Sound and Light, Sound and Fury

Sound and Light Show at the Vatican
in support of Enviornmentalism

Son et lumière shows with stories and their images being projected on historic buildings have been increasingly popular in Europe over the last forty years.  The Palace of Versailles, the Cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris, the Hôtel de Ville in Brussels, the Schönbrunn Palace in Vienna, the Parthenon in Athens, the Great Pyramid in Giza have all served as the screen for the sound and light displays.  Last week, on December 8^th—the feast of the Immaculate Conception—Saint Peter’s Basilica in the Vatican joined the list as Fiat Lux, Illuminating our Common Home, an hour-long sound and light display highlighting the challenges of Climate Change was projected on Carlo Maderno’s 17^th century façade.  Images of seals, clownfish, dolphins, lions, monkeys, coral reefs, exotic birds and countless people from around the world were projected on the Basilica. 

It is no secret that Pope Francis is one of the world’s leading voices calling for environmental reforms to protect our planet from the effects of human-generated threats to the atmosphere, seas, rivers and land.  The Pope wrote his first encyclical, Laudato Si, outlining a Christian response to environmental threats.  The Encyclical set off a vehement reaction from the Katholik Krazies and last week’s son et lumière raised the pitch of hysteria.   It is becoming clear that Pope Francis is proving an irritant to a significant party within the Church that becoming more and more rebellious to his authority.  Even such once reputable sites as Rorate Caeli and Father Z’s What Does the Prayer Really Say?  are advocating open rebellion against the current Vicar of Christ. 

This is not a problem of Francis’ making but rather due to the poor catechesis given Catholics in the years before the Council when so many of our schools and catechisms were given to a monophystism  that rejected the true humanity of Christ, giving us instead a Deity who ruled over creation but never truly entered into it.  This was reflected in our liturgy which, at the time, was totally separated from the realities of everyday life.  I was pondering this point this morning as I watched people gather for Mass and quietly greet one another as they took their places in Church.  We had always been taught that our attention should be directed solely towards the Christ present in the tabernacle.  There was no appreciation of Christ present in his mystical Body, the Church.  Everything was over-spiritualized and other-worldly.  This world did not matter at all.  The implications of the Incarnation on our daily lives were totally overlooked.

Those who oppose Pope Francis on issues of climate change do so not for theological reasons but for political-economic ones.  They uncritically buy into the economic systems that are irresponsibly exploiting our natural resources and destroying the environment in favor of short-term gain over long-term human good.  But they justify this by their gnostic separation of the material and spiritual worlds.  The Incarnation teaches us that this created world has been sanctified by God becoming part of it in Christ Jesus.  The orthodox Christian knows that we cannot divide the sacred from the profane—that creation is now shot-through with the God who is its origin and its destiny.  Perhaps Gerard Manley Hopkins put it best  

The world is charged with the grandeur of God.
        

It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;
        

It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil
Crushed.

Why do men then now not reck his rod?


Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;
        

And all is seared with trade; Bleared, smeared with toil;
        

And wears man's smudge and shares man's smell:

the soil
Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.

And for all this, nature is never spent;
        

There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;


And though the last lights off the black West went
        

Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs — 


Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
        

World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.

oh, but I forgot, Hopkins was a Jesuit.  We can hardly look to him for orthodox Catholicism!

Now That The Shoes Of The Fisherman Are On The Other Feet ...

I remember the afternoon John Paul II was elected.  I was at a committee meeting with our local auxiliary bishop.  The white smoke had already been seen and one of our number had been delegated to keep an eye on the television in the next room and let us know when the announcement was made.  The “spy” in question was an old Irish monsignor and he came into the room in a state of shock.  “It’s some Pole” (he didn’t use the politically correct term) “who I never heard of.”  The room exploded as everyone jumped up and made for the television room.  While everyone else seemed quite excited by the first non-Italian Pope in over four and a half centuries, I had an immediate feeling of foreboding.  Italians know how to do the Pope thing.  They’ve done it so long that the Pope is just the guy in the white robe who live down the block or over on the other side of Rome or a two-hour rail trip away.  They don’t take the pope all that seriously.  Even when they become pope, they take the whole thing a bit more lightly.  But a Pope from Poland—that spelled trouble.

Now don’t get me wrong.  There were aspects of John Paul’s reign that were absolutely brilliant.  He was a great communicator.  And he was a phenomenal political strategist.  But by and large, it was a troubled and troublesome papacy.  At least, I, for one, was not a happy camper during those long years of ever tightening and centralizing control.   He wrote some great encyclicals—and some not so great ones.  But most of all I saw good bishops with vision being replaced, successful innovations in pastoral practice being reversed, and a negative message edging out the Good News of salvation.   But he was the Pope.  I respected him and while in the classroom or in private conversation I might point out the flaws in his policies or thinking—and even the infallible have flaws—I only spoke with respect.  I had various opportunities to meet him—well, to be presented to him actually: needless to say we never sat down over a kielbasa and beer—and I always acted with due deference.  I was not a happy camper during his pontificate but I was—and remain—a Catholic and that means that there are boundaries regarding what and how we say what we say regarding the Pope.

I had more respect for Benedict.  He was a sort of papal Jimmy Carter.  While I think his pontificate was, aside from his precedent setting resignation, a disaster, I believe he is a man of unparalleled integrity.  I would probably agree with him on very little but he is a sound scholar in his field (which is not history, by the way; he doesn’t have a good grasp of historical data, even Church history) and I have a genuine empathy for the man who I believe sincerely desired to be pope to “fix” what he perceived to be the problems left behind by both Vatican II and his immediate predecessor, but who found that his professorial skills were not up to the shenanigans of the long-entrenched cesspool of monsignoral fuchsia that stood between him and his objectives.  All in all, I was no less unhappy with him in the chair of Peter than I was with John Paul II.  But again, I spoke only with respect of him.  The Pope is the Pope.  Ubi Petrus ibi Ecclesia.  While I was personally discontent with the direction in which these popes were taking the Church, I bore neither any animosity, personal or otherwise.  After all, they were Pope and I am not. 

Needless to say, I love Francis and feel thirty years younger with him on the Chair of Peter.  But not everybody shares my enthusiasm.  Last week it was announced that Gallup reported some serious drops in Francis’ popularity among Americans, especially since Laudato Si and its critique of our consumerist society.  Let’s face it, we all love our SUVs more than we love our Catholic Faith.  Jesus was obviously wrong: it is possible to love God and wealth, or at least to love some pious idea of God and the reality of our material obsessions. 

Criticism of Francis ranged from the ignorant to the vituperative.  Self-proclaimed authority on all things Catholic and Republican candidate for President, Rick Santorum, declared

The church has gotten it wrong a few times on science, and I think that we probably are better off leaving science to the scientists and focusing on what we're really good at, which is theology and morality.”  

I think he would have a point if he knew science as well as those scientists the Pope turned towards for advice on the encyclical, or even as well as does the Pope himself.  His Holiness is no authority on science, of course, but he does have a stronger background than does climate-change denier and general fantasist Sanctimonious Santorum.  Nevertheless, the ex-Senator’s remarks were mild compared to some who aren’t running for President and are able to shoot from the blind the Internet offers.  (Admittedly, I too keep my identity concealed in cyberspace anonymity.).  Here is an exchange of anti-Francis buffoons from the Katholik Krazy blog Eponymous Flower:

AnonymousJuly 26, 2015 at 4:41 AM
   Pope Francis stinks.

AnonymousJuly 26, 2015 at 5:34 AM  
It's only the sheep' smell......don't you like it?


AnonymousJuly 26, 2015 at 5:51 AM  
"Pope Francis stinks."

That's for sure. He stinks from the rot of Vatican II !!!

Some of Francis’s strongest critics are both very public in their identity and ruthless in their critique.  Our Fancy Friend over at the Knight of Malta, Cardinal Burke, says that the Church under Francis “is a rudderless ship.”   It has been a long time since a Cardinal was so openly contemptuous of a reigning Pope, probably not since Cardinal Lucien Louis Joseph Napoléon Bonaparte, grand-nephew of the Emperor, who was given to open mockery of Pius IX, the Pope who both ordained him and named him a Cardinal.  (Curiously they remained friends despite Bonaparte’s well-known habit of ridiculing him to visitors.) 

Equally insulting to Pope Francis is Fox News Commentator, Steve Milloy who refers to Francis as “The Red Pope.”  The Fox News crowd caters to an audience that is rabidly opposed to any degree of self-restraint on the part of free-market capitalism and its raping of the planet’s resources and considers the sort of economic reforms Francis calls for sheer heresy.  One “Bruce,” responding to the KK blog, The Radical Catholic, says

Pope Francis is to the Catholic Church what Obama has been to America. Obama kicked the already weakened final supports out from under the country and America is NO MORE. Call it what you may but it is gone.

The Pope is well on his way to doing the same to a Church already turned Protestant by the Modernist Heresy. If they aren't already the confused Catholics will soon be Useful Idiots for the Global Elite who Francis apparently serves.

The electronic version of the British Conservative Magazine, The Spectator, recently produced an article: “Watch Out Pope Francis: the Catholic Civil War Has Begun.”   The article isn’t bad at all, other than calling Ross Douthat of the New York Times, a “moderate,” but it is a bit like Paul Revere hanging the lights in the tower of the Old North Church (actually Robert Newman, the church sexton hanged the lights to warn us about the Brits); we know that already, it ain’t news.  The article drew some pretty rabid responses however: who knew the Krazies were literate enough to read The Spectator? One “Gwenn Ap Nudd” responded to Phil Steinacker

Yes, this Pope teaches error so he is not a Pope. Sede Vacant (sic) - the Seat is empty. There have been a number of Anti-Popes. Francis is just one more.

And then to one “James M”

Legalism. As Rev Cekeda says, he was a manifest heretic before his election so it wasn't valid to begin with. The Council rejected the Holy Spirit and elected a heretic. I grant you it would be more complicated if a Pope fell from grace while in office. But he didn't fall, he never had it apparently - or at least since he's been in the public eye.  (Antony Cekada is a sedevacantist, “theologian” in residence and companion of Bishop Daniel Dolan, ersatz sede-vacantist bishop of no place in particular.  I have written about Dolan and Cekada elsewhere; you can check the Label list on the right side of the webpage.) 

Actually Francis is driving many of those who were clinging to hope of a pre-Vatican II restoration to sede-vacantism.  The KK blog, Eponymous Flower, draws a number of readers who espouse the idea that Francis is not the authentic pope.  One, writing under the universal veil of “anonymous” and who represents a sort of second wave sede vacantist theory (first wave being those who claim Pius XII was the last authentic pope) wrote:

Thanks guys! I see things in a different light. Pope Benedict XVl is still for me the Supreme Pontiff. And if I live to see the day of his death, then it will be Sede Vacante. I am a Traditional Catholic and Francis will not deprive me of that. May God forgive this fake Pope. In the meantime I am a CATHOLIC. And Francis is an anti-Catholic. Deo Gratias!!!

Then there are those who want to depose Francis.  A particularly Krazy blogger from Boston by the name of Carole McKinley who runs the Blog The Tenth Crusade (in various other reincarnations known as Throw The Bums Out 2010 and What The Pope Really Said) has not only had some of the blog-flies that feed off her ordure suggest that it is time to give Francis the boot but supports the idea herself.  One Michael Dowd wrote:

I suggest a petition be developed and circulated via blog network for the removal of Pope Francis. This kind of thing might get some more national media attention on this diabolical issue. Every day more and more souls are being lost due to him. He renders advocacy for Catholic doctrine ineffective by the carelessness of his moral attitude and confusing remarks. He has got to go. Go Francis Go.

An “Anonymous” came right in behind in support  

Michel Dowd is right. Enough of this. Are there no cardinals or bishops with a Catholic backbone left? Stand up to this man and boot him out. 


Ironically the post was titled “Catechized Catholics Upset With Our Holy Father’s Shtick”  When I suggested that really catechized Catholics know that there is no way for cardinals or bishops—even those who have backbone—much less petitions to remove a pope, Carol herself came in with one of her typically vitriolic exercises in unapprised idiocy:

If the Holy Father reveals himself to have been elected by the queens to contradict Church teaching, his See most certainly has the power to kick him to the curb. We are all waiting to see what kind if stunt is pulled at the next synod. The last one was orchestrated by the queens and had the collaboration and blessing of the Holy Father…,

I was only relieved that she referred to Francis as “Holy Father” but then I remembered in an earlier blog where she said she calls him that “tongue in cheek.”  One “Lazarus Gethsemane” then chimed in his opinion that Francis was foisted on the Church by a College of Cardials gone mad:

And yet - what we get from the politico Bergoglio is not truth, but rather, confusion, chaos, division, constant obfuscation of clear doctrine, and an unprecedented elevation of man and physical manna, and all at the detriment of immutable Truths and doctrines within the church itself. … 

Many of the corrupt liberal clerics in the college of cardinals (which is the majority) knew about Bergoglio, and that is exactly why they launched an illicit internal campaign to elect him to the papacy. Don't think for one blessed moment that this chaos and destruction wasn't pre-planned beyond Bergoglio.

So, yes—Francis is edging the Church towards a Civil War, or actually a schism.  It wasn’t his doing: it has been brewing for years.  The Lefebvre Schism was the first wave, the sede-vacantists the second.  They both had their roots in the Council and the papacy of Paul VI. The more measured track of John Paul II and Benedict XVI let the fires die down a bit but as nothing short of a rejection of the Council and post-conciliar Magisterium would appease the rebels, the fires remained smoldering.  Francis has fanned them into flame again.  Some hold the old grudges about the changes in the Liturgy or the ecumenical openings initiated by John XXIII and confirmed by the Council.  For others it was seeing their hopes of a restoration of the old rites promised in Summorum Pontificum dashed by a Pope who has no time for what I have referred to as the Colonial Williamsburg approach to worship.  There are those who grieve the “injustices” perceived to have been done by Francis to His Corpulence, Cardinal Burke. More are threatened by the more pastoral direction taken in regard to the divorced and remarried.  But the largest number of American discontents to Francis’ pontificate are bound to be those who see him as a threat to our socio-economic status quo.  Let Christopher Moncton and Sarah Palin and Senator Inhofe and Governor Parry and, of course, Rick Santorum continue to deny the effects of our economic strategies on our planet, but as for me I am a believer—both in Francis and in the fact that we gotta change.  Let me just conclude with this slice of Ashley Ahearn’s KUOW Seattle program on NPR this past Tuesday. 

Tribes and wild fish groups share Butler’s sentiments. River temperatures throughout the Northwest are entering lethal territory for salmon. The fish become stressed once river temperatures reach the 60s. When they exceed the 70s, temperatures can be lethal.

“When these fish are very hot they become lethargic and they don’t reach as large sizes as they would in more cool conditions,” says Adrian Tuohy, a biologist with the Wild Fish Conservancy. The nonprofit group analyzed water temperature data from the U.S. Geological Survey earlier this month on 54 rivers in Washington, Oregon and California. Thirty-nine of the rivers were at temperatures that can be lethal to salmon and trout.

"Their metabolic rates are so high that they just can't grow as fast," Tuohy says. “That affects their survival rates in the ocean.”

Warmer waters contain less oxygen and provide conditions for fish diseases like gill rot to thrive. So as the water levels drop and fish crowd into smaller and smaller pools, the results can be deadly.

So, say what you want about Pope Francis, but as for me and the fish, we’re believers.

Source of Revealed Truth: God Meets Adam Smith or The Best Freaking Pope in History

Before Laudato Sii was released this past week I was in the middle of a series of postings on the Enlightenment as it both is relevant to my series on the Church of England in regard to its effects on the C of E in the late 17^th and early 18^th centuries and it raises a number of questions I want to explore such as the issue of secularism in the public square.  In the most recent of those postings last week I mentioned Adam Smith, the Scottish philosopher who laid the philosophical and ethical groundwork for modern capitalism.  Smith lived through the very time of the American Revolution and our founding fathers very much subscribed to his theories.  Liberty was a crucial value for him and he law liberty as one of the pre-requisites for individuals to be empowered to acquire wealth.  Though born a Scots Presbyterian in the strong Calvinist tradition of that Church (or, as it is known in Scotland, The Kirk) Smith evolved throughout his lifetime to the vague non-dogmatic sort of ambiguous Latitudinarian Christianity characteristic of the genteel upper crust 18^th century Brits.  In his journey into that comfortable Christianity he abandoned the idea of original sin but clung to its anthropological foundations. Let me explain.

The doctrine of Original Sin is found only in Western Christianity and is absent from the Orthodox theological framework. This is because it is the construct of Western Church Fathers, especially Irenaeus of Lyons and Augustine of Hippo.  The essence of original sin is the sin of concupiscence or inordinate desire.  Unfortunately the emphasis has usually been places—falsely—on sexual desire but Augustine had a much broader understanding and it would better be seen as greed.  To illustrate what he means, Augustine in one passage uses the example of the greed with which a child nurses.  This example usually appalls modern readers and Augustine doesn’t mean that the act of nursing isn’t a beautiful gift of the mother for the child but only wishes to point out that the child, even in the pre-rational state of infancy, naturally seeks out his own self-interest.  It is natural for us to wish to acquire and safe-keep those things which we need for our survival and our comfort.  One doesn’t have to make a moral judgment about this in the pre-rational person it is just our nature.

Unlike the orthodox position of Catholics, Lutherans, and Calvinists—all of whom recognized this “original sin” as part of our “fallen nature;” Smith saw our natural inclinations towards greed as something good.  Indeed, he saw it as the motivating virtue of a healthy economy.  As I desire more and more and you desire more and more we will work harder to make our desires into realities.

I remember as a child that one of my favorite fairy tales was the fisherman’s wife.  You may remember it.  In it the fisherman seeks from an enchanted fish whom he has set free a larger house for his wife.  She then sends her husband back to ask for a mansion.  Getting the mansion, she wants to become a Queen.  Becoming a Queen she then desires to be Pope.  And so it goes.  Ever more and more until her greed makes her demand to rule the earth and the heavens—to become God—and then she loses it all.  This story is just a twist on Smith’s theory: we always want for more and strive for more.  Whereas the Catholic tradition and even more Martin Luther and more yet, John Calvin, all saw this greed as sinful, Smith saw it as the foundation of a healthy economy.

Adam Smith’s writings are, as I said, that foundation of modern capitalism.  James Madison and Thomas Jefferson were both huge fans.  Margaret Thatcher allegedly carried a copy of Smith’s The Wealth of Nations in her handbag.  (We still haven’t found out what the Queen carries in hers.  Why do those British ladies all need such oversized bags?)  Smith’s theories are that this natural desire of the human person for wealth will drive the markets and allowing the markets to be free of control is the tide that permits all boats to rise equally. 

Pope Francis is not a subscriber to the theories of Adam Smith. Like Saint Augustine he sees greed as inherently sinful, and indeed the root of all other evils.  Like his two immediate predecessors he subscribes to the doctrine of solidarity by which he means that we all have responsibility for the welfare of one another.  These ideas come out loud and clear in Laudato Sii. 

In fact, Laudato Sii is a major threat to the doctrines of Adam Smith and thus to our modern free market capitalistic world.  And the troops have risen in rebellion.  Ross Douthat, a columnist for the New York Times, wrote a stinging and far less than objective critique of the Encyclical in today’s paper.  He betrayed his hand by labeling the Pope and his allies as “catastrophists,” while he and other disciples of Smith are the “dynamists.”  Really?  You don’t think this is prejudcing the argument in a way that wouldn’t pass the editorship of a junior-highschool newspaper?

Dynamists are people who see 21st-century modernity as a basically successful civilization advancing toward a future that’s better than the past. They do not deny that problems exist, but they believe we can innovate our way through them while staying on an ever-richer, ever-more-liberated course.

Thank you Adam Smith. 

Catastrophists, on the other hand, see a global civilization that for all its achievements is becoming more atomized and balkanized, more morally bankrupt, more environmentally despoiled. What’s more, they believe that things cannot go on as they are: That the trajectory we’re on will end in crisis, disaster, dégringolade.

My heavens, Mr. Douthat, wherever did you learn a word like dégringolade?  My spellcheck doesn’t recognize it.  Given the remainder of your article and its level of argument I can only presume you own a thesaurus. 

Francis X. Rocca wrote a somewhat more objective and more thoughtful reflection—though certainly not an endorsement—for the Wall Street Journal.  What I want to focus on now, however, is not Rocca’s article but the response of readers to the article.  The sharks are circling!  I am not surprised that Wall Street Journal readers are not ready, by and large, to endorse the papal teaching, but I was amazed at the levels of both bias and stupidity so many readers—90% of the—displayed.  Let me just give you a sample for your reading pleasure.  I have cut and pasted (as well as edited) them so that the various spelling and grammatical errors remain in place.  Of course, we all make mistakes in those realms so the mistakes are not meant to be indicative of the intelligence level of the writers.  I will let their messages speak for them selves.

Steve Volla

The words of despair from Commissar Pope Francis. Best stick to the moral angle and leave the political burden to politicians.  He best not carry the political burden for worsening the very people he tries to save.

Steve Volla

@bassam madany Just as our leader has re-written the Constitution, Pope Francis has taken on the task to re-write the scriptures.

Steven Frankel

By the way, has the Pope reviewed the results of Communist and Socialist control on environmental quality as opposed to free market countries? What type of foot print did the soviets leave, or the South Americans? Nothing good.

Michael Thompson

No wonder the Castro brothers and Obama like this guy so much. Put down the Communist Manifesto and read the Bible instead.

Richard Beleson

The Pope should stick to religion - what did Jesus say? "Render unto Caesar that which is Caesar's and unto God that which is God's."  I get enough political garbage stuffed down my throat by Obama and his sycophants.  I do not need a "holy man" posing as a wannabe politician.

Karl Noell

This is what happens when a liberation theologist from South America is elected Pope. He is anti-capitalism, pro-collectivism, ignores, nay tramples, the teaching of Jesus to give up to Caesar that which is Caesar's and to God what is God's. He is the equivalent of an Obama undoing what the Church's Reagan, Pope John Paul the Great, accomplished.

Tom Painter

@Steven Chen "Still, his argument on this this issue commands a moral high ground that shows his concern for the future of humanity."

No. His argument is moral pretense, not moral high ground and it is not moral high ground because the theological view is not standing on either EMPIRICAL scientific or economic high ground to inform it.  It is Marxist pretense, pure and simple.

William Fehr

I have always thought that all Popes were frauds, after all who can claim to be a deity on Earth. My conclusion about the Church and the Pope was just affirmed that again. He really confirmed that he is just another Maxist/Socialist Liberation Theology idealist. 

Maureen DiRienzo

The Pope's marxist slip is showing, He has no place in commenting on things other than religion and faith. I will ignore his encyclical as much as I would ignore a cyclical from him on surgical techniques.

Having been born raised and educated a Catholic, I am seriously considering a protestant conversion.

Edward Kinsey

"Climate Change" is the excuse for taking over more and more control of our lives. The "inadequate distribution of resources" is the rationale for socialism/communism. This Pope would know that more than others coming from a South American socialist country.

Thanks for the tip, Pope. And thanks for telling the non Catholic world how to live its life, as if it's your business. Catholics can make up their own minds on how to deal with this document, others can be guided by their own beliefs in science. JNow that you have made this proclamation, what do you suggest we do? Do we All join some Commune and share each other's food, clothing, toilets, kitchens and diseases all under the careful and caring Argus eye of the Catholic Church, like in the Middle Ages? Live under Church control and believe in church approved science? Go back to the pre-industrial age without indoor plumbing, water purification or mechanized travel? I don't see the Church selling off its holdings and moving to thatch huts from grand Cathedrals. What I do see are a lot of empty churches all through Europe and simmering, crouching Moslem communities all over Europe waiting to pounce on the self emasculated Christian states and populations. The only thing overheated is the rhetoric contained in the document.

Anthony DeAngelis

Not sure where this Pope is headed, embracing a vehicle invented in the old USSR to undermine capitalism.  Concerned that next he will adopt the pagan Mother Earth doctrine.

Marco Martins

it was only a matter of time before marxist liberation theology hit the vatican. hopefully this pendulum will swing back to normal before too much damage is done by this. Ask the Pope what other system of economic engagement has lifted more people out of abject poverty, subjugation, indentured conditions, etc., than the system that relies on free choices, open exchanges, respect for personal property and competition. lets see what he comes up with. of course, a cynic could point out that the church, like the democratic party of the USA and most left parties worldwide rely on a constant supply of poor and ignorant for their power. 

Giselle Toth

Since when is the role of the Pope to pontificate politically charged issues from a strongly partisan aspect, an extreme left as such? The guy is nothing but a communist hack. How will the world's Catholics react to that?

 Alan Then

The Pope is an espoused communist, what would you expect?  His contempt for free market economics is belied by the fact that it has lifted more people out of poverty in the world in the last 40 years, than in all of human history.  

Michael Selden

The Pope should stick to religion——oh wait, he is talking about a religion. The religion of socialism and statism. Same church Obama attends.

James McManus

He is sounding more like Obama everyday

Andrew Eppink

The Pope speaks against abortion, 'gayness' in his encyclical and elsewhere, then invites proponents of precisely these and other of the revolting lib agenda to Vatican conclaves. The only reasonable conclusion to be drawn is that evil and disgusting politics is being played.

He stubbornly rejects capitalism, which obviously has many of the faults he enumerates, stupidly preferring instead thoroughly discredited socialism.

Things are getting pretty crazy, evilly destructive. It's little wonder there's such confusion.

Roger Potocki

Sadly, the Pope's thinking is so wrong headed that it is embarrassing to all rational people. All of the poor among us in this world aspire to be consumers. People need products for basic life, health and advancement. It is market capitalism that has provided the highest standard of life to God's creations. It is socialism and all of its forms that have brought misery. It is authoritarianism and the worship of the state that keeps entire continents at a constant level of poverty. The Pope's "moral content" is at best confused. 

Robert Mayfield

@RODGER POTOCKI You are completely right! This (second-string) pope is hoping to convince the world that we should all be brought down to the living standards of the "developing" world.  Sure hope that doesn't happen in my life time.

Gina Liggett

First, there is nothing more "filthy" than then the running sewage, germ-infested drinking water, and toxic fumes of cooking over burning dung fires. Industrialization and human-inspired (not Gaia-given) ingenuity have freed people by the hundreds of millions the world over.

Second there IS NO catastrophic global warming, NO impirical evidence that human activity has any significant impact on climate. The "studies" are invented computer models.

Third, the Pope has a vested interest in condemning capitalism, the only political-economic system liberating ordinary people from abject poverty and repression. If the Pope is successful in keeping people poor, then the Church has greater sway.

This Pope and Climategaters have a core world view that human beings are subordinate to God & Mother Earth, which makes them perfect bedfellows.  They view humans as vermin, imbued with sin. And they reject in principle the notion of the pursuit of individual happiness in life on earth

Henry Lyczak

Here we go again.  The "North", through exploitation, is responsible for all the ills of the "South". With this message, the South American dictators will have Vatican coverage to continue exploiting their own people.

If Catholic churches in the US start to "preach" this political victim/redistribution message, will the IRS revoke their religious tax exempt status and re-label the churches as political organizations?  Just asking.

Tomas Pajaros

I was not ashamed to be Catholic till now.    …

Free markets have raised the standard of living in just a few hundred years, from lives that were universally "nasty, brutish and short"  to today's long life expectancy filled with good food, fantastic health care, and decades of family enrichment as grandchildren, children, parents and grandparents.  

No Utopian society, and no totalitarian society, ever produced such advances.   EVER.    

Markets are not the problem - markets are the answer.    Pronouncements such as this carry a great risk of moving societies toward socialist dictatorships, and we have seen over and over how badly those turn out.    We miss Pope John Paul II more than ever.

Scott Horsburgh

@Charles Easterman

Mr. Easterman, you are citing economic policy according to Easterman, not according to the Pope.  He has given no indication he believes in capitalism.  Every indication is that he is a redistributionist (or socialist or Marxist, if you prefer).  Accusing the industrial North of "exploiting" the resources of the southern hemisphere is Marxist language.  That the North owes an "ecological debt" to the South is anything but capitalism.

Peter Drucker

I am sorry, may be i am rude. But it seems Pope is busy with other people's business. He should serve God, help Christians do it. But he is busy with talks about business, markets and their impact on environment. This is Obama's deal to talk, talk and talk about climate change. And take some Muslims. Pope, cause of you we are losing Christianity in America

Gene Lebrenz

This Pope is very disappointing. He speaks of liberal "causes" of which he has no personal  expertise nor scientific data to support his personal opinions and "pontifications." He clearly has no lucid knowledge of how capitalistic systems have enriched more lives than all socialistic systems combined -- which he clearly advocates. His anti-capitalistic comments are enigmatic and egregious. 

This Pope  would be far better prepared to condemn the barbaric activities of the Muslims in the world against Christians than to attack Capitalism--of which his comments indicate he is totally ignorant. 

Based upon this Pope's  perfidious comments and hubris, nothing he says in the future  is worthy of belief.

Walter Hauschildt

"Pope Blames Markets for Environment’s Ills"

the pope is  plainly stupid;  markets are the voice of the people! 

Lee Gaffrey

@MITCHEL GALISHOFF  As a Christian since my Baptism 82 years ago and a former Roman Catholic I believe that the reason the Church is in existence is to spread the Good News; The Gospels. I do not know what this Pope has in mind about the former; but, I believe he is wandering around on unholy ground with his encyclical on global warming and economics of global markets.

Philip Pick

Having come from a socialist society, the Pope is continuing to reflect on the socialist approach to solving the southern hemisphere's (mainly South America) economic problems.  I'd suggest that he concentrate on trying to solve those economic problems by trying capitalism.  In the meantime, maybe those of us from the "evil capitalist economies" should withhold our "ill-gotten" financial support from the Vatican.

Philip Pick

@Joel Nicholas @Bernard Nachman The only really stupid people are those who voted two times for the current socialist in chief in the White House.  Doubled the nations debt in less than eight years.  Not sure who the bigger socialist is, the Pope or Obama.

Charles Jones

To the Cardinals that elected this Pope...did you knowingly place a Marxist as Pope, because while his views may raise people spiritually...his political views will doom millions to poverty.

Michael Jessup

Honestly, being a practicing and HEAVILY donating Roman Catholic. This REALLY turns me off. I won't say more regarding this but this is really getting old. While he talks of Climate Change perhaps he needs to focus more on issues like Women in the Priesthood, birth control, and the litany goes on.

John Sobieski

Truly the worst Pope in history

Ari Chutjian

"He just need to go away"? HA! I think this is the best freaking Pope in modern history and I'm an atheist! 

Well, thank you Ari.  I have more respect for someone who will not put his faith in God than those who put their faith in Adam Smith.