WhatFinger


Most non-Catholics and many Catholics think the Pope is always infallible according to Catholic teaching. This is not true; he must be speaking on a matter of Faith and Morals and then only Ex Cathedra

A Poverty of Understanding; the Climate Encyclical



God created poverty. This proposition, while demonstrably true, is guaranteed to bring guffaws and cries of outrage from the religious Left, but it is true nonetheless. It hearkens back to the curse of Man in Genesis:
"Cursed is the ground because of you; through painful toil you will eat food from it all the days of your life. It will produce thorns and thistles for you, and you will eat the plants of the field. By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food until you return to the ground"
What was this curse of Adam? It was a curse of poverty. Adam would no longer find it easy to care for his physical needs, but would instead provide for them through great labor and difficulty. Poverty was the prime punishment for the Sin of Adam, and it has been the bane of all human existence ever since. That is not to say God takes pleasure in it; on the contrary, He, like any good father, loathes the punishment He had to mete out, but it was necessary. Without poverty there would be no opportunity to demonstrate true agape love, to actually sacrifice for others. It is the core of our spiritual journey in life, the great tyrant we have had to fight against through all human existence. Without it Man would have had no chance to practice charity, that great virtue; charity requires a free choice, the same type of choice God Himself has. It may well be argued that poverty is at the core of the Christian faith; it is the battle against poverty in others that defines love. And, like all love, it must be freely given. St. Francis of Assisi was known for his loving care for the poor and suffering. Our current Pope took the name Francis to honor the gentle saint (who, it may be pointed out, came from a wealthy family and had wealthy donors to sustain his mission of love to the poor) and he has written yet another love letter to the Left, this time under the guise of a Papal encyclical (LAUDATO SI') about the environment and global warming. Timed to coincide with the run-up to a major conference designed to implement an international agreement to create a legal framework to "reduce Man's carbon footprint" worldwide. The reality is it will be a tool wielded by the international elites to suck massive amounts of wealth out of those who have produced it, and to reduce everyone's standard of living.

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Pope Francis is on board with that; he blames poverty on wealth in a thoroughly modern way. Now, Popes rarely write encyclicals about arguments in science, preferring to let the experts fight that out. Francis is, in a way, no exception in this document; he studiously avoids any discussion of the science of Global Warming/Climate Change. No doubt he was influenced by the vast horde of well versed climate skeptics who paid him a visit just prior to the release of his encyclical. So Francis falls back on an old liberal trick, the one Ronald Reagan elucidated 'It isn't so much that liberals are ignorant. It's just that they know so many things that aren't so". Francis peppers his work with "everyone knows that..." So false narratives are used to justify his call to fundamentally transform the human political landscape. "Everyone knows the rich are getting richer and the poor poorer". "Everyone knows the planet is warming." "Everyone knows the sea levels are rising". He makes a defensible case by making no case at all. As William Paley said of Gibbons "who can refute a sneer?" But the meat of LAUDATO SI' is the harsh criticisms of capitalism, of globalization, and the concern of Francis for the poor. The primary argument here is that industrial civilization is polluting the air, water, and land and injuring the poor. How does he think we should get there? He states:
175. The same mindset which stands in the way of making radical decisions to reverse the trend of global warming also stands in the way of achieving the goal of eliminating poverty. A more responsible overall approach is needed to deal with both problems: the reduction of pollution and the development of poorer countries and regions. The twenty-first century, while maintaining systems of governance inherited from the past, is witnessing a weakening of the power of nation states, chiefly because the economic and financial sectors, being transnational, tends to prevail over the political. Given this situation, it is essential to devise stronger and more efficiently organized international institutions, with functionaries who are appointed fairly by agreement among national governments, and empowered to impose sanctions. 177. Given the real potential for a misuse of human abilities, individual states can no longer ignore their responsibility for planning, coordination, oversight and enforcement within their respective borders. How can a society plan and protect its future amid constantly developing technological innovations? One authoritative source of oversight and coordination is the law, which lays down rules for admissible conduct in the light of the common good. The limits which a healthy, mature and sovereign society must impose are those related to foresight and security, regulatory norms, timely enforcement, the elimination of corruption, effective responses to undesired side-effects of production processes, and appropriate intervention where potential or uncertain risks are involved. There is a growing jurisprudence dealing with the reduction of pollution by business activities. But political and institutional frameworks do not exist simply to avoid bad practice, but also to promote best practice, to stimulate creativity in seeking new solutions and to encourage individual or group initiatives. 194. For new models of progress to arise, there is a need to change "models of global development";[136] this will entail a responsible reflection on "the meaning of the economy and its goals with an eye to correcting its malfunctions and misapplications".[137] It is not enough to balance, in the medium term, the protection of nature with financial gain, or the preservation of the environment with progress. Halfway measures simply delay the inevitable disaster. Put simply, it is a matter of redefining our notion of progress." [...] "207. The Earth Charter asked us to leave behind a period of self-destruction and make a new start, but we have not as yet developed a universal awareness needed to achieve this. Here, I would echo that courageous challenge: "As never before in history, common destiny beckons us to seek a new beginning... Let ours be a time remembered for the awakening of a new reverence for life, the firm resolve to achieve sustainability, the quickening of the struggle for justice and peace, and the joyful celebration of life".
This calls for the use of the law to force political, economic, and social change. But what is the Law? If you want a model of how God intended the Law to function one need only look to ancient Israel. The Israelites lived in a loose confederation of tribes, and had no central ruler. In time of need God raised up Judges, men who would act as temporary central authorities to lead military defenses and whatnot. But the Judge model was not popular with a certain sort of people, as indeed limited government is not popular with a certain sort of people today, and the uncertainty of a weak, decentralized system of governance led the Israelites to demand a king "like the other nations". Samuel, the Prophet, gave them the Word of the Lord in 1 Samuel 12:
"And when you saw that Nahash king of the Ammonites came against you, you said to me, 'No, but a king shall reign over us,' when the Lord your God was your king." [...] "Now therefore, stand and see this great thing which the Lord will do before your eyes: Is today not the wheat harvest? I will call to the Lord, and He will send thunder and rain, that you may perceive and see that your wickedness is great, which you have done in the sight of the Lord, in asking a king for yourselves."
So the very God Pope Francis has sworn to serve finds asking for a King to be a rebellious act, and here the Pope is asking to empower many kings and establish an international framework, a meta-king, to rule over capitalists. But what are capitalists? They are anyone who, through the work of their own hands, tries to make a living by serving others or creating goods. In short, capitalists are the People. Then too, this is reminiscent of the Book of Revelation 13:17:
"And that no man might buy or sell, save he that had the mark, or the name of the beast, or the number of his name."
So, a world governing body will regulate economic activity in a fashion quite similar to that advocated by Pope Francis. "Models of Global Development" pre-planned by a central authority just reeks of the system spoken of by John the Divine. The dirty little secret is that government derives it's authority from violence. Man is not naturally a herd animal, and submission to a self-styled authority (and all authority outside of the family holds its position through its own assertions of rights, unless one wishes to go back to the Medieval idea of the Divine Right of Kings) is not a natural act. Most of human history was spent in the hunter-gatherer model of human society, where an extended family formed a tribe and leaders arose based on their success at hunting and gathering, or at fighting off enemies. People followed the chieftains by choice. modern civilizations impose their will by force of arms. Oh, some are less obvious in the manner in which they impose it, and there is the notion of a social contract and democracy or representational government giving people their voice, but in the end the citizen either submits or is killed. Doubt this? Try openly defying the government; announce you refuse to pay taxes, for instance. Marshall will come to arrest you. If you resist the SWAT teams will storm your home and kill you if they must. Violence is at the root of Law. It's been that way since the Agricultural revolution. Which essentially makes Pope Francis a promoter of violence against his fellow Man. Like all thoroughly modern men Francis can only think of the good he may do, and he ignores the evil he must do to bring his vision of goodness about. He can be forgiven for this foible, as it is quite common in these times, but the man should be able to look at the reality of what the Law is, of why God did not want an intrusive, invasive legal system. He joins the Israelites in wickedness. Forced charity is no charity at all. It is theft. Not just from those who lose money unwillingly, but from those who would do good works for the benefit of others and their own souls. And Francis repeatedly claims technology will not solve the problems. Strange; he seems to misunderstand the problem in the first place; the reason the numbers of the poor are growing is because there are so many more of them who actually survive thanks to technology. The poor of the Third World have always had high conception rates, because children died in the womb or in infancy. Now, thanks to modern sanitation, medicines, and an overall increase in the standard of living of the poor, these children are living to adulthood. That is the gift of world capitalism, which this Pope seems to despise. But capitalism - the system which inevitably derives from Natural Law and the tendency of people to follow their own interests - has been a source of untold bounty worldwide. And, although Pope Francis bemoans the dying of older cultures and small holdings, it is what the public wants; international markets exist because they provide better products and services at a cheaper price. One may not like the homogenization of culture, but everyone likes being able to buy, say, roll screens to keep out malarial mosquitoes. It is the public itself that has driven globalization. This extends to agriculture. Francis believes that small holdings planted in traditional fashion by workers is superior to modern farming methods. That food production has grown immensely thanks to modern farming is unquestionable, and those many poor he so worries over would starve without it. Francis makes a complaint about genetically modified foods in one section, yet seems completely ignorant of the Green Revolution, which drastically increased crop yields through the planting of new, hybridized crops. Norman Borlaug did more for the poor than any liberal politician or, for that matter, any Pope or Bishop. He did it through science, not through lofty words or government programs. Pope Francis claims in this encyclical that science cannot solve the problems we face, in complete ignorance of the successes of the Green Revolution. But Borlaug worked for such evil corporations as DuPont, and it won't do at all to think about THAT! And Francis argues in favor of a neo-paganism. He argues repeatedly for the interconnectedness of Man, animals, plants, and Mother Earth, in what sounds surprisingly like a diatribe from James Lovelock, or from pantheistic pagans. I warned about this at American Thinker a few years ago. Environmentalism is a return to the ancient forms of worship. Isn't Pope Francis aware that Baal, the god of the Canaanites, was a nature god, and worship of him brought the rath of Yahweh down on Israel? Oh, and Francis also calls labor a right in this document. I am mindful of another group that saw it that way; embossed on the gates of a former brewery in the town of Auschwitz were the words Arbeit macht frei "Work makes you free". A job may give a life dignity, but it is no more a right than the beer that formerly flowed from what would be the most infamous death camp in history. Rights do not presuppose obligation on the part of others. Actually, work may be a right but not a job, which is what Francis seems to think is owed to the poor. Work, as in when someone does something for remuneration, is absolutely natural and the most natural of all is capitalism, where one labors for oneself. That is the true right, not some vision of corporations as social welfare organizations - which Francis makes quite clear in his document is what he believes. In the end Pope Francis shows himself to be a utopian socialist, believing that a de-industrialized society would be infinitely preferable to what we now have, not bothering to consider the economics of supporting a large population with 19th century technology. His solution is to steal from the rich to give to the poor, something that has been tried and found wanting repeatedly throughout history. Francis is a product of his environment (as are we all to a degree) and, having been raised under the fascists of Peronism, believes utterly in class warfare rhetoric. He also has allowed the return of Liberation Theology, which was a powerful intellectual force in Latin America and suppressed by both St. John Paul II (who Francis canonized a saint in 2014)and Pope Benedict XVI. Francis further leads these assaults on free markets and limited government at a time when the world has real problems he should address; the rise of radical Islam comes to mind. Francis of Assisi was a staunch foe of radical Islam in his day. Why is his namesake tilting at windmills instead? Jesus said the poor you will always have with you. Poverty is a process, and there is never going to be a solution because it is not a finite thing, but an elastic concept, a sliding scale. Poor people in America are profoundly rich compared with others; they have central heat, air conditioning, automobiles, televisions. But we see them as poor and we provide them with a bounty of food and assistance which keeps them locked in the position in which they are comfortable. Is that the care for the poor that Pope Francis sees as noble?At some point the mother bird must nudge the baby out of the nest. Most non-Catholics and many Catholics think the Pope is always infallible according to Catholic teaching. This is not true; he must be speaking on a matter of Faith and Morals and then only Ex Cathedra, invoking infallibility. Generally the matter must be closed, the "science settled". Pope Francis, by producing so political a document, has done the Body of Christ a great disservice, sewing confusion and discord. In the end what he misses is that Sin is the opposite of Love, and Love can never be forced.

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Timothy Birdnow -- Bio and Archives

Timothy Birdnow is a conservative writer and blogger and lives in St. Louis Missouri. His work has appeared in many popular conservative publications including but not limited to The American Thinker, Pajamas Media, Intellectual Conservative and Orthodoxy Today. Tim is a featured contributor to American Daily Reviewand has appeared as a Guest Host on the Heading Right Radio Network. Tim’s website is tbirdnow.mee.nu.


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