The Pope's environmental encyclical has been released, discuss here.

[MikeK]

No nonsense political editorializations on what the Pope /really/ meant. Just your thoughts and questions and such on the teaching. I'm working my way through it. So far, it looks to be exactly what we expected given the drafts that were released earlier. This is a direct challenge to every one of us - especially those of means or who live in developed countries - to aknowledge that climate change (which he states the vast majority of the evidence shows is caused by man's actions) and pollution are serious life issues that threaten the least among us and that demand our attention now and in a big way.

 

[Armoured]

The Pope isn't a REAL Christian! Climate Change is a scam perpetrated by millionaire research scientists to keep getting funding! Climate Gate! It still snows in the Winter! Al Gore uses lots of electricity! God will intervene and stop it from happening! Why do you hate America? Benghazi! 9/11! Communism! Socialism! Obama is the anti-Christ!

 

[MikeK]

The Pope isn't a REAL Christian! Climate Change is a scam perpetrated by millionaire research scientists to keep getting funding! Climate Gate! It still snows in the Winter! Al Gore uses lots of electricity! God will intervene and stop it from happening! Why do you hate America? Benghazi! 9/11! Communism! Socialism! Obama is the anti-Christ!

3 minutes? That took longer than I was expecting. I'd like to add "by-by-but other countries pollute more than we do, by some measures!"

The Pope could have written this Encyclical on any subject he liked, or he could have not written an Encyclical at all. The significance that he chose this important topic to instruct the flock on should resound with every Catholic, that what we are doing today is not good enough - this is a call for change. Maybe I'm naive, but I am hoping that maybe those who have to date downplayed the importance of these concerns will be corrected. There are certainly changes I need to make regarding the kind of consumer I've been and my process for making business decisions.

Here's hoping Catholic politicians in my country, right and left, will enact and enforce policies that respect the environment and, by extension, human life, even if it means decreased profits. If we all demand it and demonstrate our willingness to vote them out of office if they don't, they will.

 

[Armoured]

3 minutes? That took longer than I was expecting. I'd like to add "by-by-but other countries pollute more than we do, by some measures!"

The Pope could have written this Encyclical on any subject he liked, or he could have not written an Encyclical at all. The significance that he chose this important topic to instruct the flock on should resound with every Catholic, that what we are doing today is not good enough - this is a call for change. Maybe I'm naive, but I am hoping that maybe those who have to date downplayed the importance of these concerns will be corrected. There are certainly changes I need to make regarding the kind of consumer I've been and my process for making business decisions.

Here's hoping Catholic politicians in my country, right and left, will enact and enforce policies that respect the environment and, by extension, human life, even if it means decreased profits. If we all demand it and demonstrate our willingness to vote them out of office if they don't, they will.

Let's hope. I'm sure some probably will take it on board and adjust their political stance accordingly.

I'm sure some will also come up with ways to excuse themselves from following it. Probably while criticising others for being "cafeteria Catholics" as they do so, quite oblivious to the irony.

 

[Fantine]

The Pope could have written this Encyclical on any subject he liked.

But the Pope realizes that nothing happens in a vacuum. Everything we do has ripple effects all over the world. How much energy we waste, and how many of the world's resources we consume affects people in every nation, especially in the third world where they are less able to recover from disasters.

Upset because he didn't work abortion in? Well, because nothing happens in a vacuum, he actually did.

Our squandering of the earth's resources, and the vast inequality in the world, speaks very much of our reverence for human life, or lack of it.

 

[Tallguy88]

The pope did mention abortion specifically in the encyclical.

 

[MikeK]

The pope did mention abortion specifically in the encyclical.

Yes he did, and he worked in how making serious changes to how we consume and pollute is a life issue that effects future generations and the young (and unborn) today. It isn't stop abortion or save the environment, it is save the environment and stop abortion. Thankfully, as evil as abortion is, it is trending downward in our country and globally. Abortion presents a smaller risk to the future of human civilization than environmental concerns do.

 

[MoonlessNight]

Here is the point I want clarified:

Many people on other sites are acting as though a faithful Catholic is necessary to prevent the ills of climate change. That is, that now that the Pope has spoken to disagree with scientific results in this area is now a bad act of Catholic faith.

Is this opinion common to this site as well?

Personally I am finding the encyclical to be very interesting as I read through it, and I am finding much for me to digest and consider in terms of our responsibilities to the world community. But the passages on the current science do not change my opinion one way or the other, since the Pope is not an authority on science and the purpose of the encyclical is not to be a scientific paper.

 

[Root of Jesse]

No nonsense political editorializations on what the Pope /really/ meant. Just your thoughts and questions and such on the teaching. I'm working my way through it. So far, it looks to be exactly what we expected given the drafts that were released earlier. This is a direct challenge to every one of us - especially those of means or who live in developed countries - to aknowledge that climate change (which he states the vast majority of the evidence shows is caused by man's actions) and pollution are serious life issues that threaten the least among us and that demand our attention now and in a big way.

I don't know why we have to acknowledge that climate change is man-made in order to know that we should be good stewards of our resources. Pollution and care of the environment are very serious issues. So...stop consuming so much. Do with as little as you can. Kind of a no-brainer. Regarding the Pope's opinion on climate change, I respectfully disagree that it's primarily caused by man.

 

[MikeK]

Here is the point I want clarified:

Many people on other sites are acting as though a faithful Catholic is necessary to prevent the ills of climate change. That is, that now that the Pope has spoken to disagree with scientific results in this area is now a bad act of Catholic faith.

Is this opinion common to this site as well?

Personally I am finding the encyclical to be very interesting as I read through it, and I am finding much for me to digest and consider in terms of our responsibilities to the world community. But the passages on the current science do not change my opinion one way or the other, since the Pope is not an authority on science and the purpose of the encyclical is not to be a scientific paper.

Statements in encyclicals like this are not infallible but Catholics must assent to them. Whether the Pope is an authority on science or not is immaterial, the Pontifical Academy of Sciences are well-qualified to make sure the Pope is as informed as anyone on the state of the science of climate change.

 

[MikeK]

I don't know why we have to acknowledge that climate change is man-made in order to know that we should be good stewards of our resources. Pollution and care of the environment are very serious issues. So...stop consuming so much. Do with as little as you can. Kind of a no-brainer. Regarding the Pope's opinion on climate change, I respectfully disagree that it's primarily caused by man.

I don't think you can respectfully disagree with the Pope, who has sought the guidance of the best scientific minds available and is so certain that he is exercising his authority to instruct the flock on this matter respectfully, unless you have similar access to scientific minds and have done equal research on the topic. Without that, disagreement with him would be the opposite of respectful.

 

[MoonlessNight]

Statements in encyclicals like this are not infallible but Catholics must assent to them. Whether the Pope is an authority on science or not is immaterial, the Pontifical Academy of Sciences are well-qualified to make sure the Pope is as informed as anyone on the state of the science of climate change.

Let me make the question more specific: if a Catholic now says that Climate Change is nor primarily caused by man does that statement, in and of itself, constitute not assenting to the Pope?

 

[MikeK]

Let me make the question more specific: if a Catholic now says that Climate Change is nor primarily caused by man does that statement, in and of itself, constitute not assenting to the Pope?

There is room in the faith for dissent. It should be prayerfully considered and should not be promoted, but your private thoughts on matters like these are your own. The catch is that if we conclude we know better, we better have some awful strong information explaining exactly why we feel we are right and the Pope and the Pontifical Academy are wrong. As I understand it, failure to believe that humans are the primary cause of climate change is not sin. Failure to work in the ways that this Encyclical directs us to is.

 

[Root of Jesse]

I don't think you can respectfully disagree with the Pope, who has sought the guidance of the best scientific minds available and is so certain that he is exercising his authority to instruct the flock on this matter respectfully, unless you have similar access to scientific minds and have done equal research on the topic. Without that, disagreement with him would be the opposite of respectful.

Scientists have agendas, Mike. It could be that their agenda is good, and meant to encourage conservation. It could be that their agenda is to promote carbon taxes imposed by the UN, which I consider a bad thing. Carbon taxes hurt the poor, too. I don't know who his scientists are, but it is possible for the pope to be misled. Remember there is currently the case of the papal nuncio, whom advisors to the pope promoted, and Pope Francis signed off on it, who had a homosexual sex trafficking thing going in Bolivia (I think).
As I said, the general thrust of what he's said, what I've read so far, that we must stop using our resources wantonly, is something I've been behind for many years. And it is up to each of us to individually make our own impact, without having government impose regulations on us to do so. One example of this government overreach is where the government makes retailers sell plastic bags for you to carry your groceries or whatever home. A business must not provide bags? Fine, I'll go to a place where they do give bags. I do recycle those bags, reuse them many times over. But it's built into the cost of products I buy, so I won't pay extra for them.

 

[MikeK]

I have to trust that the Pope and the Pontifical Accademy did their homework. If I can't trust them I don't know who to trust. I am less interested in the topic of what we have to believe than I am in the work that we have to do to get where we need to be for the good of human life.

Our Orthodox and CoE brothers seem pleased with the Encyclical.

http://www.wfsb.com/story/29349538/the-latest-church-of-england-praises-papal-encyclical

http://time.com/3926076/pope-francis-encyclical-patriarch-bartholomew/

 

[MoonlessNight]

There is room in the faith for dissent. It should be prayerfully considered and should not be promoted, but your private thoughts on matters like these are your own. The catch is that if we conclude we know better, we better have some awful strong information explaining exactly why we feel we are right and the Pope and the Pontifical Academy are wrong. As I understand it, failure to believe that humans are the primary cause of climate change is not sin. Failure to work in the ways that this Encyclical directs us to is.

I am against having matters of science be something that even enter into notions of assenting or dissenting to the Church as a matter of principle. We did that before with models of the solar system, and it was a mistake then.

But the thing is, the "settled science" at that time was all in favor of the geocentric models (particularly the Tychonic). In fact, I would say that the science was far more in favor of the Tychonic model than the current science is in favor of Anthropogenic Global Warming, since the only evidence for heliocentric models (such as stellar aberration or the stellar parallax) was not discovered until years after the controversy, whereas our current models are complex statistical behemoths which can be criticized at any of their parts.

So the problem in the Galileo affair was not that the Church put faith above science, since the science of the day in fact was on the side of the Church's verdict. The problem was that it chose a correct "Catholic" position for a matter of science. But the Church has no special guarantee of being correct in matters of science, and here it later turned out that the theories of the day were flawed, since they were missing important data.

So I am against tying the actions of a faithful Catholic to accepting one scientific theory or another, no matter how good the evidence for it. And it's not like this encyclical stands or falls on the role of man in climate change.

 

[Root of Jesse]

[Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew] has asked us to replace consumption with sacrifice, greed with generosity, wastefulness with a spirit of sharing, an asceticism which “entails learning to give, and not simply to give up. It is a way of loving, of moving gradually away from what I want to what God’s world needs. It is liberation from fear, greed and compulsion”.

The above is what I'm suggesting. This is the best line, so far as I've read, of the encyclical. Paragraph 9.

 

[Cappadocious]

http://time.com/3926076/pope-francis-encyclical-patriarch-bartholomew/

The Ecumenical Patriarch has been down with this for a while:

http://www.halkisummit.com/

Resistance is not only futile, but indicative.

 

[Rhamiel]

"Since everything is interrelated, concern for the protection of nature is also incompatible with the justification of abortion. How can we genuinely teach the importance of concern for other vulnerable beings, however troublesome or inconvenient they may be, if we fail to protect a human embryo, even when its presence is uncomfortable and creates difficulties? “If personal and social sensitivity towards the acceptance of the new life is lost, then other forms of acceptance that are valuable for society also wither away”". [97] Footnote #97: ID., Encyclical Letter Caritas in Veritate (29 June 2009), 28: AAS 101 (2009), 663.

AMEN the good Pope calling out the hypocrites who pretend to be concerned with nature while supporting the murder of unborn children

deluded minds who see more value in a tree frog then in an unborn child

God bless the Holy Father, showing us that the culture of Death will not lead to Life

 

[Rhamiel]

here is something to think about for people who deny climate change (and I do not use the term deny in a pejorative sense)

even if CO2 does not make the earth hotter, there are TONS of reasons to want to preserve the air quality.... like, oh... I dunno... the fact that we breath air

at the same time, Al Gore said that by 2013 we would not have any ice left in the Polar Icecaps..... so when people DO question the reliability of these Global Warming Claims, that seems reasonable.... because it is 2 years past the "no ice" prediction and we still have ice.... so it seems like they are not trustworthy, I do not mean purpusfully deceitful, just that they are trying to say they have it all figured out when their models are not really working as they should