isn’t he??
In today’s world, politics infects everything – commerce, education, entertainment, news coverage and sadly, even religion. Both ends of the political spectrum have long sought to identify themselves with the imprimatur of religious authority, seeking validation for secular policies on religious grounds.
Each side has gone about this in different ways, with conservatives filling the pews and liberals filling the seminaries. The result has been a steady diminution of membership among mainstream Christian denominations as the leadership of these churches veer left while their members remain fixed in the foundational beliefs of the denomination.
Perhaps nowhere is this phenomena more evident than in the Catholic Church, although Protestant denominations in recent years have certainly done their best to catch up in this race to perdition.
Marxism bears a stylistic resemblance to the collective love found in a Church body and millions have been seduced by the concepts of “social justice” and other similarly crafted Marxist initiatives.
It can be quite easy for the layperson, insufficiently grounded in sound doctrine, to see the surface similarities between the legitimate expressions of Christian doctrine found in “love thy neighbor” and the entirely illegitimate Marxist doctrine of “force everyone to love as we see fit.”
It is no gain to the soul to vote for politicians who pledge to take from others to give to the poor. Christianity is not a wealth redistribution scheme to be handed to the government to implement; yet due to the steady leftward tilt of our Seminaries, this pernicious misunderstanding of Christ’s declaration has indeed found a home within our Churches, elbowing out the honest understanding of individual sacrifice for one’s fellow man.
Now, the cause celebre of our time, “climate change,” has found a willing partner in no one less than the Pope himself, who has accepted the demonstrably false premise of anthropological climate change as “gospel.”
To be clear, no one doubts that climate changes, indeed it would be a true catastrophe if it did not. The question is one of cause. To the sceptics, it is a part of a natural cycle that has been ongoing as long as there has been an earth. To the climate change proponent, it is caused by the activities of man. Sadly, Pope Francis has become enamored of the latter.
The Pope is issuing an “Encyclical,” which is a fancy name for a letter to the Bishops of the Church, outlining his suggestions for how the Church should respond to the question of international climate policy. This isn’t a binding document of theology, or an interpretation of Christian doctrine – it is merely a letter outlining the thoughts of the Pope on a given subject.
Contrary to the screeching of left-wing enviro-nazis (who under any other circumstances would mock the Pope or anyone who believes in the “bearded old man in the sky!) the Pope is not infallible.
In Catholic doctrine, the Pope is NOT considered to be infallible, except when speaking “ex cathedra” on matters of faith and morals.
This is not due to any particular ability endemic to Popes, but rather is a gift from God, who ensures that in these rare and specific instances, we can rely on Him speaking through the “Vicar of Christ.”
In other words, with the rare exceptions mentioned above, the Pope can be just as wrong-headed as any of us, because God doesn’t feel a particular compulsion to intervene in matters of left-wing hoaxery. If we’re dumb enough to believe it, we are on our own.
As the debate about climate change rages, remember that the people who will be citing the Pope’s encyclical most loudly are for the most part the same people who advocate for abortion, same-sex marriage and a religious zeal for separating all references to God from public life.
I’m Catholic, and I’ll be just fine.