The Return of Catholic Anti-Modernism

Commentators are sure to make the false claim that Pope Francis has aligned the Church with modern science. They’ll say this because he endorses climate change. But that’s a superficial reading of Laudato Si.

In this encyclical, Francis expresses strikingly anti-scientific, anti-technological, and anti-progressive sentiments. In fact, this is perhaps the most anti-modern encyclical since the Syllabus of Errors, Pius IX’s haughty 1864 dismissal of the conceits of the modern era.

This is getting where the progressives live, believe me.

For the rest, go here.

More from the remarkable Steven Malanga in an excellent short takedown of Pope F as in his gloom-filled encyclical.

The pope’s assuming of the apocalyptic tone of the environmentalist is, in the end, ironic. It is the Church’s gospel that offers us the true Apocalypse, which is a hopeful revelation of God’s coming and cause for joy among the good. Laudato Si, by contrast, is perhaps the least hopeful, most joyless document to come out of the Vatican in my lifetime.

Steven Malanga is the senior editor of City Journal and the author of Shakedown: The Continuing Conspiracy Against the American Taxpayer.

via Brother Glum, Mother Earth by Steven Malanga, City Journal June 19, 2015.

In his Brother Glum, Mother Earth in City Journal of June 19, Steven Malanga makes note of Pope Francis’s background:

Early on, Francis said that his papacy would be shaped by his experiences serving the poor of Argentina—a place where, as economic historian Pierpaolo Barbieri wrote in the Wall Street Journal, “Government takeovers [of private businesses] and crony capitalism are the enemy of genuine development.”

More than any recent pope, his vision has been shaped by this distorted view of how modern trade and commerce work. One result is that Laudato Si devolves into a long rant against consumerism that ignores the many benefits produced by human innovation through free markets.

Something to keep in mind whenever he addresses the ills of the world.

via Pope Francis is from Argentina, something to keep in mind.

Mid-July at the Library, continued:

Rep. Lilly had said she was confident in passage of same-sex-marriage legislation, which she said was “in [her] heart.”

A man identifying himself as a Certified Public Accountant followed the softball question about same-sex marriage with a hard ball question, addressing the senator: “If you do anything in Springfield in our very corrupt state, do something about corruption.” He specified “gerrymandering,” complained, “The way it’s set up, candidates know they will win,” continuing at length in this vein.

“Each of us is vulnerable in a primary,” replied the senator. If an opponent surfaced, he might have said. Lilly, appointed in 2010, had run unopposed in primary and general in 2012 and would do so again in 2014. The senator had run unopposed in the general election every year but one — he said nothing about this — since he was elected in 2002. He was…