Guest essay by Eric Worrall
The papal Laudato Si’ encyclical on global warming continues to be a source of division, and has prompted reportedly heated exchanges between senior church figures, at a recent top level meeting in Rome.
ROME, December 18, 2015 (LifeSiteNews) – A heated exchange regarding global warming and magisterial teaching between a top Vatican official and various other presenters ended a December 3 Acton Institute conference in Rome. Argentinean Bishop Marcelo Sánchez Sorondo, a close advisor to Pope Francis and the Chancellor of both the Pontifical Academy of Sciences and the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences stressed that the pope’s declarations on the gravity of global warming as expressed in the encyclical Laudato Si’ are magisterial teaching equivalent to the teaching that abortion is sinful.
Father Joseph Fessio, SJ, the founder of Ignatius Press who obtained his doctorate in theology under Joseph Ratzinger prior to his elevation to the pontificate, told LifeSiteNews, “Neither the pope nor Bishop Sorondo can speak on a matter of science with any binding authority, so to use the word ‘magisterium’ in both cases is equivocal at best, and ignorant in any case.” Fr. Fessio added, “To equate a papal position on abortion with a position on global warming is worse than wrong; it is an embarrassment for the Church.”
I applaud the courage of senior church figures who have had the courage to speak out against this divisive encyclical. People like the North American Jesuit Father Joseph Fessio, and Australia’s Cardinal Pell, church leaders with a track record of placing integrity before political convenience, who have publicly and repeatedly criticised the attempt to extend papal moral authority into deciding matters of science.
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It is not Anthropogenic Global Warming that is splitting the Church. The AGW controversy is just a symptom of the deep rift in the Church between Progressives and Traditionalists.
Even before John Paul II died, a progressive cabal was active in the Church to come up with a progressive successor. It included the German Cardinal Kasper and the Belgian Cardinal Danneels. They referred to themselves — jokingly, of course — as “The Mafia of Sankt-Gallen”, after the Swiss town where they met.
However, their candidate, Jorge Bergoglio, lost to Joseph Ratzinger, who became Pope Benedictus XVI. In 2013, when Benedictus XVI resigned, the progressive network (“Team Bergoglio”) prevailed and got its man elected.
The Progressives are not concerned so much with the Church as they are with its image.
Traditionalist would never claim that the Church, much less the Pope, has any specific authority in any other field than the Christian faith and the ethics it requires. Progressives want the Church to swim in the dominant streams of public opinion (whatever these may be). Pope Francis may still be a traditionalist in some matters (e.g. the role of the family) but many Progressives are prepared to go all the way to whatever it takes to receive some praise from the mainstream media.
The Traditionalist-Progressive divide pervades not just the Church. It also pervades the institutionalized world of science as well as the media. Most contributors and commenters on this blog pride themselves on their commitment to the traditional standards of science (“How to get things right”) and repudiate the progressive obsession with having the largest impact on public opinion and funding authorities. Also, there are still many journalists and reporters In the media who uphold the traditional standards of their profession against the spineless “go with the flow” majority. Whether there are still traditionalist politicians of note is another matter.
N.B. No progressive will ever refer to his opponents as traditionalists. To him, they are either “conservatives” or “reactionaries”.
It took them almost 400 years to fix the Galileo humiliation of Pope Simplicio. Pope Karlus Marxium I should be penailling in an apology for his successor for 2400AD.
BTW, “Pope George from Melbin” has a nice ring to it.
that Man’s activities are warming the planet, dangerously so.
……………………………
ROFL
l lost my respect for Pope Francis when I saw he did not consider the effect on the poorest of the Earth when writing this terrible encyclical. Helping the poor should his principal mandate, not “saving the planet”, which is doing very well on its own.
He knows the church has enough problems right now…..it a shame he’s not smart enough to realize he was creating another problem
Even if all that was true, if his motives were sincere, where’s Christ? He didn’t come to save the planet. He came to save the people. (Eternal life, not temporal well being.) Why isn’t this pope preaching the gospel of Jesus Christ that was once delivered to the saints? Whether we leave behind a Man-made paradise or a trash heap, eternity won’t notice. God sent the “life preserver”, Jesus Christ, so that those who choose to grab hold can be rescued.
Man was born screwed. (Dead in trespasses and sins. Ever read Romans 5?) Keeping his room clean won’t matter.
Gunga,
You are right. Christ did not come to save the planet. He came to save fallen humanity. He also warned his followers that they would be persecuted by the rest of the world. Well, you can see that happening in many of the comments above. Yup, following Christ is not the best way of courting popularity. But in the Book of Revelation we read, “Then I saw ‘a new heaven and a new earth,’ for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and there was no longer any sea.” God created the earth and man has broken the relationship which God established with both man and ‘the planet’. So the Incarnation, which we celebrate at Christmas, is about the restoration of that broken relationship and that includes the creation of a ‘new earth’.
In addition, it might be an idea to keep in mind what Christ says on the Day of Judgment:
“When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, he will sit on his glorious throne. All the nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate the people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. He will put the sheep on his right and the goats on his left.
“Then the King will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world. For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.’
“Then the righteous will answer him, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe you? When did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you?’
“The King will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.’
“Then he will say to those on his left, ‘Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. For I was hungry and you gave me nothing to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, I was a stranger and you did not invite me in, I needed clothes and you did not clothe me, I was sick and in prison and you did not look after me.’
“They also will answer, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or needing clothes or sick or in prison, and did not help you?’
“He will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me.’
“Then they will go away to eternal punishment, but the righteous to eternal life.”
Fortunately, the Pope is not the Church, and the Church is not the Pope. Sometime when you are bored and want some heavy reading look at the entire history of the 2000 year old Catholic Church. It becomes abundantly clear it is God’s Church and not man’s church. The have been a bunch of idiots as Pope, a bunch of idiots as Cardinals, and yet the Church survives. It will survive this idiot too.
agree Dan
Dan,
Yes. It really is up to the church members to politely rebel against error. In fact,it is part of Canon law:
Canon Law…
TITLE I : THE OBLIGATIONS AND RIGHTS OF ALL CHRIST’S FAITHFUL (Cann. 208 – 223)
Can. 212
§2 Christ’s faithful are at liberty to make known their needs, especially their spiritual needs, and their wishes to the Pastors of the Church.
§3 They have the right, indeed at times the duty, in keeping with their knowledge, competence and position , to manifest to the sacred Pastors their views on matters which concern the good of the Church. They have the right also to make their views known to others of Christ’s faithful, but in doing so they must always respect the integrity of faith and morals, show due reverence to the Pastors and take into account both the common good and the dignity of individuals.
So…
yes – thank you
PF is just a knee jerk Jesuit happy dancer from a looong line of Jesuit heretics. Perhaps the most notable, Tielhard de Chardin, tried to incorporate the collectivism of Marxism with the ‘Progressiveness’ of evoluttion to synthesize a new global spirituality which would eventuate in the second coming. This heresy displaces the Divine Christ with collective human progress. The Jesuits have been afflicted with demonic intellectual conceits for many decades. There are good Jesuits but they are very circumspect in criticizing Progressives. JPII was insulted and humiliated by the rabid Liberation Theology Jesuits in Central America. He tried to get them back in line and failed. He should have suppressed the order. PF thinks he can invent science.
The climate that is plainly seen by analysis of ice cores at the Vostok shows 4 past glacial cycles starting 420,000 years ago. On average, the earth has been far more entombed in ice than it is now.
See for yourself http://bit.ly/1J0N4hM.
Russian scientists have recently set up a research facility to attempt to recover and make use of DNA from a well preserved woolly mammoth baby that was entombed in snow and ice some 39,000 years ago. It was discovered exposed in the Russian Arctic Circle in 2010.
Since mammoths eat vegetative matter, it is clear that just a short time ago, as the earth measures time, the arctic was warm enough to support mammoth-friendly vegetation.
Even a casual glance at the data from the Vostok ice cores shows that on balance, the climate is normally much colder than anything in the last 200 years. The last glaciation in North America occurred about 50,000 years ago. When the glacier started to retreat about 20,000 years ago, the ice was a mile thick at Chicago.
As can be seen from Vostok data, the climate is continually changing, freezing and thawing.
It is no surprise that almost every demand made by advocates of Anthropogenic Global Warming converges on bigger government, higher taxes, less freedom and more restrictions. That tells me all I need to know about this massive fraud.
Reblogged this on gottadobetterthanthis and commented:
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I absolutely agree that the Pope has given cause for division. This situation is Galileo all over again. Those who refuse to learn the lessons of the past are damned to repeat them.
It is an embarrassment for Christianity. It is especially embarrassing for the Catholic Church. It is also an embarrassment for science in accepting the endorsement.
“To equate a papal position on abortion with a position on global warming is worse than wrong; it is an embarrassment for the Church.”
It is worse than wrong. It is damaging.
Sadly, it will likely take as long to get past this embarrassment as it did with Galileo.
Lonnie E. Schubert
I have to disagree. The Pope has nearly every scientific body on earth on his side. He has convectional science on his side. During the Protestant reformation, the Church had accepted the “unpopular” Copernican model of planetary motion decades before Galileo and Galileo himself, was afraid to be out as a “Copernican” in his communications with Kepler. So the analogy is wrong on the contemporary facts and the history. All this is obtainable information.
Now, your errors notwithstanding, comments attributed to Pope Francis have been a cause for controversy. Comments he never said also have been a cause for controversy, and documents he has authored have also been the a cause for controversy.
Jesus himself said this:
“Do not think that I came to bring peace on the earth; I did not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I came to SET A MAN AGAINST HIS FATHER, AND A DAUGHTER AGAINST HER MOTHER, AND A DAUGHTER-IN-LAW AGAINST HER MOTHER-IN-LAW; and A MAN’S ENEMIES WILL BE THE MEMBERS OF HIS HOUSEHOLD.”
The sole question that remains is what does science tell us now?
My next question is what are you going to do about it?
I give you credit for being authentic.
That setting of “a man against his father” has nothing to do the prevailing “97% consensus” but about him. Is Jesus the Christ or not?
Genuine and honest science has done much to make our temporal lives better now.
Politics is twisting the science now for it’s own ends.
The eternal then has to do him.
This pope isn’t preaching him.
In the mean time, lets keep the politics out of the science of the now.
.
This attempt by the Pope to meddle in the field of science is a throwback to the pre Thomas Aquinas days of the 13th Century. One would have thought that the Church had the concept of distancing the authority of the church from matters concerning the natural world well embedded after 800 years !
Paul,
Please look into Opus Majus by Roger Bacon, published in 1267 at the request of Pope Clement IV It is considered to be the birth of western scientific method.
Furthermore, The “dark ages” is a modern myth. It is beneath those of us in our information filled world to accept such nonsense as fact. Search Dark ages Myth and simply read.
Paul,
Who considers Bacon’s Greater Work the birth of the Western scientific method?
The two most recent studies of his work debunk this hoary canard, irrefutably IMO. He says in Pat Two of the Greater Work that theology, especially the Bible, is the basis of all “science”. His “method” bears little relationship to the scientific method as now understood. In Part One, he objects not to citing authority, but only unreliable or weak authorities.
Nor are the Dark Ages a myth. It is an historical fact that most of the learning and much of the technology of the Greek and Roman pagan world was lost in Western Europe during the Dark Ages. After the fall of Rome, instability, to include repeated invasions and epidemics, swept across Europe, East and West. Note that the Dark Ages also coincided with deteriorating climate, ie it got colder.
You’re also mistaken if you imagine that the Catholic Church embraced heliocentrism and a mobile earth in the 16th century. It never did until the 19th century, sticking to the Ptolemaic System long after Galileo showed it false by observing the phases of Venus. Rome largely ignored Copernicus before Galileo, although those Churchmen who did comment abhorred the sun-centered system. Galileo was convicted of heresy precisely because of advocating that the earth does move. I’ll grant that his disrespect for the pope didn’t help his cause.
Make a list of how many things the RC church got right over the past 2000 years. Now make a list of how many things they got wrong.
Virtually everything they got right was given to them 2000 years ago by Jesus of Nazareth. He explained what was right and what was wrong.
Just about everything the Church got wrong over the past 2000 years were matters where the Church took it upon themselves to decide right from wrong.
This is a mistake. God determines right from wrong, not the Church, not the Pope. Every person has it in their heart to know right from wrong, without any help from the Church or the Pope. Jesus made that abundantly clear. It is God in our hearts that determines right from wrong, not the teaching of some old fool in a funny hat.
The Church and the Pope have no business deciding right from wrong. That is the Province of God. The Church’s only task on earth is to carry out those things identified as right by God, not right as identified by Popes.
This fool’s pronouncement was stupid enough, but I wasn’t aware it stood on an equal footing to abortion. So we now have a side in a scientific question being pronounced upon with the same authority as a serious moral issue. This is probably intended to be the church’s next foray into claiming scientific authority, but the fact is the facts are what they are. And when what they are is indisputably established, the church’s moral authority, being now on equal standing with its scientific idiocy, will fall into the same disrepute. Brilliant work.
Genesis 1:28
God blessed them; and G_d said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it; and rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over every living thing that moves on the earth.
Who is the Pope to tell us to disobey G_d? We were told fill the earth and rule over it and now the Pope says not to? Did G_d change his mind? If G_d changed his mind, you’d think he’d tell the Pope to tell us so the new rules could be communicated to us? Or perhaps drop a giant stone tablet out of the sky with much thunder and lightning and perhaps an earthquake for emphasis with the new rules written on it?
Religion is complicated thing. One can selectively quote to make it say anything one wants.
This Pope has on the whole been a pretty good Pope in my view, but my view takes in a lot of other issues. On this issue he is simply wrong, he’s gotten emotional instead of logical about it, and his judgment is clouded.
The bible says there will be no rising of sea level:
Gen 9: Never again will the waters become a flood to destroy all life.
Perpaps the pope should believe in the bible.
Ummm, dodoist, you do realize that “the waters” could rise more than the IPCCs most alarmist predictions and still not “become a flood to destroy all life”?
People who don’t read the Bible shouldn’t attempt to tell anyone what it says. 🙂
I cannot believe all this venom spit against the Pope trying to save our planet is by people we revere as tpreachers of the word of Christ. Global warming stares us in the face!
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-thjAsfU7juc/U9eNzR7vVVI/AAAAAAAAOX4/fBBaHczrr3s/s1600/Cartoon+–+Global+Warming+Lies.jpg
Francis
How many millions do YOU – and the pope! – condemn to death by YOUR fears of what is only a beneficial increase in global average temperature, and a beneficial increase in CO2 to all plant life, and a beneficial improvement in life for billions worldwide?
“In 2012, there were 1,228,612,000 Catholics in the world and 393,053 priests.”
http://ncronline.org/blogs/ncr-today/global-catholic-population-number-priests-down-1980
There are more than 7 billion people on this planet. To put it simply, if every single Catholic did indeed “revere” the Pope, that still makes only 1 out of every 7 people.
Hey Mr. Pope, stop looking in the toilet and you won’t scare yourself quite so much !!!
You’re obviously a troll, but whatever…
CO2 has provided the earth with 11% more food over 28 years, thus feeding 600 million people. And the world’s got warmer since the little ice age, as every sane person says it did.
But in order for whatever is staring us in the face to be a cause for starving 600m. ppl, then it has to be ALL of the following:
1) not merely “a fact”, but a dangerous fact. And since it was 2C hotter in the middle ages and life was BETTER, clearly we aren’t there yet.
2) Mostly caused by CO2,
3) which was mostly emitted by human activity.
You got that? Now crawl back in your hole.
Francis,
Nice parody. Thanks. No one informed and reasonable actually believes what you wrote.
I appreciate good irony.
There’s worse staring Man in the face. And it ain’t the condition of “our planet”.
If the Pope has abandoned the Good News of Jesus Christ in favor of the current “97%” world view of a temporal Man-made paradise, what “venom” is being spit? If he’s wrong when measured against Scripture, then, guess what? He’s wrong. Is he preaching Christ or pantheism?
(Ever read the record in Galatians where Paul called out Peter for not walking according to the Gospel?)
Hence the term “Papal Bull”!
Bishop Sorondo’s remarks, if reported accurately, are outrageously wrong.
Why I’m not a Catholic anymore is succinctly captured in this commie Pope. He’s full of s…t. Why would anyone listen to anything he spews from his mouth or pen? I don’t revere him. I despise him.
We must not abandon the church because of a goofy pope. As a well known saint said the road to hell is paved with the skulls of bishops. The whole church has been infected by Marxism according to plan by Antonio Gramsci. Displacing God with Socialist Government to build a Utopian heaven on earth calls to mind the Golden Calf, the Tower of Babel and the parable of the weeds among the wheat. The church is seriously afflicted but there is a faithful cohort that preserves the faith despite our misguided bishops. Our Lady of Fatima warned of this chastisement.
I did a Mr Spock Meld with one of my chickens and it turns out God is a chicken. We’re all in trouble.
There are no “Vulcans”. There are no “Mind Melds”. There is no “Mr Spock”.
So…ummm
What were you doing to that chicken of yours?
What else did it reveal to you?
here… this may help.
http://www.healthyplace.com/other-info/resources/mental-health-hotline-numbers-and-referral-resources/nami-state-resources-list/
God’s a chicken???
Well, even if true provided the means to feather our nest. No works on our part. Just say “Yes, I believe.”
Just don’t squawk about it later.
Gregor Mendel a catholic monk got genetics right…
Copernicus, a catholic Priest got Heliocentric right…
Fr Georges Henri LeMaitre, got the big bang right, even while ALL of the world’s most prominent atheist physicists said he was wrong, including Fred Hoyle who refused to accept it even into 2000 AD.
etc etc…
Was it Fr Georges Henri LeMaitre that heard God say “Let there be light.”
Discussions on Galileo and the Church always seem to ignore the fact that Galileo’s contemporaries made some very important contributions to science. Considering these contemporaries might change the nature of the conversation since some of these contemporaries were priests.
http://www.scientus.org/Galileo-Contemporaries.html
http://www.scientus.org/Galileo-Contemporaries-Timeline.html
And Galieo’s astronomical ideas weren’t driven completely by reason. Galileo was the most famous critic of his time of Kepler’s planetary model, and the reason for his criticism was probably aesthetic..he felt that the circles of the Copernican model were more ‘perfect’ than the ellipses of Kepler’s. The Copernican Model was never going to work better than any other model if you didn’t add the ellipses.
http://www.scientus.org/Galileo-Battle-for-Heavens.html
Kepler was a Protestant. Copernicus was persuaded to complete and publish his book by a Protestant, and it was printed by a Lutheran press. He waited until near his death to publish, despite having written a summary of his ideas 36 years previously.
IMO The Popes objectives in Laudito Si were political, not religious or scientific. He, like Obama and Naomi Kline, see CAGW as a means to wealth redistribution. Sadly, this dishonest “means justifys the ends” approach is in itself immoral. I believe this is not an issue between orthodox or progressive leadership within the church, it is an issue between those who recognize the potential damage to the papacy and the church, and those who are willing to accept duplicity as a means to a goal. Sadly, the Pope appears to be in the later camp.
He was probably lobbied heavily by prelates from the developing world. They, and their flocks, would have been alienated by inaction, not to mention skepticism. It would have hurt the church’s popularity. This probably accounts for half his motivation. But he obviously has a warmist mindset–hence the heatedness and frequency of his proclamations on this matter, the poor reasoning he employs, and his exclusion of skeptics from his counsels.
IMO, being a Marxist “liberation theologist”, Francis didn’t need to be lobbied by Third World cardinals and funcionaries. The Commie goon embraced this anti-human doctrine whole-heartedly.
Well said Gloateus Maximus. Indeed, Francis is right at home with the misanthropic greens. Their shared goals and policies will condemn forever poor societies to all of the solvable ills of energy poverty.
Thanks.
Francis is a Jesuit, a member of the Counter-Reformational order (founded by St. Francis Xavier) which most fully embraced so-called “Liberation Theology”. Its priests were active in violent revolutionary movements in Latin America and in the cocaine trade. That’s the milieu out of which the Watermelon pope emerged.
And under Archbishop Marcinkus (1971-89), the Vatican Bank was implicated in laundering money and running scams for the Mob.
Here’s a hidden benefit Francis has reaped by his actions: He now has a lot more “cred” with the governments of the world, and others, because he could claim that he motivated his flock to get the COP deal passed in Paris. He’s seen as one of the fathers of victory.
rogerknights
Well, he now definitely has a lot more credibility with those who he (this pope) admires and wants recognition from: His socialist teachers and sponsors, the socialist governments around the world, the immigration sponsors and “immigration winners” around the world (those who hate the western world in general and the US/UK in particular), and those in Washington who need their “good catholic voters” to remain in power.
But he is NOT the “father of victory” but rather the bringer of despair and death. Victory to killers? Yes.
It is better that two leading religions of the West get together rather than fight each other, but it is unusual for the press to put such effort into reporting a good news story.
Has no-one read False Dawn by Lee Penn?
That will put the Popes encyclical into it’s proper context.
Fr. Joseph Fessio is right IMO. Mankind isn’t omnipotent. If it were, why believe in any supernatural being?