Friday, March 29, AD 2024 3:17am

PopeWatch: Encyclical Translated-Part I

VATICAN-POPE-AUDIENCE

 

One of the reactions of PopeWatch to the Green Encyclical is bloat.  The whole thing could have weighed in at 50 pages without any loss of content.  The committee who put this together needed a good editor.  As a public service, PopeWatch will now provide a slimmed down version of the Encyclical.

1.Saint Francis liked the environment and so should we.

2.The world is in a sad shape from pollution and it is our fault.

3.This encyclical is as important as Pacem in Terris that was released in 1963.

4.The Pope cites Pope Paul VI on the environment so that you won’t think he is a hippie Pope off on his own hook.

5.Ditto as to Pope John Paul II.

5.Ditto as to Pope Benedict.

6.The Pope cites Patriarch Bartholomew because he is an environmental alarmist like the Pope and because modern pontiffs never miss an opportunity to suck up to the Orthodox, even though they all tell us to take a hike eventually when it comes to reunification.

7.More Bartholomew.

8.More Bartholomew.

9.Let’s drag Saint Francis back in and ahistorically paint him as an enviro-nut.

10.More Saint Francis.

11.More Saint Francis.

12.More Saint Francis.

13.Man made harm to environment is a big problem and we all need to work together to solve it.

14.If you think this whole environmental doom and gloom is idiocy you are in denial and part of the problem.

15.Yeah, the Pope is making this eco alarmist manifesto part of the Social Teaching of the Church.  In the rest of the encyclical the Pope will first scare you with enviro gloom and doom picked from scientific sources that agree with him.  He will then graft principles drawn from Judeo-Christian sources to develop a plan of action.  Then he will tell you what he wants you to do about the environmental mess.  He will support all of this with cherry picked examples from Christian history.

16.Organization of this Encyclical is sort of sloppy and the Pope will be zigzagging around.

17.Here begins the part where the Pope will scare you.

18.The world is going through a period of rapid change.

19.Humanity used to be confident, but now Humanity, at least the chattering classes, is pessimistic and concerned with the environment and that is a good thing.

20.Pollution is all around us.

21.The Earth is being turned into a vast rubbish dump.  (Scared yet?)

22.Humans produce a throwaway culture and we should emulate the plants and their sustainable mode of producing energy and growth.

23.Climate is a common good and it has been getting warmer largely because of what humans do.

24.Cue the parade of factually dubious examples of harm caused by global warming.

25.Climate change is bad.  Poor and developing nations hardest hit.

26.The Pope is in favor of the renewable energy boondoggles to get away from nasty fossil fuels.

27.Natural resources are being depleted and there are still poor people.

28.We are running out of water!  (Panic!)

29.Poor people have bad water.

30.We have a duty to provide water gratis to the poor, because it is a basic human right for them to have other people pay for their water.  Do not think of privatizing water!  Caesar must control it.

31.Lack of water will lead to increased cost of food.  Evil multinational corporations controlling water may lead to conflicts.

32.Earth’s resources are being plundered for evil free enterprise.

33.Species have rights!  Stop causing them to go extinct!

34.More extinction gloom and doom.

35.The Pope will simultaneously rail about the conditions of the poor while being against economic development because it harms the environment.

36.The search for profits leads to damage to the environment.

37.Environmental sanctuaries are good.

38.You knew the Pope was going to sing the praises of rainforests, didn’t you?

39.Hands off wetlands and rain forests!

40.Hands off the oceans too!

41.The coral reefs, think of the coral reefs!

42.Greater study of ecosystems is needed so that Man, contra Nature, can guard all species against extinction.

43.Humans are harmed by environmental deterioration.

44.Cities are bad.

45.Don’t even think about establishing environmentally pleasant private areas.

46.The world’s going to Hell in a handbasket.  (In spite of his smiles, this encyclical does indicate that the Pope is at bottom a deeply pessimistic man.)

47.The Pope doesn’t think much of you internet couch potatoes.

48.Poor hardest hit by environmental problems.

49.Must hear both the cry of the Earth and the cry of the poor.

50.Pope is against those who wish to reduce third world populations, but he does want attention paid to imbalances in population densities.

Continued on Monday.

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Michael Dowd
Michael Dowd
Friday, June 19, AD 2015 4:16am

Here is a good summary conclusion of Laudato Sii from ‘Deus Ex Machina Blog’ He calls it Laudato No. I thought some of you would be interested in his very crisp summary.

https://sarmaticusblog.wordpress.com/2015/06/19/t-121-laudato-no/

“Concluding and for our purposes, what we are left with when analyzing the Laudato Sii encyclical is nothing more than a pseudo theology that is post-concilicar neo-modernism, dovetailing with a pseudo-science that is global warming, to shore up an ideology through which a small group of interest parties are trying to gain control over sovereign nations, all in the name of the “poor”.

So at the end of the day, a Catholic must ask himself what does the Laudato Sii encyclical have to do with Catholicism and the salvation of souls?

And the reasonable answer must be: Nothing.

Just like the entire Francis pontificate”

The Bear
Friday, June 19, AD 2015 8:34am

Excellent service, especially for those bloggers too lazy to actually read it with a highlighter in hand.

The problem isn’t that global warming is wrong, it’s Agenda 21 and similar UN designs to defeat freedom. Not that I think Pope Francis’s dismal novel will make a lot of difference, but the UN shouldn’t get any comfort. (Nor should Francis continue to deform the Church, but there’s little we can do about that.)

Paul W Primavera
Friday, June 19, AD 2015 9:29am

“When we learned how to make carbon our slave instead of other human beings, then we learned how to be civilized people. Thorium has a million times the energy density of a carbon-hydrogen bond.” Kirk Sorenson, Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactors

D Will
D Will
Friday, June 19, AD 2015 10:45am

I think we are far better served by reflecting at this time on this subject as Fr. Baron does here: https://laudatosi.com/watch. Rise above and evaluate the good that it strives for … then and only then reflect, not on the bad pope, but on the foreseeable concerns we share as to how the E may be put into action by a wayward left. Aim the arrows wisely.

Don L
Don L
Friday, June 19, AD 2015 11:00am

There does seem to be one important “link” missing from all this “science” talk–mixed as it is with political salad and tossed with a strong dash of “inequality dressing.”
That something missing is the “science (consensus anyone?) of evolution and the Darwinian concept of “the survival of the fittest.””
If one is a learned ecological scientist, shouldn’t they concede the natural “fact” of inequality is part of mother earth–thus part of “progress?

Ezabelle
Ezabelle
Friday, June 19, AD 2015 11:02am

The environment is a very complex issue. Each countries has its own”problems” in terms of the environment and it’s impact in civilisation. We have both droughts and floods at the same time. We also have fracking causing health problems and contamination of water supplies for whole communities.

For example in regards to water scarcity, in Australia this is true for many farmers and as a developed country we feel it in the cost of fresh produce when there has been a drought. But rather than blaming it on human activity, we know that parts of Australia do have considerably abnormal dry periods. Our issue is that we don’t harness the rain water in areas like Sydney or Brisbane where rains have caused floods, and directing it to farms. Farms run by generational farmers in communities distraught with the financial burden of the lack of crops or having to put down thirsty and hungry cattle- many of which resort to suicide.

This is just one example of how the environment has its own localised issues.

I feel the Pope was doing this to tick a box, and failed to delve his teeth into the more harder issues for humanity on a localised level. That’s very typical “general manager” behaviour.

Tom D
Tom D
Friday, June 19, AD 2015 11:02am

Of course, most of these numbered bullets are objectively true (including #15, which is more Don’s analysis that Francis’ views). Here are the outliers:

#26 – renewables are a boondoggle only if subsidized

#30 – water needs to be paid for by the consumer to avoid waste. Private utilities are usually more effective than governments. If the poor can’t afford water then governments can provide assistance, but free water is a BAD idea

#31 – Already answered for #30

#32 – it’s not only free enterprise that plunders, dudes

#33 – Careful! Protecting species is good. Giving them rights equal to human beings will diminish humans and give more power to governments.

#44 – Cities are good. They allow for other places to be more natural. All of humanity could fit in a city the size of Texas with the density of Manhattan.

#45 – Doesn’t this partially contradict #37? Oh, wait, it’s private! Don’t tell the Nature Conservancy or Ted Turner!

Don L
Don L
Friday, June 19, AD 2015 11:16am

I might add that “inequality” science –survival of the fittest–must then be just as accepted as a valid view as AGW , because of that famed “seamless garment” moral code we’ve been infused with by certain progressive shepherds. This would mean no one-world governments or re-distribution politics to violate nature and human ecology.

Michael Paterson-Seymour
Michael Paterson-Seymour
Friday, June 19, AD 2015 11:51am

Perhaps, in this context, we should recall the words of the great Catholic poet, Alexander Pope, who bids us put our trust in Him,

“Who sees with equal eye, as God of all,
A hero perish, or a sparrow fall,
Atoms or systems into ruin hurled,
And now a bubble burst, and now a world.”

But whose providence is utterly inscrutable to us:

“All nature is but art, unknown to thee;
All chance, direction, which thou canst not see;
All discord, harmony not understood;
All partial evil, universal good:
And, spite of pride in erring reason’s spite,
One truth is clear, whatever is, is right.”

Hence, the poet concludes,

“Know, then, thyself, presume not God to scan;
The proper study of mankind is man.”

Phillip
Phillip
Friday, June 19, AD 2015 12:46pm

I listened to Fr. Baron and hope his take is right though I suspect not.

The thing that strike me though is that in the past, encyclicals by Popes like JP II and B XV! needed to be studied to be understood. Now they need to be interpreted to make sense.

daledog
daledog
Friday, June 19, AD 2015 1:18pm

I went to Friday noon mass today hoping against hope that the priest would not bring up the encyclical. Of course I was disappointed. He could not wait to get to the pulpit and amplify the garbage that came from our pope. I never have seen this priest move so fast. I walked out in the middle of the homily shaking my head. I fear the Bear underestimates the havoc this will cause. This pope has put starch in the spines of leftist priests. Now they can talk about something they really believe in.
Just saw Fr. Barron’s short video about this encyclical. He’s laying the groundwork for this encyclical’s acceptance. Good Fr. Barron does not have a good poker face. His face was wracked with pain.
Decades of liberal policies all over the world resulting in starvation, mass death, and poverty (material, intellectual, and spiritual). We seem incapable of learning.

Shawn Marshall
Shawn Marshall
Friday, June 19, AD 2015 1:19pm

first time I ever thought Fr. Barron was a coward.

lanie
lanie
Friday, June 19, AD 2015 1:39pm

An MMM masterpiece. Modernist/Masonic/Marxist.

@FMShyanguya
Friday, June 19, AD 2015 2:12pm

@Donald R. McClarey: Nice work! Thank you!

Steve Phoenix
Steve Phoenix
Friday, June 19, AD 2015 2:56pm

Well done, DMcC! I like your notes on this 246-paragraph, 180+ page disaster MUCH better than mine. I can’t wait for you to get to n.161, where he professes that climate-change “Doomsday predictions” (his wording, his actual wording) must be believed, since as he optimistically points out, we are leaving only “debris, desolation and filth to future generations.”
Now there is a Happy Francis-type! 🙂

Kyle Miller
Kyle Miller
Friday, June 19, AD 2015 4:04pm

Donald,
You need to sprinkle more “Capitalism is the root of all evil.” and “Technology is capitalism’s evil cousin.” in your points. The pope should have added “I know this to be true because I read it on the Internet.” Irony given most people will read this document using technology reaching every corner of the planet thanks to capitalism primarily. (Government w/private contractors and universities planted the seed. Capitalism nurtured and it greatly blossomed.)
#48, I noticed several paragraphs like that. It’s like Global Warming is the Great Eye of Sauron, and it’s affixed on the poor, which sort of counters the whole “global” part of Global Warming.
Paul,
Cool video. I’ll make you Secretary of Energy upon my election. Donald, attorney general of course. 🙂

Ernst Schreiber
Ernst Schreiber
Friday, June 19, AD 2015 10:15pm

We also have fracking causing health problems and contamination of water supplies for whole communities.

balderdash

Ezabelle
Ezabelle
Friday, June 19, AD 2015 10:23pm

Ernst- Fracking is only safe if it is safely managed and run. Being a relatively new firm of mining, the long term effects have not been determined to farming land where owners are not compensated for the associated risks.

It is not a “widespread” problem nor is it “risk free”.

Michael Paterson-Seymour
Michael Paterson-Seymour
Saturday, June 20, AD 2015 1:13am

Lanie wrote, “An MMM masterpiece. Modernist/Masonic/Marxist.”

Pope Francis is no Marxist. He is a typical petit-bourgeois Social Democrat. In other words, he is someone who wants a decaffeinated Revolution – 1789 without 1793 (or the October Revolution without the Red Terror)
Unlike a real Marxist, such as Alain Badiou, he lacks the courage of his convictions: “if you say A – strict egalitarian justice – you should not shrink from its consequences and gather the courage to say B – the terror needed to really defend and assert the A.” (Logiques des mondes)
Like all Social Democrats, he will achieve nothing, for Social Democrats always want guarantees. They argue that one should not risk the revolution too early; one has to wait for the right moment – “it is too early for the Socialist revolution, the working class is not yet mature” or they argue that “the majority of the population is not on our side, so the revolution would not really be democratic.” They offer nothing but the story of their many defeats and the bitterness these have produced. T heir exhaustion has made them incapable of seizing the possibilities of the present.

Michael Dowd
Michael Dowd
Saturday, June 20, AD 2015 3:37am

Let’s let Winston weigh in on the underlying meaning of ‘Laudato No’. He always has the right words at the right time.

“Socialism is a philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance, and the gospel of envy, its inherent virtue is the equal sharing of misery”

-Winston Churchill

T. Shaw
T. Shaw
Saturday, June 20, AD 2015 7:19am

Will Rogers, “The problem isn’t what people don’t know. It’s what people know that isn’t so.”

48. The poor are harder hurt by green boondoggles, lower economic development/growth, decreased energy supplies, and higher energy costs than by so-called, nonexistent AGW.

I file the encyclical (except for the two sentences devoted to abortion and gender identity) under Democrat Party Propaganda, Fundamental Change for Holy Mother Church, and Socialist Tool.

Steve Phoenix
Steve Phoenix
Saturday, June 20, AD 2015 8:51am

Well put, Michael PS: “[PF] is a typical petit-bourgeois Social Democrat. In other words, he is someone who wants a decaffeinated Revolution – 1789 without 1793 (or the October Revolution without the Red Terror).”
A petit-socialist without caffeine (my expropriation). No croissant, by the way, because by so doing you are taking away from future generations and leaving them in “debris, desolation, and filth” by ordering one.

Steve Phoenix
Steve Phoenix
Saturday, June 20, AD 2015 8:56am

However, the Masonic observation about this encyclical (if not PF himself) sticks, because Jesus Christ is putatively replaced by S. Francis of Assisi, a matter I noticed from the outset (JC isnt namedropped until n. 82, and gets 4 paragraphs (96-100), out of 246 total.

I hope I recall accurately that the York Rite Masons at their London announcement in 1717 made a big point of their profession of a belief in God without belief in Christ.

Michael Dowd
Michael Dowd
Saturday, June 20, AD 2015 9:13am

Here is the conclusion of R.R. Reno’s take on Laudato Si in article entitled, “The Return Catholic Anti-Modernism”. Mr. Reno’s is a moderate voice who is concerned like us. Well maybe not quite like us.

“If global warming poses a dire threat to humanity—and it may—we will need all the moral strength, scientific integrity, economic vitality, and political legitimacy that Western modernity can muster. The same goes for the pressing problems of poverty and development. Instead of the voice of denunciation, we need the Church’s counsel and guidance. We all need to repent. But when it comes to pressing ethical problems, revolution is a dangerous game to play.

R. R. Reno is editor of First Things.

Jeanne Rohl
Jeanne Rohl
Saturday, June 20, AD 2015 9:17am

Donald, YUP! That’s it in but shell.

Lanie
Lanie
Saturday, June 20, AD 2015 3:08pm

I was struck by Francis’ remark on air-conditioning. Has he announced yet that he is not leaving Rome again on his jumbo jet as he has done nine times in twenty-eight months or that he will refuse to attend any meetings in air-conditioned buildings and turn it off in all of Vatican City? Or will he abandon his second residence at Casa Santa Maria which uses money and energy that could be given to the poor?

Lanie
Lanie
Saturday, June 20, AD 2015 3:18pm

Francis asks “why should this document addressed to all people of good will, include a chapter of convictions of believers?” A waste of time because EVERYONE WILL GO TO HEAVEN!

“At the end we will find ourselves face to face with the infinite beauty of God (1 Cor 13:12), and be able to read with admiration and happiness the mystery of the universe, which with us will share in unending plentitude.”

Steve Phoenix
Steve Phoenix
Sunday, June 21, AD 2015 7:27am

Don’t encourage him (PF), Lanie (re. giving up extra residences in the Vatican)—he peremptorily announced he is divesting Castel Gandolfo, the historic retreat of the popes, which also serves as a more hidden refuge to receive visitors away from the easy scrutiny of the press and hostile international governments. This he announced as though it belonged to him and not to the people of the Catholic Faith.

As for PF’s announced premise that all go to heaven, that certainly explains why he and his ghostwriters expunged the defining conclusion of the Canticle of the Sun:

“Happy those who endure in peace,
for by You, Most High, they will be crowned.

Be praised, my Lord, through our sister Bodily Death,
from whose embrace no living person can escape.
Woe to those who die in mortal sin!
Happy those she finds doing Your most holy will.
The second death can do no harm to them.”

I wouldn’t presume to “Inform” others on S. Francis, but Francis’ whole life and message was motivated by the crucified Christ (eg. the call at San Damiano from Christ Himself), and was starkly oriented to one’s inevitable personal judgment (“Woe to those..”).
Francis of Assisi must be mortified that he gets more attention and more paragraphs in Laudato Si than putatively Jesus Christ (nn. 96-100).

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Monday, June 22, AD 2015 3:30am

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ATB
ATB
Thursday, June 25, AD 2015 8:26pm

3.This encyclical is as important as Pacem in Terris that was released in 1963.

Wrong , Pacem in Terris was never important even when it was released in 1963. The only importance it ever had was to Freemasons, Communists and other tree hugging hippie pagans.

Ernest Martinson
Ernest Martinson
Friday, June 26, AD 2015 4:35pm

The cry of the earth and the cry of the poor should both be heard. The poor should not be taxed, nor should anyone for that matter. Taxes on economic effort are mostly used to fund political favorites. The poor should share with all adults in the value of our earth commons through an earth dividend. The earth dividend would be funded through government’s collection of the rent on those owning the land and natural resources of the earth. This would encourage conservation in the use of our earth commons as well as discourage waste and pollution.

Tom D
Tom D
Friday, June 26, AD 2015 4:53pm

Ernest Martinson, but without taxes who will pay for my birth control?! I use a lot of it – or at least I did before I saw the eco-friendly light and traded in my wife for my two husbands. Iranians? Who cares?

Ernest Martinson
Ernest Martinson
Friday, June 26, AD 2015 5:16pm

Tom D, taxes on economic effort, as I wrote, are mostly used to fund political favorites. That should end. No privileges or subsidies. No taxes on income, profits, payroll, sales, or property. Taxes on the earnings of labor and capital are legal theft and are immoral.

Tom D
Tom D
Friday, June 26, AD 2015 5:27pm

Wouldn’t it be easier to just eliminate the ‘political favorites’? Oh, drat, there go the two husbands off to camp. Hey guys, I you that you were out of step with the times! Utopianism was going to get one (or two) of us. Well, it was fun while it lasted!

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