I’ll take his abuse, thanks, if the choice is the abuse of all the other leaders, who are only concerned with propping up their own systems regardless of the long-term cost.
He wants us to be good to each other and our planet. I am no green-hearted ecowimp, nor a Catholic, nor religious, nor any particularly nice guy… but I can get behind that. Time someone with authority said so.
Pope is an elected position. Granted suffrage is limited to a small pool. Campaigning didn’t involve lawn signs, but the Cardinals didn’t elect him by random number generator or who his daddy was.
He does have scientific training in chemistry. Although it appears that he doesn’t actually have a master’s degree, as is commonly reported.
These are important points - reporting is subject to interpretive biases. Don’t rely on secondary sources.
This is what I was looking for. I have a feeling this Pope will do some good things, but I also have to wonder if it could serve to set a precedent for other Popes with less attractive views. I feel like a see more of a potential for abuse than I do actual abuse of power.
You are way late on that, what we have here has to be encouraged, not the hypothetical that in this case is not happening.
It took about 400 years for the church to accept that Galileo was right, about 100 to accept that Darwin was onto something (officially nowadays evolution is considered to be more than a hypothesis, the only sticking point is that according to the church souls did not evolve, so there.) And on the more current ecological matter the Church has seen the light decades ago.
Even with that this lapsed Catholic (me) is not going to leave his agnosticism, but as I pointed many times before, we have to accept that organized religion will not disappear soon; secular people should at least keep an eye that the churches become and remain benevolent. We have to encourage positions like this that encourage the faithful to look at science and not just dogma.
The precedent for Popes with unattractive views happened long ago. However, the ability for any particular Pope to abuse his views, whatever they may be, is dropping every day. The Catholic Church has nowhere near the political influence that it had even mere decades ago.
He’s got a loud soapbox, and in this case (from what I gather, I haven’t read the encyclical), he’s using it for good. Sounds fine to me.
The more I think about it the more I think you are right. It is his message that has the appeal, his status simply gives it a bit more credibility.
I’ve been looking at some of the press around this, and I love the way it’s forcing certain political factions to take sides in ways that are very revealing. The venerable Rush Limbaugh called the encyclical a “Marxist rant” and accused the Pope of “issuing a commandment to vote Democrat”. Limbaugh had earlier suggested that the encyclical was so unbelievably over the top – since everyone is now supposed to know that “global warming is a hoax” – that it might be a faked leak by the religion-hating Marxist left to discredit the Pope.
Continuing to rant and froth at the mouth, Limbaugh also informed his listeners that “every other word [in the encyclical] seems to be about how unfettered capitalism is destroying the world” (as I mentioned, the word “capitalism” does not appear anywhere in the encyclical, and par. 129 makes a strong pro-business statement).
So there’s the line in the sand – who should we side with?
On one side: the Pope, who has proven himself exceptionally compassionate, intelligent, and scientifically knowledgeable, and every reputable climate scientist in the world.
On the other side: a venal, lying, drug-addled gaseous windbag.
Climate change denialists are getting some really embarrassing friends! 
For my part, I wish the Pope would dry up and blow away.
Yeah, it’s nice he’s saying things I agree with. But in the next breath, he’s going to say something I don’t agree with. It’s nice that he’s saying that science is good…but he’s still working from a faith-based perspective, and faith is not compatible with science.
Some day soon he’ll say something against abortion, or contraception, or gay rights, or women’s rights, and I’ll be disgusted again. His religious beliefs push him to a number of harmful and evil opinions.
Reading the title again: well, they never reached the influence of the Pogues, but were often a good outlet for Shane MacGowan’s talents/debauchery.
What, you mean like homophobia? Or sexism? Covering up for pedophiles? Lying about effective AIDS prevention techniques in Africa?
Jesus, whatever will we do if we get a pope who does stuff like that? :rolleyes:
For those of us who weren’t familiar with him before his election, those political leanings you find offensive were made clear as soon as he said he was Francis “as in Assisi”.
And I hope you meant to say that “regulation” is the target. That’s Francis’ target too.
Which part of “the Pope is elected” have you apparently never heard? Do you sincerely believe that the cardinals who elected him didn’t have the foggiest idea about his leanings?
I think the “unbridled capitalism is bad” being referred to here isn’t from that encyclical, but from the exhortation “Evangelii Gaudium”? That came out in 2013, and while it also never mentions the term “capitalism”, it decries income inequality and the idea that free markets are necessarily just:
How is the distribution of any point of view able to be apolitical?
The Pope is leader of a group. That group has positions which reflect their paradigm. They would like to distribute that point of view to their constituents.
For nations with any semblance of participatory mechanisms which allow those constituents to influence policy-making, the most broadly accepted mechanism to effect change is “political” (as opposed to, say, terrorism or brute force).
It’s not possible to express a position without that being “influence.”
It’s not possible to influence without that being “politics.”
If you are suggesting that some topics such as AGW should be off-limits because they are so politically charged, I disagree. The Pope’s role as a Catholic leader is to shephard his flock toward whatever world they are trying to build, and the extent to which a given initiative is politically charged should be irrelevant.
If you are suggesting that concern over AGW should be off limits because it is a political issue and not theological, I believe the Pope would disagree. I believe he would say that Catholic theology calls for humans to be good stewards of the earth. Therefore where there is evidence we are not being good environmental stewards, we should alter our behavior accordingly.
Whether Catholicism=environmentalism is defensible theology may be a matter of debate, but once that point of view is taken, it becomes the Pope’s duty as a Catholic leader to disseminate it, political ramifications be damned.
I have never heard Mr Limbaugh, and didn’t realize he was “venerable,” but I completely agree Denialists have embarrassing friends and spokespersons. Bozos, even.
I was not as enamored as you with the beauty of the Pope’s document, other than the sense in which a sermon admonishing us to stop sinning is beautiful. It was, for me, one rhetorical construction after another. It has a lot of language like this:
"A consensus should always be reached between the different stakeholders, who can offer a variety of approaches, solutions and alternatives. The local population should have a special place at the table; they are concerned about their own future and that of their children, and can consider goals transcending immediate economic interest. We need to stop thinking in terms of “interventions” to save the environment in favour of policies developed and debated by all interested parties.
"
The poor need lifting up. The privileged need to do the lifting. GM cereals might be bad because they enable oligopolies that displace small farmers. Rich nations should pay for swapping out the grid and for climate change effects that damage poor nations. Inequality is bad. The wealthy should live more sparsely.
Good stuff. Amen. Preach it brother! (Parishioner returns home refreshed and renewed; orders new golf clubs.)
There are some specifics. My favorite is paragraph 171 calling out that Carbon Credits are a fraud. (I have likened them to indulgences which are bought for the purpose of allowing the purchaser to continue sinning, and apparently Pope Francis agrees).
But in general, beautiful though it may be, it’s more or less a cheerleading speech. For those of us less enamored with platitudes about what we all should do, I don’t think it has any elegant solutions.
The world has too many people (how about an encyclical on having fewer children?), and everyone of them would live like me and Al Gore if they could.
Here’s a beautiful message: Stop living well right now until we first solve the energy grid.
You cannot lift up the poor and be a consistent environmentalist. If we actually want to minimize our invasive damage as a species, we need to all become poor for the moment, and we need to find ways to reduce our population. Neither is likely, and anything short of that will not work, no matter how beautifully the pontificating rings from the pulpit.
I think Global warming is a moral issue and should be addressed by religious leaders. I think he is right on target with his entire message. I am having a hard time identifying what it was that left me feeling uncomfortable.
The pope is probably one of the most influential men on the planet. Lets suppose he comes out with a very good message that is widely accepted. His popularity would naturally start to grow. He comes out with more good messages and his popularity and influence grows even more. At this stage he has an opportunity to start injecting his own personal slants on things and has the potential to start swaying elections.
I am not comfortable with any one man potentially having so much influence, especially when he has a slightly unfair advantage in having such a large audience right fro the start.
Not very familiar with the history of the papacy, are we?
Even were he not Pope, he would have a right to speak his mind. As he is the Pope, he has not only a right to do so, but an obligation. If you disagree with any of what he says, then the recourse to that is your right to ignore him.
And if some large number of people would frame this and hang it on the wall, the world would be on the road to being a better place.
How many loud, angry public battles have taken place in just the last… oh, half-decade that informed observers could see were not about anything in the actual object of contention?
As an essayist, this Frank guy said some important and valid things. The first round of pundits freaked out and turned it into a open attack on Capitalism and Business and The American Way… and so goes the public debate.
Of course, as it was noticed before you do ignore how big the disinformation efforts are.
[snip]
Here are 2 messages that many times over have dealt with those inert platitudes many times before:
The second one is what Richard Alley and the many economists he consulted told many times to the ones that are alarmists about thinking that proponents of change are demanding that we should become poor.
[QUOTE] Some people say transitioning to clean energy will simply cost too much - "leave it to future generations." In Edinburgh, Scotland, Richard Alley explains that if we start soon the cost of the transformation could be similar to that which was paid for something none of us would want to do without - clean water and the modern sanitation system. [/QUOTE]Of course you only demonstrate to ignore what statistician Hans Rosling has pointed many times before, (on this it is good the Popes have not been given much attention, people and specially women do family planning when they become less poor and more educated)
And again: history does show that in the past critics of the then proposed clean up of water and a sewage system were the chicken littles when they claimed that cleaning up our act was going to bankrupt all. Same goes for the real alarmists that claim that we should become poor so we can change when many changes in the past that solved environmental issues caused no such thing.
The root cause of nearly all our global problems is gross overconsumption… which is not a natural thing no matter how smugly its defenders try to pin it on human behavior. Acquisition is a natural drive, yes, but we’ve had sixty to seventy years of behavioral engineering hammering on that button until we can think of nothing else.
This fostered desire has built us an economy that demands that each and every person consume to the limit of his or her ability, down to making every life choice in favor of increased income and thus increased ability to consume their share.
Disagree? Muse a moment on what happens when consumer spending drops a tiny fraction, or even just stays level… the whole merry-go-round shudders. And if the great mass of people were to do what’s sensible and start saving 10-15% instead of spending it… the word you’re looking for is “crash.”
But that all assumes we have a choice. We don’t, and this Frank guy gets it.