Friday, March 29, AD 2024 1:44am

Green Encyclical Released

enviro-Pope

 

 

Go here to read it and put your initial thoughts in the comboxes.

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Don L
Don L
Thursday, June 18, AD 2015 6:02am

I’ll save reading this for next lent. I got no far than “a very solid scientific consensus” and learning that their is only one “climate system.” (Alaska has five)

Phillip
Phillip
Thursday, June 18, AD 2015 6:10am

Just skimmed the first couple of pages so far. Reads like a college sophomore’s paper so far. This, particularly given the richness in the writing of JP II and B XVI. Worse actually as there are mere assertions of climate “urgency” and no citations to prove. Perhaps we should take those assertions on faith.

One thing that struck a note was this comment:

“Some countries have areas rich in water while others endure drastic scarcity.”

Yes, as I recall I learned that in elementary school geography. What of it? Well it seems to relate to the previous sentence where it talks about “Water poverty” in Africa though, again due to the poor writing, that is not necessarily clear.

But then we have this:

” But water continues to be wasted, not only in the developed world but also in developing countries which possess it in abundance.”

So water is wasted. How? How much? Again an assertion. But at least it notes that it is also in developing countries so it is not just those “unjust structures” of the bad First World that is doing this. The result of this will be “Greater scarcity of water will lead to an increase in the cost of food and the various products which depend on its use.” Ah, so. And the solution is perhaps to have more central regulation which of course always improves efficiency in the use of resources and lowers costs for all.

Not time to read more now. Will skim in due course as I feel obliged to read this tripe as it is forwarded by the Holy Father.

Phillip
Phillip
Thursday, June 18, AD 2015 6:18am

Though one last final point. Came across this: “The rich and the poor have equal dignity, for ‘the Lord is the maker of them all'”. Good for the Pope to realize that as he seeks to make the Church the “Church of the Poor.”

Don L
Don L
Thursday, June 18, AD 2015 6:55am

Don Lond • 2 minutes ago

Somehow I suspect the diabolical is having a joyous laugh.
If we accept consensus climate change as man-made pollution and indisputable (very solid) scientific reality, they will win.
On the other hand if we have widespread rejection of an encyclical because it is loaded with such nonsense–they still win, for it will make all the other encyclicals and teachings of the Church insignificant and not authentic..

Cthemfly25
Cthemfly25
Thursday, June 18, AD 2015 7:24am

Don L —you have captured the core concern which arises when the Pope uses his teaching office to promulgate a bankrupt ideology. The premises of this letter stand on falsehoods. Take for example his representation of the existence of a very solid “scientific consensus.” A scientific consensus is not the same as political consensus. There is no such thing as a scientific consensus, based on hypothesis, empiricism, experimentation, etc., on this subject. There are several other false premises stated early in the letter so my question is how do we read this other than as if we are pigs searching for edible truffles of truth?

And someone please read paragraph 50 and explain it to me. It gave me the creeps as I interpreted it.

bill bannon
bill bannon
Thursday, June 18, AD 2015 8:24am

. Here’s section 55….

” 55. Some countries are gradually making significant progress, developing more effective controls and working to combat corruption. People may well have a growing ecological sensitivity but it has not succeeded in changing their harmful habits of consumption which, rather than decreasing, appear to be growing all the more. A simple example is the increasing use and power of air-conditioning. The markets, which immediately benefit from sales, stimulate ever greater demand. An outsider looking at our world would be amazed at such behaviour, which at times appears self-destructive.”

I and probably the leaders at the air conditioned UN are not getting it. The worst air conditioning abuse might be St. Patrick’s cathedral since 95% of the air there is above those in the Church….you’re air conditioning that space first before it reaches down to the pews. Apart from that, I don’t get his ” stimulate ever greater demand” as though air conditioning companies have a maniacal huge marketing department that tricks people into needing air conditioning in
Iceland. I’ll bet they have a small marketing department because people are either sweltering or they’re not….and competition is limited unlike liquor and cars which need marketing departments. I read 15 minutes of the encyclical.
Generalties with no named heroes or villains have limited effect. Poor versus rich is not simple. If poor people in Bangladesh were NOT SEWING shirts bought in Macy’s by the north affluent, then what would they be doing?…starving? The abscence of consumerism is sometimes broke countries…some on the Catholic continent.
Maybe Bolivia and Peru would have more non cocaine work opportunities if they made more sneakers and cars….with air conditioning.

Mary De Voe
Thursday, June 18, AD 2015 8:43am

Eradicating the sovereignty of the United States and setting a global overseer and one world government, probably the world bank, a godless world bank, is the intent of this climate change issue. The sovereignty of the United States is constituted by the sovereignty of the citizen,. The sovereign personhood of the individual is endowed by God, the Supreme Sovereign Being. This climate change issue intends to redefine the human being as a soulless beast of burden to the one world government.

Phillip
Phillip
Thursday, June 18, AD 2015 8:51am

“I and probably the leaders at the air conditioned UN are not getting it.”

I say move the Vatican and UN to Louisiana. You understand pretty quick the need for air conditioning.

Kyle Miller
Kyle Miller
Thursday, June 18, AD 2015 9:39am

Don L,
I am with you. This is very hard to read. You ever notice how global warming alarmists continually repeat “solid scientific consensus”? It’s like they are trying to pin their case on “Everyone believes it. Why not you? What’s wrong with you?” Or, they are trying to reassure themselves they’re right because everyone on their side agrees with them.
.
It’s every hard to stomach this. This misuse of Bible citations in para 2. St. Francis may be a saint, but I have a problem calling earth “Sister” and “Mother.” (para 1). I’ve not read Canticle of the Creatures, in Francis of Assisi: Early Documents, so he may be taking poetic license in writing while Pope Francis is using in a context where it will be taken literally.
.
WORST. ENCYCLICAL. EVER. Someone order the Luddite special? I’m sure there are good parts coming. I just haven’t hit them. Let me thank PF in advance for throwing some bones.

Joan B.
Joan B.
Thursday, June 18, AD 2015 10:15am

The encyclical seems as if it was written by two distinct, separate people. At the beginning of the document, “I, I, I, I” expresses concern about climate change. In the latter portion of the document, it seems as if a theologian takes over and expands upon very traditional themes. I was troubled by the supporting documents from the UN and the “Earth Charter”. There were a couple of very good Catholic points in the encyclical, but I am afraid that those will be forgotten for the sake of the “greenery”.

Paul W Primavera
Thursday, June 18, AD 2015 10:53am

PART 1 OF MY COMMENTS

In his recent Encyclical, Laudato Si, Pope Francis’ statements on energy and on nuclear in particular are fundamentally flawed and incorrect.

Paragraph 3

More than fifty years ago, with the world teetering on the brink of nuclear crisis, Pope Saint John XXIII wrote an Encyclical which not only rejected war but offered a proposal for peace. He addressed his message Pacem in Terris the entire “Catholic world” and indeed “to all men and women of good will”. Now, faced as we are with global environmental deterioration, I wish to address every person living on this planet. In my Apostolic Exhortation Evangelii Gaudium, I wrote to all the members of the Church with the aim of encouraging ongoing missionary renewal. In this Encyclical, I would like to enter into dialogue with all people about our common home.

Comment

The nuclear crisis was finally defused by the strong military posture of Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher against the Soviet Union. The Strategic Defense Initiative, and a new generation of nuclear deterrent weaponry on the part of the West helped to bankrupt the nuclear military machine of the USSR. The Roman Catholic Church generally opposed those methods in spite of the fact that they were successful.

Paragraph 23

…The problem is aggravated by a model of development based on the intensive use of fossil fuels, which is at the heart of the worldwide energy system…

Comment

The solution is transition from fossil fuel to nuclear energy. There is enough uranium and thorium in Earth’s crust to power technological civilization for tens of thousands of years without the environmental impacts that the burning of fossil fuel is purported to have. That said, the use of fossil fuel – coal, oil and gas – has displaced biomass burning which when used in third world countries still accounts for 4 million deaths annually. Thus, the green energy of biomass burning is MORE devastating on human mortality than the impact that fossil fuel burning has.

Paragraph 26

There is an urgent need to develop policies so that, in the next few years, the emission of carbon dioxide and other highly polluting gases can be drastically reduced, for example, substituting for fossil fuels and developing sources of renewable energy. Worldwide there is minimal access to clean and renewable energy. There is still a need to develop adequate storage technologies. Some countries have made considerable progress, although it is far from constituting a significant proportion. Investments have also been made in means of production and transportation which consume less energy and require fewer raw materials, as well as in methods of construction and renovating buildings which improve their energy efficiency. But these good practices are still far from widespread.

Comment

Renewable energy is neither reliable nor clean. Solar and wind energy due to the intermittent nature of sun and wind have capacity factors of 20 to 30%. This requires constant spinning reserve in the form of fossil fuel generation or nuclear energy to supply the missing 70 to 80%. Additionally, the manufacture of solar cells involves the generation of prodigious amounts of toxic metal waste dumped into the environment, and the manufacture of solar thermal systems involves the use of toxic, explosive coolants which likewise constitute an environmental hazard. The use of wind turbines results in the release of thousands of gallons of leaking transmission lubricating oil into the environment. Both source of energy – solar and wind – have a hazardous impact on avian wild life. Solar mirrors burn birds alive, and wind turbine blades chopped them apart. Lastly, both solar and wind generation require the leveling of vast amounts of land area to generate electrical power output. An area the size of West Virginia would have to be leveled to enable wind turbines to replace the 100 nuclear reactors in the United States, and an area the size of New Jersey would have to be leveled to enable solar cells to replace those same reactors. And even were that done, the energy provided would be unavailable 70 to 80% of the time due to the intermittent nature of sunlight and wind.

Paragraph 52

The developed countries ought to help pay this debt by significantly limiting their consumption of non-renewable energy and by assisting poorer countries to support policies and programmes of sustainable development.

Comment

With the use of nuclear energy and the abundant availability of uranium and thorium in Earth’s crust, there is no need to reduce energy consumption. Rather, the solution is to raise the availability of low cost, pollution free energy for everyone.

Paragraph 57

It is foreseeable that, once certain resources have been depleted, the scene will be set for new wars, albeit under the guise of noble claims. War always does grave harm to the environment and to the cultural riches of peoples, risks which are magnified when one considers nuclear arms and biological weapons. “Despite the international agreements which prohibit chemical, bacteriological and biological warfare, the fact is that laboratory research continues to develop new offensive weapons capable of altering the balance of nature”. Politics must pay greater attention to foreseeing new conflicts and addressing the causes which can lead to them. But powerful financial interests prove most resistant to this effort, and political planning tends to lack breadth of vision. What would induce anyone, at this stage, to hold on to power only to be remembered for their inability to take action when it was urgent and necessary to do so?

Comment

This encyclical equivocates nuclear energy for electricity with nuclear weapons. There is no equivalency. The stockpile of nuclear weapons by Western States does, however, represent a risk, but far riskier is complete and unilateral disarmament in the face of the nuclear armed communist China, rogue nuclear weapons states like North Korea, and would-be nuclear armed states like Iran. Deterrent worked from the 1950s through the 1990s, and will work now. When a gun fighter enters a saloon and no one in the saloon is armed, then the gun fighter can kill indiscriminately to get his way. But when the people in the saloon are armed, then the gun fighter thinks twice before going for his revolver.

Paul W Primavera
Thursday, June 18, AD 2015 10:55am

PART 2 OF MY COMMENTS

Paragraph 104

Yet it must also be recognized that nuclear energy, biotechnology, information technology, knowledge of our DNA, and many other abilities which we have acquired, have given us tremendous power. More precisely, they have given those with the knowledge, and especially the economic resources to use them, an impressive dominance over the whole of humanity and the entire world. Never has humanity had such power over itself, yet nothing ensures that it will be used wisely, particularly when we consider how it is currently being used. We need but think of the nuclear bombs dropped in the middle of the twentieth century, or the array of technology which Nazism, Communism and other totalitarian regimes have employed to kill millions of people, to say nothing of the increasingly deadly arsenal of weapons available for modern warfare. In whose hands does all this power lie, or will it eventually end up? It is extremely risky for a small part of humanity to have it.

Comment

There is no equivalency between the nuclear bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki to stop the Imperial Japanese military from continuing its course of devastation, and the peaceful use of nuclear energy. Fuel in a commercial nuclear power plant is enriched to less than 5% uranium-235 and enrichment to greater than 90% is required for a nuclear weapon. Additionally, the plutonium-239 generated by a commercial light water reactor has too much non-fissile plutonium-240 mixed in it to make it a militarily useful weapon. Nuclear reactors do NOT explode as a nuclear bomb explodes, and the nuclear fuel cycle for a nuclear reactor is inherently very different than that for nuclear weapons.

Paragraph 106

Human beings and material objects no longer extend a friendly hand to one another; the relationship has become confrontational. This has made it easy to accept the idea of infinite or unlimited growth, which proves so attractive to economists, financiers and experts in technology. It is based on the lie that there is an infinite supply of the earth’s goods, and this leads to the planet being squeezed dry beyond every limit. It is the false notion that “an infinite quantity of energy and resources are available, that it is possible to renew them quickly, and that the negative effects of the exploitation of the natural order can be easily absorbed”.

Comment

There is enough uranium and thorium in Earth’s crust to power a civilization of 12 billion people for tens of thousands of years at the energy consumption level of the average American. This is easily achieved through the use of fast neutron breeder reactors. Furthermore, our nearest satellite neighbor – the Moon – has additionally resources of thorium. With low cost, pollution free energy, we can produce as much clean water, food and hydrocarbon fuels as we would ever need. We do not have a resource problem.

Mary De Voe
Thursday, June 18, AD 2015 10:55am

Mother earth does not give rise to brother sun, sister moon.

Paul W Primavera
Thursday, June 18, AD 2015 10:56am

PART 3 OF MY COMMENTS

Paragraph 153

The quality of life in cities has much to do with systems of transport, which are often a source of much suffering for those who use them. Many cars, used by one or more people, circulate in cities, causing traffic congestion, raising the level of pollution, and consuming enormous quantities of non-renewable energy.

Comment

Automobiles have done much to free people from the very congestion being decried here, enabling people to live in the country and commute to the city for work. Non-renewable energy is a marked improvement for transportation over the ox or horse drawn cart. However, converting automobiles from fossil fuel to hydrogen and generating hydrogen from water using nuclear energy would obviate this problem.

Paragraph 164

Such a consensus could lead, for example, to planning a sustainable and diversified agriculture, developing renewable and less polluting forms of energy, encouraging a more efficient use of energy, promoting a better management of marine and forest resources, and ensuring universal access to drinking water.

Comment

We have a non-polluting form of energy – nuclear. Its use results in better environmental management, greater efficiency and can provide for more access to drinking water. Just recently a local community in California started plans to use the water de-salinization plant at the Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant to alleviate the drought conditions being currently experienced. That facility has almost a million gallon per day over-capacity that can be used for the betterment of the community – nuclear desalination!

Paragraph 165

We know that technology based on the use of highly polluting fossil fuels – especially coal, but also oil and, to a lesser degree, gas – needs to be progressively replaced without delay. Until greater progress is made in developing widely accessible sources of renewable energy, it is legitimate to choose the lesser of two evils or to find short-term solutions. But the international community has still not reached adequate agreements about the responsibility for paying the costs of this energy transition.

Comment

The newer designs of nuclear reactors – Westinghouse AP-1000, GE-Hitachi ESBWR, NuScale SMR, etc. – are all passively safe designs, and can all replace fossil fuel generation. Responsibility for paying costs should be borne by industry after leveling the regulatory playing field. Each generator of electrical power should be required to sequester its own waste as nuclear currently does with its used nuclear fuel (which isn’t waste at all, but which can be consumed as fuel in fast neutron burner reactors). No government funding should be provided to electrical generators – let the free market work in a level regulatory playing field. Prediction: solar and wind drop out due to high cost. Fossil fuel drops out due to pollution. Nuclear wins.

Paragraph 172

For poor countries, the priorities must be to eliminate extreme poverty and to promote the social development of their people. At the same time, they need to acknowledge the scandalous level of consumption in some privileged sectors of their population and to combat corruption more effectively. They are likewise bound to develop less polluting forms of energy production, but to do so they require the help of countries which have experienced great growth at the cost of the ongoing pollution of the planet. Taking advantage of abundant solar energy will require the establishment of mechanisms and subsidies which allow developing countries access to technology transfer, technical assistance and financial resources, but in a way which respects their concrete situations, since “the compatibility of [infrastructures] with the context for which they have been designed is not always adequately assessed”. The costs of this would be low, compared to the risks of climate change. In any event, these are primarily ethical decisions, rooted in solidarity between all peoples.

Comment

Solar energy due to its intermittency is useless for providing baseload electrical power. Spinning fossil fuel or nuclear reserve is always required for the 70 to 80% of the time when sunlight is unavailable. The only means by which solar energy could provide electrical power at the capacity factors approaching nuclear or fossil fuel generation is through the use of space-based geosynchronous orbital solar power satellites. Sunlight is converted into electricity which is converted into microwaves and beamed to a rectenna farm on the surface for conversion back into electricity. The disadvantage of this methodology is its interference with airplane flight paths and its harmful impact on avian wild life. Therefore, the only environmentally benign source of pollution free electrical power remains nuclear.

Paul W Primavera
Thursday, June 18, AD 2015 11:36am

I will post part 4 of comments later tonight. I am very, very angry.

Tom D
Tom D
Thursday, June 18, AD 2015 12:14pm

Air conditioning is evil? The Nigerian newspapers I read say otherwise. It is not evil to take steps to reduce the stresses on hypertensive elderly people. One could only wish that more could afford it.

Now, a moral case could be made, perhaps, that younger people should consider foregoing air conditioning for the sake of those with health problems who truly need it. Raising such issues can be a valuable way to aid the formation of conscience, which is what an encyclical is for, among other things. That does not appear to be what is written in this encyclical.

Tom D
Tom D
Thursday, June 18, AD 2015 12:16pm

Paul, if you allow yourself to be angry at ignorance you will be angry for the rest of your life.

Phillip
Phillip
Thursday, June 18, AD 2015 12:23pm

“I was troubled by the supporting documents from the UN and the ‘Earth Charter'”.

I am troubled by the Earth Charter reference also. Here is the Earth Charter:

http://www.earthcharterinaction.org/content/pages/Read-the-Charter.html

Tom D
Tom D
Thursday, June 18, AD 2015 12:34pm

A quick scan of the encyclical shows the word ‘conscience’ appears only three times, and never in the context of formation, only once in the context of ‘burden’.

A scan of the word ‘individual’ shows that the document is heavily skewed against individualism. This can be a good thing, since individualism carried to idolatrous levels is responsible for much of our social evils. But individualism can be a good thing too, and this encyclical fails to note this. It is at its core a collectivist document.

Tom D
Tom D
Thursday, June 18, AD 2015 12:44pm

Once section ‘The Globalization of the Technocratic Paradigm’ seems particularly weak. It is written in neo-Luddite language, and comes close to denying the morality of humanity’s God-given talent and Biblical directive to better its condition. Again, the objective of this section could have been done better if it approached the ‘technocratic paradigm’ from the perspective of idolatry. Christians are, after all, forbidden to turn technology or progress into idols.

BTW, the word ‘idol’ and its derivatives appear nowhere in the encyclical.

bill bannon
bill bannon
Thursday, June 18, AD 2015 1:23pm

Paul,
Thanks for that work. Paragraph 104 forgot that Mao killed between 15 million ( China’s figure ) and 45 million between 1958 to 1962 through no technology at all but through having farmers do factory work and stop farming which then collided with a drought. Here’s my quicker pro poor encyclical: buy four tee shirts right now from Modell’s for $20 total because they’re made in El Salvador where gangs thrive due to lack of work….and no death penalty. If the gangs want a poor person’s house, they fire a bullet into it…if you don’t move, they next kill one resident. That behaviour does not happen in China…for more than a month.

Tom D
Tom D
Thursday, June 18, AD 2015 1:27pm

Cthemfly25 wrote “And someone please read paragraph 50 and explain it to me. It gave me the creeps as I interpreted it.”

I thought it was pretty good. It properly attacks the idea that population control can ‘fix’ environmental issues. The worst that can be said is that it gives support to unrestricted immigration in a simplistic manner.

Murray
Murray
Thursday, June 18, AD 2015 2:11pm

Serious question. From Sandro Magister’s excerpts of the encyclical (emphasis mine):

The principle of the subordination of private property to the universal destination of goods, and thus the right of everyone to their use, is a golden rule of social conduct and the first principle of the whole ethical and social order. The Christian tradition has never recognized the right to private property as absolute or inviolable, and has stressed the social purpose of all forms of private property.

How do we square the bolded statement with this, from Rerum Novarum:

Hence, it is clear that the main tenet of socialism, community of goods, must be utterly rejected, since it only injures those whom it would seem meant to benefit, is directly contrary to the natural rights of mankind, and would introduce confusion and disorder into the commonweal. The first and most fundamental principle, therefore, if one would undertake to alleviate the condition of the masses, must be the inviolability of private property.

This appears to be an outright contradiction. Leo XIII declares that the inviolability of private property is a first and fundamental principle, while Francis declares that [t]he Christian tradition has never recognized the right to private property as absolute or inviolable. How do we square these?

And while we’re at it, what on earth is the principle of the subordination of private property to the universal destination of goods? Is this a technical term of some kind?

Tom D
Tom D
Thursday, June 18, AD 2015 2:26pm

I partially take back my comment “‘The Globalization of the Technocratic Paradigm’ seems particularly weak. It is written in neo-Luddite language, and comes close to denying the morality of humanity’s God-given talent and Biblical directive to better its condition.”

Paragraphs 102 and 103 take care of the concern of that denial. Good! Still, paragraphs 106 through 110 could have been dropped without hurting the document at all, and would have expunged the neo-Luddite theme.

Tom D
Tom D
Thursday, June 18, AD 2015 2:36pm

Murray, my parents’ family Bible was printed in 1950, and it has an abbreviated Catholic Encyclopedia in the back. The section on private property says almost word for word what Sandro Magister wrote.

I think that the reconciliation of this with Pope Leo’s encyclical is that they refer to two different arenas and two different rights. Leo was defending the human right of the individual to own and use property in the face of a hostile state. Francis is defending the natural right of people to expect that property will be used by individuals and the state to better their condition.

Yes, there is tension between these views, but there is also agreement. There is also nothing new about this. I think that a review of the history of eminent domain law in the U.S. would point to examples of both tension and agreement. The only worrisome issue here is that Laudato si will be used by the collectivists among us to further their agendas.

Murray
Murray
Thursday, June 18, AD 2015 2:49pm

Thanks, Tom. Your explanation makes sense, though we might hope (for the umpteenth time) for a little more distinguo from the Holy Father.
.
(And if I’d taken the trouble to google “universal destination of goods” before typing, I might have saved myself from the embarrassment of asking a dumb question. )

Tom D
Tom D
Thursday, June 18, AD 2015 4:17pm

Murray, the only dumb question is the one unasked. I always think of threads like this being read by high school freshmen. The importance of a good discussion becomes apparent in that light.

Paul W Primavera
Thursday, June 18, AD 2015 4:23pm

Folks,
.
Every time I publish part 4 of my analysis, I get the following error regardless of platform used (Android, Microsoft Tablet, Desk Top PC. Help!
.
Internal Server Error

The server encountered an internal error or misconfiguration and was unable to complete your request.
Please contact the server administrator to inform of the time the error occurred and of anything you might have done that may have caused the error.

More information about this error may be available in the server error log.

Web Server at the-american-catholic.com

Penguins Fan
Penguins Fan
Thursday, June 18, AD 2015 4:36pm

I’m not going to read it. I have a headache from getting up at 3AM this week, putting in a full day at work and taking my seven year old to hockey camp. Yes, ice hockey in June! Indoors, powered by electricity, generated by burning coal, natural gas and atom splitting.

When the Roman Pontiff visits Philadelphia later this year – and the Philadelphia region is drooling at the thought of revenue from increased taxes on natural gas extraction in WESTERN Pennsylvania (not gonna happen) – the Roman Pontiff can come to Washington County with that stupid T shirt.

I would not cross Pennsylvania – or the street by my house – to see him, I am so disappointed in him.

Paul W Primavera
Thursday, June 18, AD 2015 4:53pm

Hi Donald. I tried 3 different computers. All the same msg. 🙁

Kyle Miller
Kyle Miller
Thursday, June 18, AD 2015 4:54pm

Paul, maybe post is too big. Post in smaller parts.

Ken
Ken
Thursday, June 18, AD 2015 8:25pm

Read Cupich’s comments re the encyclical. http://www.archchicago.org/topic/laudatosi/docs/ArchbishopCupichRemarksOnLaudatoSi.pdf
As a member of the archdiocese of Chicago I am truly angered this evening. What mendacious crap!

Cthemfly25
Cthemfly25
Thursday, June 18, AD 2015 8:41pm

Tom D. This is he part of paragraph 50 which I found to be disturbing, especially in the context of his cultural revolution and world governance statements. I also might add that an encyclical based on false premises cannot advance the teaching of Truth even if you find nuggets of truth within it. I find the admixture of references to sound Catholic doctrine on family, transgenderism, etc to be an arguendo technique to bolster what is an otherwise fraudulent and deleterious teaching against subsidiarity and free will. Anyway here’s the part of 50 causing me concern within the context of this letter:

“Still, attention needs to be paid to imbalances in population density, on both national and global levels, since a rise in consumption would lead to complex regional situations, as a result of the interplay between problems linked to environmental pollution, transport, waste treatment, loss of resources and quality of life.”

Within his governance model is he calling for —forced immigration, population control (despite what is said elsewhere), or what…. That’s where I’m looking for insight. And please remember that while the Pope calls for dialogue, he then castigated any critics and is sending out his minions like Sorando to promote this drivel by attacking “big oil”.

Franco
Franco
Friday, June 19, AD 2015 12:00am

More Marxist and anti-Western malarkey from Bergoglio.

I had no idea, until Bergoglio, of the widespread popularity
of liberation theology among the Latin American clergy.

The Synod on the Family this fall should be horrifying.

Phillip
Phillip
Friday, June 19, AD 2015 3:33am

“Leo was defending the human right of the individual to own and use property in the face of a hostile state. ”

“The only worrisome issue here is that Laudato si will be used by the collectivists among us to further their agendas.”

“Your explanation makes sense, though we might hope (for the umpteenth time) for a little more distinguo from the Holy Father.”

In this matter this is my concern. As has been pointed out, the right to property is not absolute. Few rights in Catholic thinking are. The contrary, of the Universal Destination of Goods would also seem not to be absolute. That is, on cannot take the property of one to give to another if that causes unjust harm to the one losing the property. So the tension of remains also in distributing property to others.

The problem for the current moment is the latter tension. Property is routinely taken as noted in eminent domain or, even more commonly, in taxes. Here too the tension is amplified as the Church teaches that taxes should not be so high as to discourage private efforts nor to create a state of dependency.

As pointed out, nuance is needed to distinguish the problems of the moment. The problem is, at least as I see it, is that there is more of the collectivist approach through a hostile state. Thus the emphasis of Leo seems more appropriate.

Phillip
Phillip
Friday, June 19, AD 2015 3:40am

Ken,

I found this comment by Cupich interesting:

“Tomorrow, I leave for Ukraine. I’m reminded that Eastern Europe is still living with the legacy of wanton environmental abuse imposed on subjugated nations so the Soviets could feed their economic engine.”

Now reading the Encyclical (and I have not finished), it seems to say that the (free) market and its profit motive is the cause of environmental destruction. The post by Don on Fr. Rutler’s comments also notes Cardinal Maradiaga linking capitalism and environmental destruction. But the Soviet system was neither capitalist nor did it have a free market.
One of the many problems of the thinking of the Encyclical.

Phillip
Phillip
Friday, June 19, AD 2015 4:12am

One final thought on Cupich. Why is he flying to the Ukraine? Does he need to? Can he do without going?

A Cloney
A Cloney
Friday, June 19, AD 2015 8:52am

I will listen to the Pope on theology and morality …. And perhaps global warming – oh wait ….. “Climate change” – when “His Rocket Scientist” explains the shift from the New Ice Age fear in the 70’s to Global Warming to “Climate Change”. Frankly, more co2 produces more agricultural products which feeds more poor people – I think the Pope should trust God to provide for the poor.

Tom D
Tom D
Friday, June 19, AD 2015 9:55am

“Within his governance model is he calling for —forced immigration, population control (despite what is said elsewhere), or what…. That’s where I’m looking for insight.”

Cthemfly25, the encyclical rules out population control. There is no despite what is said elsewhere.

As far as forced migration is concerned, we already have that, and have had that for decades. Not in the sense that national governments or the UN are overtly forcing people to migrate, but in the sense that people are being forced by desperation to flee bad governance. This is a fact, and environmental problems are only one outcome of bad governance. The Church is very much against forced migration, and for good reason.

Of course, many churchmen want forced migration replaced with unrestricted voluntary migration. “The rich should take the moral decision to invite the poor into their nations”. OK, perhaps that makes sense in truly desperate situations, but usually the best course is to fix bad governance so people can live good lives where they already live. Unrestricted migration just papers over bad governance, it enables it, and it is ultimately immoral, even if advocated by a Pope.

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