Pope Francis Sends Encyclical To Republicans In Congress (VIDEO)
To highlight the plea by Pope Francis, spiritual leader of the world’s 1.2 billion Roman Catholics, that all people of good will respond to the moral imperative of solving climate change, faith leaders today hand-delivered “Laudato Si’,” the Pope’s first complete encyclical to the faithful, to all Catholic members of the US Congress. The distribution of these 160-page books precedes the Pope’s planned address to Congress on September 24.
Along with delivering the official policy document, Franciscan Catholic activist Patrick Carolan and Presbyterian climate activist Mike Tidwell are also requesting lawmakers to support the Healthy Climate and Family Security Act. Introduced in the House of Representatives on February 24, 2015, by Maryland Congressman Chris Van Hollen and cosponsored by more than 25 of his colleagues, the bill would cap carbon pollution in the US and issue quarterly “carbon dividend” checks to recompense Americans victimized by anthropogenic climate change. H.R. 1027 is called a “cap and dividend” measure rather than “cap and trade” to emphasize its wider purpose of redress directly back to the poor and middle classes harmed by corporate pollution of the atmosphere.
But what will this education effort accomplish? In June, I noted “a startling and longtime disjunction between the root views of American Catholics and those of Republican Catholic politicians currently in office.”
By 63-71%, a succession of polls show that Catholic Republicans support policies to reduce global warming. Conservative Catholic Republicans are more likely to believe climate change is happening than their non-Catholic conservative brethren and sisters. However—
“Over 56% of Congressional Catholic Republicans deny or question the science of climate change…. Neither Republican-controlled chamber currently supports policies to reduce the impacts of climate change…. The trends shown [in Pew Research data] indicate that calling oneself an American Catholic means different things to different people. They also indicate that many Catholic Republican politicians are out of step with the majority of Republican Catholics–even the most conservative of Catholic constituents.”
Van Hollen and the other public servants who worked on the Healthy Climate and Family Security bill found the following:
- Carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas emissions are continuing to rise, with atmospheric CO2 levels exceeding 400 parts per million two years ago for the first time in human history.
- The warming of our planet has led to more frequent, dangerous and expensive extreme weather events, including heat waves, storms, fires, droughts, floods and tornadoes.
- More than 97% of climate scientists agree that our planet is warming, primarily because of the extraction and burning of fossil fuels.
- The atmosphere is a common resource that belongs equally to all.
- Stabilizing the climate can and must be done in a way that supports vibrant economic growth and a thriving middle class.
- Legislation to address climate change and accelerate the transition to a clean energy economy must be fair, transparent, and built to last.
They introduced the legislation as an amendment to the Internal Revenue Code of 1986. People exposed to the concept have begun to popularize it.
CleanTechnica discussed “Laudato Si’” in some detail back in June. The Pope’s encyclical asserts that climate change requires urgent ethical action from all world’s Catholics and other citizens as well—including American lawmakers (most of them Republicans) who have obstructed the view of voters and in some cases deliberately obscured (and are still doing so) public knowledge of climate facts.
At a midday virtual news conference, Franciscan Catholic activist Patrick Carolan and Presbyterian climate activist Mike Tidwell highlighted the Pope’s plea that all peoples of the planet—especially those who make and enforce the laws in all nations—must respond to the moral imperative of solving climate change. Read the draft legislation at this link. There are also online petitions launched by Archbishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa and Tara Expeditions’ Romain Troublé urging world collaboration.
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Francis seems like a very good man. It’s a shame he’s not a lot younger. He may not have time to adequately reform his institution.
US Presidents of both parties have taken to nominating quite young jurists to the Supreme Court, expecting this to protect their positions for a long time. But Popes still appoint old cardinals.
It would still probably take a decade or more to flush out the present crap.
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Pope Francis is an intelligent man and a real steward of the earth. Unfortunately he is only one man situated in a rowboat trying to change the course of the world’s largest aircraft carrier.
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One man, with a very big megaphone. “How many divisions has the Pope?’ asked Stalin. As it turned out, quite a few in Poland and Lithuania.
It’s not clear that he’s got a lot of people under him who agree with him.
Just look at the priest pedofile problem. Many of the priests were protected by their bishops. The organization has a lot of rot and a lot of wrong thinking which won’t be quickly eliminated.
To be fair, I don’t think bishops, priests were trying to protect or promote pedofiles, as much as trying to quietly resolve it, hoping it could be managed without anyone outside knowing it. This lead to disastrous results and was a horrible thing to do, but it would be wrong to think that was intentional.
Big part of the problem, for the longest time, was that due to hiding, keeping things quiet at all levels, church officials only slowly learnt magnitude of the issue.
I am not trying to defend catholic church, but I think that clever predators are very difficult to get rid of, and church proved to be quite optimal habitat for them. Unfortunately.
Otherwise commendable ideals of forgiveness can be abused and manipulated, along with less commendable ones (pride of the institution).
So does that matter? I do think so, because there is difference between bad people, and ignorant & misguided ones. Problem has taken and will take long time, but that may not be due to slow speed of “one burial at a time”.
That’s a fine line you walk.
When a bishop knows that a priest is accused of being a pedofile and then moves them to another area, even another country, without warning the people there to keep an eye on him I’d call that protecting.
Not calling the police, I’d call that protecting.
I find it hard to accept that church officials only slowly learned the extent of the problem. The rumors and reports of pedofile priests have been common for decades. A responsible official would make an attempt to see if the problem was real.
There is little reason to think that the proportion of paedophile Catholic priests is or was higher than in other denominations and religions. (It’s possible because of the celibacy rule, but SFIK unproven), The big difference was the cover-up. A paedophile rabbi or Protestant pastor or Muslim imam would be quickly outed by enraged parents, and summarily fired. The greater status of the priest in Catholicism, and the strict and protective hierarchy, kept the paedophiles in business for decades. Marcial Maciel, the Mexican founder of the reactionary Legion of Christ and a child abuser, was even being promoted for sainthood when Pope Benedict put a stop to it and ordered him into silence.
Why is Francis only sending it to the Catholics? The encyclical is addressed to all men and women of good will. Of course much of it (see the baffling section on St. Bonaventure’s Trinitarian doctrine of the Creation) will only make sense to Christians. Only a little (the few feeble sentences on abortion and on population, irrelevant to the main argument) will only appeal to Catholics.
First politicians say they aren’t scientists. Are they now going to say they aren’t Christians either? “Protecting God’s creations” should be part of being a good Christian.
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Pope Frank is making Catholic Republican’s heads spin.
Now the pope needs to step it up one more level. Call on all Catholic churchs to divest from fossil fuel, to call on all Catholics with investments to divest, and to call on Christian leaders and faith leaders in general to ask/direct their followers to do the same. Ask all those living in a country where you can vote, to make this an important issue when you vote.
I beer but we need to get a new way of thinking for sure, We need to get all these life Society, Out of the White House, Let a new way of thinking for this to work for the people of this world, For sure”; )