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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 current Pope is a Marxist and he’s trying to make the church over in his image. Hopefully he’ll die soon and the church will revert back to the status quo ante.
He came to power in a palace coup, of communists against conservatives in the Vatican.
My old-school Southern grandparents used to say that they didn’t leave the Democrat party, the Democrats left them. Thanks to the Catholic Church, I understand exactly how they felt.
More silly stuff and nonsense from the media dreamers. The Pope has indicated we should respect and care for the environment…a no brainer in all political circles. He hasn’t whined about the Keystone Pipeline,fossil fuels or coal.The radical left wants the Pope to embrace their discredited views as Church Doctrine…never going to happen.
Hmmmmm. How do you spell G-A-L-I-L-E-O?
The Pope and the Catholic Church should confine themselves to the fighting of sin in our modern world. Particularly the sin of covetousness…which Progressive/liberal/socialist regimes worldwide have embedded into governments like hungry parasites. The Obama administration or the Democrat party in America wouldn’t have an agenda plank to stand on if it weren’t for covetousness…us versus them…soak the rich…pay your “fair share”…wealth redistribution, etc. Yet nary a peep from the Pontiff or his bishops. Sin seems to be the last thing they care about. They are only concerned with being social justice warriors…even for unjust and lunatic causes.
But he’s all whipped up about climate change…a phenomenon for which there hasn’t been one substantiated claim proven. I think the guy has gone MENTAL. Methinks there’s a layer of tinfoil under that miter.
Naysayers,heretics,unbelievers! Next thing you will say Rachel Carson was a fraud.
Carson WAS a fraud. The eggshell thinning data came from a fixed experiment where the calcium was intentionally reduced in the diet of the birds also fed DDT. Look it up. The researcher confessed.
Global warming (aka climate change) is the religion of the stupid.
Sheep, lemmings, and Leftists are easily manipulated.
http://www.zazzle.com/firstprinciples/products?rf=238518351914519699
They need to get rid of this so called Vicar of Christ and never again raise up another Pope from a Latin American socialist country.
You can take the Pope out of Latin America, but you can’t take the Latin America out of the Pope.
Dang. No wonder the only time I set foot in church is for a marriage or a funeral. Until Pope Frankie allows all those “refugees” that he tells the rest of the world to embrace into Vatican City, I won’t hold my breath.
There was a time the Church was concerned with men’s souls – as was Jesus. For from the good souls of mankind all good things would follow.
The Church seems to think delving into politics will make religion more relevant, widely accepted, give it a larger voice in the world. Mother Theresa did that with an open heart and unquestioning good works. She was a better model for the Catholic Church than the insulated Pope ever has been.
Religion and politics don’t mix well. This global warming initiative in the Church is just wrong.
Don’t bring Jesus into Religion, that’ll upset the politics.
The Vatican’s Pontifical Academy of Sciences is the world’s oldest, longest running scientific mission.
Are these the same folks who said the earth was the center of the universe and that the earth was flat?
This exactly the reason I am no longer a participant in the Catholic religion. The poor, more than any, need the benefits that fossil fuels provide most of us including the pope! To deny the poor these benefits is not Christian!
Actually if you read it it says care for creation. It’s the slant of the article that put in the whole climate change emphasis. It says nothing of forcing people or priests to acknowledge global warming as an only man made event. It has always however taught that we should care for creation, which does mean helping to build up the environment not destroy it. But nowhere does the church say promote global warming trash.
I would walk out of any homily.
Bring back the Inquisition to deal with global warming heretics.
Wow, just wow! Of course it’s political. The church is lost in the desert of hubris. “change effects the poor the most” – If tomorrow magic happened and ALL human influence on the climate stopped, the climate would still change in some way. It always has, and always will. Who would the church blame then? God? All this money would be better spent helping people deal with the effects of change rather than the Quixote like effort to change global human behavior.
The Catholic Church promotes their coming home advertisement. Coming home to preaching global warming instead of the Gospel? I use to be Roman Catholic. The gospel was not preached. Only social justice stuff. Now i attend Gospel preaching ACNA (Anglican) Church. Would never go back. The Catholic Church and this Pope is falling into heresy.
So now the religion of global warming has found a sponsor? And one with deep pockets at that. Just in time too, since a President Trump will likely cut the flow of money from the taxpayer spigots.
How long will it be before Hanson et al proclaim, “We’re all Catholics now.”
Why? The Catholic Church will be around long enough for this fr*ud to be exposed. This isn’t going to help their cause, it will alienate conservatives and most climate alarmists are aligned with the atheist Democratic Party. I just don’t get it.
Can you say, empty pews.
Enviro evangelism is the new religion. The Pope, seeing this, is applying it, to attain his goals. People were getting sick and tired of the same old crap anyhow. He’s still working the Armageddon stichk, but now the devil is capitalism and wealthy countries. He sees redistributing wealth to poorer people, who he can control, as his main goal. It’s a basic socialist platform which, if you look at Latin America today, would lead to disaster.
I don’t believe Catholic Online is an official part of, or speaks for, the church. Although the writer of this article is pretty clearly in the alarmist camp, the view attributed to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, is much more nuanced: …global climate change is real and is caused, at least in significant part, by human activity. Almost all skeptics agree with the first part of this statement, and many agree with both parts.
Eric, I don’t see anything in the article about “efforts to reduce carbon emissions.” As far as expecting clerics to be aware of secular issues and open to valid science, there is nothing wrong with that.
What is really objectionable with this article is the two paragraphs from Unfortunately, the issue is politicized. to The deception continues today.
Whoever wrote this should review the 9th commandment (or the 8th, depending on your tradition.)
This is the exact wrong time to join the bandwagon.
https://youtu.be/QowL2BiGK7o?t=17m1s
The two things that this pope has said Islam is a religion of peace and now preaching carbon dioxide reduction both lies.
They have proven their lacking mental capacities by BEING Catholic, so AGW is not a stretch for them.
[I sometimes think we should have a minimum age requirement for posting here . . . mod]
mod, you’re an idiot