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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.
The Pope is a Marxist bent on destroying the Catholic church. “Man made” “global warming” that can be “solved” “only” by organized crime government theft and redistribution of rights (e.g. property) is his fake news he equates with his fecalphilia.
The more things change the more they stay the same. Galileo ran afoul of church thinking because of his heliocentric views vs. the standard and church mandated geocentric view. Advice to the church. Leave science to scientist and learn what the “Scientific Method” is.
the cover up of the child molestation by priests made me stop going to church. this socialist Pope confirmed that I had made the correct decision and I will not go to mass again
Ok, so I scrolled through all the comments here, and maybe I missed it, but it seems as if *not one* of the commentors noticed that Eric Worrall’s headline and introduction to this article are extremely misleading. If you click through to the article on Catholic.org, it is quite clear that it is an *opinion piece* by Marshall Connolly. *He* is the one–not “The Catholic Church”–who is advocating that new priests “be expected to preach global warming”, in the misleading words of the headline to this guest essay.
The actual guidelines for priestly formation that Marshall Connolly is talking about only says the most generic statement, that priests should be “promoters of an appropriate care for everything connected to the protection of creation.” That’s it, and I find that perfectly appropriate. Everything else in the Catholic.org article is put together by Marshall Connolly, and Mr. Worrall does his readers a disservice by confusing the advocacy work of Mr. Connolly with the official position of the Catholic Church.
Part of the climate change agenda is to act as if humans have the power of God to radically affect the environment of this planet. Short of a catastrophic nuclear war, God’s creation is more than capable of regulating itself. The Catholic church is joining the humanists in declaring their power over God. Today’s global warming scheme is the modern day equivalent to the Tower of Babel. We have come to think more highly of ourselves than is warranted.
If you are going to comment on the Catholic church and it’s doctrine, at least learn enough to get it right.
The Pope can say anything he wants, but that does not make what he says official doctrine. Since he is supposed to knowledgeable in spiritual matters people often take his teachings to heart. But no Catholic is required to. Others can believe what they will. The only teachings that become doctrine are “ex cathedra” or “from the chair”- from the Gospel Matthew 23: 2-3- [Jesus spoke] The scribes and the Pharisees have taken their seat on the chair [Gk. cathedras] of Moses. Therefore, do and observe whatsoever they tell you, but do not follow their example. For they preach what they do not practice.” Corruption, crime, lying, and perversions have plagued all religions since they started. Do you think the Mayan folks being led(dragged maybe?) up the steps to the altar to have their hearts cut out were really in to it? There is some archaeological evidence that at least a few didn’t going as willing victims.
Second, one of the most basic teachings in the Church is to “form your conscience”. That means a moral duty to determine what is right and true as to how to behave. But in the end we all will find out when we die and meet God in his mercy.
Unfortunately, this man has a degree in chemistry and should understand science. But he also was involved in liberation theology and may have gone off the rails, putting to much emphasis on the here and now results than the hereafter.
He doesn’t have a degree in chemistry. He has a high school level certificate allowing him to work as a lab tech, basically.
Any Christian denomination that puts any man on a higher level of “holiness” or at a more divine relationship to God than any other man, is not based on Christianity at all. The Catholic church is a political body concerned with power and money and always has been. And the anointment of this radical Marxist pope has made that fact more obvious than ever before. The Vatican’s Pontifical Academy of Sciences has always been a body used to insert the Catholic Church into whatever pop-culture “scientific” claims are made at the time to give Catholicism influence and appear relevant in society in order to continue their lust for money and power. Since the anointment of this pope, he has abandoned Christian scripture and done nothing but push a radical socialist/Marxist agenda. So it is no wonder that the Catholic Church and the politically-driven leftist scientists (not the consensus that they claim) that push the “man-made global warming” agenda (or is it now “man-made climate change”) will make such good bedfellows. To hell with this anti-Christian, secular pope who’s heart and intentions are odorned with the hammer and sickle and not the cross that Christ died upon.
Global warming is the newest religion. The snappers don’t want to be left out.
When smokers are outlawed I’ll be an outlaw.. 😎
Guess I’m a Globull Warming Heretic.
Utter garbage. The Church is well out of its purview in pushing the unscientific scam of AGW. True adherence to issues of faith and morals would require the Church to condemn those who falsify data and scaremonger for purposes of graft and the encroachment of individual liberty in cringing submissiveness to tyrannical leftism.
As a life long Catholic…..this Pope is just a meddler…..and a LOT of Catholics I know feel this way, as well as some PRIESTS! First it was our election, Now this…He is NOT helping the Church. There are plenty of Catholic issues that need to be addressed. Just wanted to say this because many Catholics do NOT agree with this guy and what he says.
And God blessed them, saying: Increase and multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it, and rule over the fishes of the sea, and the fowls of the air, and all living creatures that move upon the earth.
Gen 1:28
I’ll pass on being cared for by Popes and Jesuits. Pray that you do not find out what Protestants have been talking about for hundreds of years on that subject.
It may interest you all that the Jesuits are a secret society whose main mission field is in education and in academia. It is an anti-reformation movement and its purpose is to bring the world back to Rome, which claims temporal power over the earth as a consequence of its false claims of spiritual authority. So all of the environmentalists that the Universities cranked out in the 60s and 70s all had a little help from the Jesuits in arriving at their West-hating, environmentalist conclusions. Now your paths all meet back up again in the Pope’s radical environmentalist plan to care for people who really don’t want to be cared for. See if college and university graduates were really “free thinkers” or not. Maybe not?
And. If anyone cares about the poor, stop selling drugs to spoiled overeducated environmentalist brats in Universities and people on welfare in the cities; let the people in the Southern Hemisphere raise their children away from drugs and cartels. That is a good start.
I go to church to hear the doctrine of the Almighty, not the doctrine of man.
If you want to take care of something, how about not making the parishioners pay for the baby raping priests and their lying Bishops. How about that!!
The old boys track record ain’t that good…
https://notonmywatch.com/?p=655
Once again Popery displays its appalling blindness.
This is exactly why I stopped going to mass – a pope who embraces the ideology of death, destruction and massive poverty
It is striking, really, how folks can believe in myths. Such as the myth of the evil Catholic Church through history. Such as the myth that unthinking people have propagated religious doctrine for twenty centuries. I’ve found most scientists have no better than a third grade education in theological teaching and church history (protestant or catholic). Those who have swallowed whole the modern myths of religious intolerance need to read Arthur Koestler’s book The Sleepwalkers. It will make you realize how much bunk you were taught about Copernicus and Galileo.
Thomas,
Don’t know to which bunk you refer. No one doubts that Copernicus and Galileo were religious, but the fact remains that their science ran counter to Church dogma. Galileo was persecuted for his science, and Copernicus waited until right before he died to publish, out of fear, as he himself admits in the Dedication to his book.
Even back in 1959, Koestler acknowledged that spiritual scientists were no longer ascendant, as they might still have been well into the 19th century.
No one who has actually studied the history of science, that is.
“Don’t know to which bunk you refer. No one doubts that Copernicus and Galileo were religious, but the fact remains that their science ran counter to Church dogma.”
Roman Church dogma was based on the teachings and dogmas of Aristotle and Ptolemy. Sir Francis Bacon, the father of empirical science, when he assessed the state of knowledge in England and in the Europe of his day, pointed this out. He showed how knowledge and discovery could advance through observations and experiments and that the reverence for Greek philosophers was an enormous hindrance. But Galileo and Da Vinci also stated plainly that the teachings of Aristotle and Ptolemy were their main obstacles.
The Roman Church also kept a strangle hold on writing, so that it was only done by scholastics and monastics in the Latin language.
After the invention of the printing press, the Protestant Reformation and writing in the vernacular resulted in an increase in literacy, learning and discovery. Each country slowly emerged from Roman feudalism, social mobility allowed new interests, and each country began to print its own works.
Ah yes, that reminds me, the Enlightenment saw the rise of “nationalism.” Writing your own literature and your own histories, imagine that.
As someone born and raised in the RC church..I will let u know doesn’t matter what they say no o e will listen..People with listening to these Priests years ago..they will only manage to drive what few parishioners they have left away from them..I quit when they tried to tell me I should support illegals..like I should condone law breakers but I should follow the law..what BS..
“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.”
I want the fossil fuel industry to know that I am available and I will gladly deny CAGW for very reasonable rates. Just drop me a line.
The Church has often been a force for good, but it has suffered a severe collapse in recent years. The pedophile priest scandals turned whole countries away from the Church. In the left’s inexorable march through the institutions, it managed to take over the Pontifical Academy of Science, and Pope Francis, in his ignorance, seems unable to come to grips with this. He thinks that in endorsing the false narrative of climate catastrophe, he can remedy the Church’s unfortunate situation. Instead, he is merely attacking human progress, the well being of the world’s poor, the integrity of science, and effectively hammering another nail in the Church’s coffin. Sad.
Your comment is one of the most thoughtful and well written among so many amateurish attempts. A veritable ‘petunia in the onion patch.’
I don’t know where these priests went to seminary, much less Catholic school but
I have a news flash for them and everyone else who is promoting global warming BS.
Our Lord Jesus Christ has His Finger on the thermostat of the universe.
Maybe the pope should focus on more proven issues–like pedophile priests in his midst.
Bless me Father, for I have sinned, I forgot to recycle last week