic reliance on Greek and Roman writing:
“[I]t becomes a thing not only useful, but
absolutely necessary, that the excess of honor and admiration with which
our existing stock of inventions is regarded be in the very entrance and
threshold of the work, and that frankly and without circumlocution stripped
off, and men be duly warned not to exaggerate or make too much of them.”
~Francis Bacon
It remains a most stunning sleight of hand that Christians are faulted for having impeded knowledge for centuries, when it was really the scholastics and monks, writing in Latin and studying the Greek and Roman writers, who were the source of this stagnation of understanding. In logic they taught Porphyry, in all things Aristotle and Plato, in geography and astronomy, Ptolemy, and of the human body they taught Galen. The maps of Ptolemy and his astronomy were the dogma of the Roman Church. All scientists and inventors who discovered anything were overturning some matter of dogma from the Classical scholars which Rome enforced.
And yet this does not stop modern scholars from claiming that science and learning has been renewed from the Dark and Middle Ages, by returning to the works of the pagan philosophers and logicians, that is, the Greeks! It was adherence to and dogged memorization of Greek works that cemented all learning for centuries. The Roman Church, moreover, even forbade the translation of Scriptures into any vernacular language – for example, Pope Innocent III forbade Bible reading in the common language in 1200.
The geography by Ptolemy was incorrect. This kept most Europeans from attempting to round the southern tip of Africa to go to India for centuries. Exceptions to the rule, such as Vikings and Basques, would have had a high degree of independence from the Roman Church – for Basques refused to have their priests appointed for them from outside. Wisely.
The map from the 1400’s that is claimed to be Ptolemy’s map was different from all descriptions and maps based on Ptolemy’s writings before that. A monk somewhere drew a passage which would allow circumnavigation of earth. This may have inspired travel, or helped the bolder Italian explorers convince fearful sailors to strike West, but it is not a Ptolemaic map (except it still has the southern hemisphere totally wrong as Ptolemy did.
In nearly all areas of discovery, invention, exploration and new observations, the lonely protagonists were in conflict with the ancient writers doggedly upheld by the Roman Church. Galileo is not an isolated case to be dismissed away.
Not only that, Peter was a married man! 🙂
Paul Westhaver January 6, 2015 at 11:01 pm
Well Paul, I wasn’t around in the 1480s, but I’m reasonably certain that, even way back then, one of the Ten Commandments forbade bearing false witness.
And please don’t think I’m throwing out the baby with the bathwater. I got a good education from the Dominicans and Jesuits, and most of my values are Christian, above all, The Golden Rule.
As I appreciate the story, the major objections to the helio-centric theory were first that no parallax could be detected (which meant the theory was disproved by experiment) or else to be below detectable limits meant the stars would have to be impossibly far away. If I’m been correctly informed, there were entirely rational reasons for “Which is it?” to still be in play in his day. “Dogma” had nothing to do with the dispute.
The other knock on the Popes is usually Columbus. Again if I’m on track, the objection was that he could not carry enough water to sail that far, since the world was actually 24K around, not 16K. Falling off the edge of a flat plate had nothing to do with the argument back then. Of, course, but for N & S America being in the way, Ol’ Chris and his crews would likely have died.
Again, I think the best read is the one cited by Jonah Goldberg, that some rivals tried to use the Pope to kneecap a rival, in the same way that Bjorn fellow got drummed out of polite society.
It is disturbing to hear the Pope take up the cause of the green religion. As a Catholic Christian I am deeply saddened to hear this. The global warming alarmists ignore the Creator and deify the Creation. They elevate the stature of man to the same level as God by their belief that lowly humans can actually destroy the planet. We are called to be good stewards of everything God has entrusted us with, not to worship such things. It is called a world without end for a reason.