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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 Catholic Church
1517 – Indulgences to buy away your guilt.
2017 – Carbon credits to buy away your guilt.
Always suspicious of a man in position of religious authority whose emphasis seems to be far more weighted to the created rather than the Creator. So was the author of 1/3 of the New Testament.
Here the Church takes her eye off the ball once again and encourages distraction in a world full of misery and sin. It’s no small wonder that God’s Church has a difficult time recruiting young priests when Church leaders themselves stray like lost sheep into the myriad of politically charged street issues. We as a church need priests, priests and more priests, not sociological ideologues to introduce more confusion to scatter the flock.
It appears there is something other then the Holy Spirit involved here. Prayer, did anybody ever hear of Prayer? God help us.
Tax the church if they get into politics.
So if the Pope prays really hard, we can get the Laurentian Ice Sheet back?
There is “Climate Change (TM) ” I can believe in.
Image if the Church actually taught Climate Change.. Always has always will.
It is (damn near?) a miracle that the planet has sustained life, given its proximity to a variable star.
Our geological indications of global stability , indicate one hell of a self modulating system ..
Or is that brilliant(divine) design.?
Strikes me this Religious Leaders obsession with climate points to a disbelief in his own God.
A disconnect of doctrine?
Remember when told ; “Its an act of God”.. be sure to inquire as to ; “Which One/Ones?”
Spiritual Blindness. AGW or CC mitigation by the left crushes the poor.
Suddenly the Democrats can’t get enough of the Catholic Church and Christianity.
And the left has completely left their old friends the Rooskies behind, blaming them for Hillary’s loss and supposed “fake news”. I wonder if it is not now time for us to hug a commie?
This is total horseshit. As a Catholic I think this Pope should be excommunicated as he is likely the one to usher in the AntiChrist and one world Government. he is a communist and a fool
This is what happens when you have a Communist Pope. They stick politics into everything. Instead of focusing on individuals saving theirs souls through good individual behavior — they jump into matters of science which they know nothing of.
I am a Roman Catholic. The Church needs to STAY OUT of politics!!
Yes, alarmists there is and has always been climate change. However, the theory that human emissions of CO2 is the cause of global warming is NOT FACT BUT ONLY AN UNPROVEN THEORY THAT HAS BEEN REJECTED BY MANY SCIENTISTS FOR THE FOLLOWING, NEVER REPORTED, REASONS:
1. CO2 is a minor greenhouse gas that at it’s present level of 400 ppm accounts for 0.04% of the atmosphere and human activity account for only 4% of total carbon emissions. Nature accounts for 96% of carbon emissions. Do the math – 4% of 400 ppm is 16 ppm….How can such a minor amount of carbon produced by humans drive climate change?
2, CO2 is not a pollutant, but an essential to life element. There would be NO LIFE WITHOUT CARBON DIOXIDE!
3. CO2 is a clear odorless gas that’s constantly being used as it allows plants, trees and crops to CONSUME CO2 AND RELEASE OXYGEN BACK INTO THE ATMOSPHERE. This benefit is totally ignored.
4. Geologic history contradicts the “carbon emissions” theory. During past warm periods CO2 levels were as much as 10 times higher than today, but it did not prevent the glacial ages that followed. Conversely, following the long glacial periods, the climate warmed despite very low levels of CO2.
5. Ice core samples from Antarctica reveal that when the last ice age ended about 12,000 years ago temperatures rose 800 YEARS BEFORE CO2 LEVELS contradicting the claim that carbon drives climate.
6. “The 2016 State Of The Climate Report” presented to, and ignored, by the U.N.’s Climate Conference in Morocco just a few weeks ago in November says all you have to know: “The very idea we can predictably manage climate change accurately by manipulating at the margins one politically selected factor (CO2) is as misguided as it gets…It’s scientific nonsense!”
Pity. The Church now has little to separate itself from The New York Times. We should anyone make the effort to attend Mass if they can receive the same pablum online?
With such homogeneous content, the two institutions appear to be approaching the same irrelevance.
Liberation theology from a liberation theologist.
The hateful, spiteful comments on this thread make me glad I was out running errands and had no chance to comment when the article was posted.
Anyone who hates / despises Christianity, please feel free to NOT BOTHER ME with a response. I won’t be back to this thread anyway.
Just like an otter: popping up, so cute, and then disappearing before you can get your camera ready.
God is omnipresent – therefore he is present in this blog – look harder! GK
The RCC almost always stayed on the side of unreason. So why not this and particularly now. As environmentalism became a new “religion,” the Church seeks desperately to have the share in that stupidity as well.
“Global warming” is just a religion, so why not?
As a cradle Catholic I think the church and the Pope should stick to church matters. God knows there is enough there to keep the clergy busy.
What next — pedophilia as a means of combatting global warming?
Just driving more Catholics away from the church. Good job Padre
Will the Roman Catholic Church amend the Affirmation of Faith?
At least the Alarmists are finally recognizing that climate change belief is a religion based purely on faith. No science needed.
Isnt this the same bunch that told us the world was flat?
Which side was the church on re shape of the earth? Organization of the solar system?
Good luck trying to express a contrarian opinion in their comments. Apparently AGW is now an article of faith.
To all the anti-Catholics – I will pray for you and will kick the arse of any who blaspheme against God’s Holy Church! And for the ignorant Protestants – No Catholic Church, no Bible! Wake up!
The dopey, media-hungry Peronist in the Vatican continues his crusade to make Catholicism absurd. Nice.