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Guest essay by Eric Worrall
Catholic Online reports that new priests will be expected to be familiar with and promote efforts to reduce carbon emissions.
New priests to learn about global warming as part of formation
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LOS ANGELES, CA (California Network) — The Catholic Church is intimately concerned about climate change. The Vatican’s Pontifical Academy of Sciences is the world’s oldest, longest running scientific mission. That body, which advises the pope on matters of science, has concluded that global climate change is real and is caused, at least in significant part, by human activity.
This is important to the Church because creation care is part of our mission. We are called to be stewards of creation. It’s also important because climate change can exacerbate the ills of poverty. Poor people in much of the world are the most vulnerable to changes.
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Unfortunately, the issue is politicized. In the late 1970s, when the issue threatened the financial interests of the fossil fuel industry, the political lobbies, chiefly in the United States, financed a massive political disinformation campaign to manufacture the illusion of dissent within the scientific community.
We know because this manipulation of public opinion has been caught and documented. The fossil fuel industry funds nearly all of the climate change skeptics, going so far as to commission questionable studies, to financing think tanks, and even paying individual bloggers. The deception continues today.
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But what does this have to do with the Church?
The Church has a responsibility to care for people, and the environment. And care for one is also care for the other.
Now updated guidelines for the formation of clergy says new priests should understand this as well:
“Protecting the environment and caring for our common home — the Earth, belong fully to the Christian outlook on man and reality. Priests should be “promoters of an appropriate care for everything connected to the protection of creation.”
The new guidelines suggest that in the future, priests will also have a good grasp of the global climate change problem and will share this with their congregation.
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Read more: http://www.catholic.org/news/green/story.php?id=72433
From the Vatican website;
The Gift of the Priestly Vocation
… For some time now, experts and researchers, active in different fields of study, have turned their attention to the emerging planetary crisis, which is reflected strongly in the current Magisterium regarding the ‘ecological question’. Protecting the environment and caring for our common home – the Earth – belong fully to the Christian outlook on man and reality. They constitute in some way the basis for a sound ecology of human relations. Hence they demand, today above all, a “profound interior conversion. It must be said that some committed and prayerful Christians, with the excuse of realism and pragmatism, tend to ridicule expressions of concern for the environment. Others are passive; they choose not to change their habits and thus become inconsistent. So what they all need is an ‘ecological conversion’, whereby the effects of their encounter with Jesus Christ become evidence in their relationship with the world around them. Living our vocation to be protectors of God’s handiwork is essential to a life of virtue; it is not an optional or a secondary aspect of our Christian experience. Therefore it will be necessary for future priests to be highly sensitive to this theme and, through the requisite Magisterial and theological guidance, helped to “acknowledge the appeal, immensity and urgency of the challenge we face”. This must then be applied to their future priestly ministry, making them promoters of an appropriate care for everything connected to the protection of creation. …
Whats next? Excommunication of scientists whose theories aren’t approved by the Pope?
Update (EW) – Added a quote from “The Gift of the Priestly Vocation” from the Vatican website.
How do you know some social or scientific fad is outdated? The church picks it up.
Sounds like the Inquisition is back on.
The Catholic Church tried Galileo for heresy and excommunicated him in 1632 a.d. His sin? Claiming/proving that the earth revolved around the sun. Church doctrine was the planets revolved around the earth.
Science is not the churches strong suit. They were wrong about “heliocentricity” then and they are wrong about “climate change” now.
So, since the Catholic Church has deemed global warming is significantly caused by human activity, it then follows that the number of humans is part of the problem (7 billion of us little buggers). Does that then mean that the Catholic Church is going to advocate for birth control?
How obsecenly greedy for power and wealth can the Vatican become?
They share their billions with nobody.
They take the last few pennies from the poverty stricken in their church services.
Now they want to take millions from from taxpayers through governments who use bogus science.
They are pure evil.
Sounds like you are describing the Obama administration.
If my priest starts in on this it is over. I will walk out and not go back. No donations, no help in parish functions. Over. Il Papa, idiot extraordinary worships the created instead of the creator.
I am not a devout Catholic worshipper. But the CCB’s policy letter concerning Syrian refugees caused my weekly contributions to the Catholic Church to be terminated. Now with the Catholic Church and the Vatican’s Pontifical Academy of Sciences entering the fray concerning global warming I will terminate contributions altogether. Can the Pope, the Catholic Church or the Vatican’s Pontifical Academy of Sciences prove global warming? No they cannot. No one can prove global warming without the proper data and the appropriate analysis of those data. Remember, this promotion of global warming by the Church is being done by the same entity that suppressed the scientific fact that the Earth orbits the Sun.
Begs to question why so many have not left this theocratic cult that is guilty of a long trail of abuses (persecution of Christians and rape, pillage, genocide of the New World, false prophet). No wonder that the evil moo-him-mad admired the Roman catholic theocracy so much, that he copied its power and control precepts into islam.
Jesus Christ said that you are to call upon Him and Him alone, for Salvation. Your Walk in Christ is wholly personal; no church required.
John 14:6
6 Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.
Just one more reason I left the Catholic church decades ago and turned to Jesus instead…”You must be born again” John 3:7
The article reflects the strong biases of its author, Marshall Connelly. It is clear that Connelly has ingested many gallons of full strength CAGW Kool-aid when he states porkies such as the fossil fuel industry financing climate change skepticism. Thus his opinions about the rigor of CAGW training of future priests are suspect. But it should make Catholic skeptics aware of the potential for this to happen, and such skeptics should push back hard if it does start to materialize. Such resistance may prevent long term harm until a time of cooling renders CAGW moot.
I am one Catholic who is pushing back. As I said in another comment, the Pope is neither scientist nor politician. The facts and science about this Globalist Climate ripoff will arrive long before there is the cooling you’re talking about. One can gather the truth without much effort.
Fracking.
Oh, not an issue .
If they preach anything it should be the havoc caused by overpopulation.
If a Church uses the pulpit for political purposes, are they not in danger of loosing Tax exempt status?
Priests should be required to register as foreign agents and jailed for efforts to propagandize the people. More fake news should not be tolerated. Henry VIII did not tolerate the interference of Clement VII in the matter of his marriages but declared himself head of the Catholic Church in England.
The issue of AGW is far more serious than a marriage. Why tolerate a Pope that chooses to interfere in the matter in the US? Why not demand that US Catholics abjure this Pope in Rome?
“…Unfortunately, the issue is politicized. In the late 1970s, when the issue threatened the financial interests of the fossil fuel industry, the political lobbies, chiefly in the United States, financed a massive political disinformation campaign to manufacture the illusion of dissent within the scientific community…”
Ah yes, who can forget the huge global warming scare of the late 1970s, right on the heels of the 1975 Newsweek cover story, “the Cooling World.”
The threats to the financial interests of the fossil fuel industry were a global energy crisis due in large part to Iran and Iraq. The other big issue was peak oil, with rampant claims that we only had about 50 years before we ran dry when it came to oil. The big global issue was the Cold War. The big environmental issues were saving the whales and the Amazon rain forests.
The energy crises had a number of causes, but a large factor was the imposition of rationing by odd/even license plate numbers and other nonsense on pricing and profits. With the rationing many people turned to various tactics to keep a steady supply of gasoline to get to work, etc. The simplest was instead of running the tank down to 1/4 or less, they kept if filled to 3/4 or more- stop every other day after work for gas. Many people had two cars, one for each day. This kept 10 gallons or more in the tanks of upwards of 80million cars- about 10% of production. That extra demand to months to work out and never really disappeared, adding to the gas lines, and numbers of cars running out while waiting. Add to that the chaos caused by the “windfall profits” tax which also cut production- why make more, just to send more profits to the government?
All in all the government blundered its way through the mid seventies to the end of the early 80’s recession with out of control inflation and interest rates pushing 17% at times.
Those in the pulpit would be better served to advance responsible stewardship of God’s creation and avoid the hyperbole and politics of GW. Clean air and water and avoidance of unnecessary waste stands on its own and contributes to a stronger biosphere irrespective of causation.
The apostate Pope wants to be the leader of the one-world religion.
It is a sin to lie. Promoting the lie of global warming is not something that comes within the purview of the church. This pope is the anti-pope. His coming was foreseen many years ago. The church has always been a bit to the left, but generally only involved in ministering to the poor, the needy and showing compassion (sometimes inappropriately). Now it is become an arm of the globalists who are promoting this scam to sell indulgences called carbon credits. Some will become filthy rich while others will suffer because fossil fuels have been deemed the work of the devil. The cause of non-existent global warming. How sad that a religion which has survived for a couple of thousand years has come to this state. Through times of great power and times of great relevance or times of great misconduct, the church cannon has survived because it preaches the Gospel. Now it just preaches the Party line. That’s what happens when corrupt men inhabit the offices of religion.
Affordable energy for any population is without a doubt the most cost effective way to reduce poverty society has ever seen. To deny poor countries the availability of affordable storable fossil fuels would be and is a travesty, all in the name of and belief that it is somehow noble and is saving the planet.
The demise of the Catholic Church, in many countires, soon to follow the demise of the United Methodist Church, due to liberalism.
Looks like the Pope and WUWT made the Drudge Report.
Climate Change Scheme Saying it is caused by Humans + The New World Order=’s Carbon Tax, the Money to Fund the Redistribution of Wealth to the Few, while deceiving the World and the Churches that this MONEY will help the poor, and improve the Climate.
Think Everyone, do you really think Humans can control the Climate , even with all the money in the world.
Climate has been changing for millions of years, and Earth has seen this type of climate , long before man roamed the planet.
If they are so worried about pollution , then why hasn’t the government banned BURNING BARRELS , WHERE HOMEOWNERS BURN PLASTIC, DIAPERS, AND OTHER ITEMS, SPEWING CHEMICALS INTO THE AIR.
No , the government is only interested in controlling any industry that they can bring in big bucks, prevention is the last thing they care about.
The observable, reproducible threat is posed by both atheists and theists who indulge in departures from the scientific domain. We need a separation of logical domains.
Unh, … People?
The issue of “the One True Religion” doesn’t need to be solved TODAY, on this blog.
There are many shades and formulations of belief, and NONE of us will know-for-certain-sure until we’re dead and beyond this three-or-four dimensional realm.
As far as science, Pope Frankie is wrong to religion-icize climate-change theories, and I’m sure most of us can understand that.
The End, — and thanks for playing.
Goofball Central, headquarters Vatican City.
As a devout Catholic, everytime this Pope preaches or opines, I just snicker and laugh. Kinda the same way I do at my loser liberal cousins who have a new career every other year and whose only passion is social media activism.
Just argue facts with the collectivists, eventually they’ll have a panic attack and self destruct.