Of course the Pope knows almost nothing about fossil fuels. All he knows is that he has signed on to the climate change hysteria of his Left Wing allies. That this has bupkis to do with Catholicism deters the Pope not at all.
PopeWatch: Predictable
- Donald R. McClarey
Donald R. McClarey
Cradle Catholic. Active in the pro-life movement since 1973. Father of three, one in Heaven, and happily married for 43 years. Small town lawyer and amateur historian. Former president of the board of directors of the local crisis pregnancy center for a decade.
Of course, should the West and the US divest of fossil fuels, which are essential not just for energy production but for the manufacture of over 70% of nearly all materials production, he won’t be around to be responsible for the carnage of a new Dark Age.
Hey, maybe if his wish comes true we would have no daily updates nor plane interviews to read. There is a plus side to going back to dark ages.
When studying art, one learns that the negative shapes actually illuminate the positive shapes–and so it is with faith. The more this pope goes secular and political, the more good Catholics pray, perhaps actually increasing the faith.
I’ve written about the PF’s errors in his encyclical and why the Church should not make judgments on scientific validity (which does not mean the Church should not make judgments on the use of science). See here:
https://catholicstand.com/galileo-redux-church-meddle-science/#comments
See also “Laudato Si–The Curate’s Egg, The Bad Parts.”
https://www.wmbriggs.com/post/16423/
Fossil fuels are used in so many things including the lubricant to keep the behemoth wind turbine bird killers going.
If they were to now stop w all fossil fuel it would all screech to a halt including metal ships which are protected by, you guessed it, paint brought to you by fossil fuels.
There is no wisdom in his pontifications against fossil fuels. Give him a stone and a chisel to write on. Make sure it is dragged in by ropes or horse and carriages.
Now, I’ve noticed that the polluters, offenders, are getting off easier by just pledging to plant a tree.
Ug.
It’s gross.
I can remember the day when paper bags, totally recyclable, were demonized and in walked the plastics which don’t break down in anyone’s lifetime.
This is the most utterly myopic thing he’s ever said. Getting rid of fossil fuels would condemn millions to poverty, starvation, deathly cold while destroying the environment.
The fact it has nothing to do with Catholicism before the modernist tsunami is precisely the attraction to this mean-spirited elderly clout-chaser.
The more he makes a clown out of himself, the less people are inclined to pay him any mind.
I wish it were as simple as dismissing this as clownery. But this gives an imprimatur to the insanity of New York ending fossil-fuel-generated electricity, the push to end internal combustion engine-powered vehicles, ramping up the elimination of gas stoves, etc.
He’s the oligarchy’s life coach, and they delight in his various brain emissions. Especially when he repeats them enough to turn them into teaching which creates a conundrum for Catholics who are expected to listen carefully to his moral teaching.
And make no mistake, he’s framing this in moral terms, as he did with Fratelli Tutti’s demand that Catholics work for the abolition of life sentences.
Sure, there’s a chance his successor could say “oops, anti-pope!” and erase this nonsense. But I save my magical thinking for RPGs.
More likely it will die in silence like most papal bad ideas. Who cites the Syllabus of Errors these days? No one is arguing against a heliocentric model of the solar system. The Papal prohibition on crossbows is a dead leter. Magna Carta is doing fine in spite of its papal condemnation.
Perhaps. But the overall takeaway might just be to make the papal magisterium as relevant to the pilgrimage of believing Catholics as it it is to Christians outside of the Roman fold.
If Denzinger is, at the end of the day, an exercise in post-hoc cherry-picking, to be added to or deleted as the circumstances and party in power require, then what’s the point?
But this gives an imprimatur to the insanity of New York ending fossil-fuel-generated electricity, the push to end internal combustion engine-powered vehicles, ramping up the elimination of gas stoves, etc.
Kathy Hochul hasn’t paid attention to the Church since 1976. Her problem, and that of New York generally, is that she’s vacuous. If you can locate one utterance of hers that isn’t derived from the Democratic Party’s kultursmog du jour, it’s an extraordinary day. IMO, the Democratic base doesn’t have the same kind of emotional investment in fantasies about fossil fuels that they do about their various mascot groups and their political antagonists, so its an area wherein the political class is more likely to yield to constraints to which they’re alerted by the businessmen who pay them protection money. (I suspect for the Democratic cognoscenti, green energy is an excuse to funnel money to business clients).
Most popes talk and write a lot as pope. Most of it is quite ephemeral. It has ever been thus. Modern popes, unlike their predecessors, have every utterance taken down and attempts made to make it part of the deposit of the Faith. I doubt long term they will be any more successful than their predecessors. Pope John Paul II talked and wrote about his theology of the body. That seems to be fading now.
JPII never declared his theology of the body doctrine: it was a way of understanding our nature as male and female he thought a useful means to teaching the more eternal doctrines of the Faith. The Syllabus was directed at clergy and theology students, not the average Catholic, and was likewise a temporary measure.
Dawson once observed that the effectiveness of the Irish missionaries to the Continent in the First Millennium was not just their learning and enthusiasm, but that they were farmers and countrymen, just like the pagans to whom they were preaching. Would Rome ever entertain the idea that any candidate for the priesthood practice a hand-trade (including military service) for at least six years before entering the seminary, so that working class Catholics at least would see a point of identity? So that when these guys became bishops they would not see issues like war and peace, the economy and the environment solely as pampered, semi-academic administrators, talking to each other and to other secular pampered semi-academic bureaucrats?
The fulcrum of the Democratic base are well-heeled suburban whites in the corporate and academic worlds. It’s not a coincidence that 9 of the 10 highest income congressional districts are represented by Democrats. Unions and blacks are taken for granted, and where their interests diverge from white technocrats, the former get the shaft. Until the various Democratic shibboleths (green policies, DEI, Alphabetism, pro-crime policies, etc.) start goring the technocrats’ oxen, policy beatings will continue until morale improves.
Unions and blacks are taken for granted, and where their interests diverge from white technocrats, the former get the shaft.
Yep. The funniest statement in politics is that the contemporary Democrat party stands for the little guy. Little Tech billionaire maybe.
I suggest we push PF to zero fossil fuels.
No polyester vestments. Only heavy, rug like ones.
No phones or electronic devices bc they used fossil fuels.
No plane trips.
Only communication can either be via stone w chisel (no plastic handles), onion paper w feather to write w. Ink has to be from crushed flowers or fruit in pumice bowl. If he has to use paper, it can only be from tops of trees and has to made by hand, no electricity nor plastics used.
His announcements can only be delivered to us via a total wooden ship – no satellites to deliver them.
Yes.
Let’s encourage him. A break from him would be a breath of fresh air.
Someone encourage him.
if the climate crisis folks wanted to be taken seriously, they would have already initiated a program, similar to JFK’s space program, to make fusion energy available commercially in ten years.
i don’t take the plutocrats pushing the elimination of fossil fuels seriously.
but, they do have a negative effect on society through their influence with the poorly educated elitists.
remember, most people are too buskeeping body and soul together to stay well informed about issues such as fossil fuels and transgenderism.
the plutocrats are running a scam designed, primarily in my opinion, to weaken america because a strong america is an obstacle to their objective, a plutocratic hegemony.