For a worldly attention-seeker, it would be very bad news, but as a follower of Jesus he’s not impressed with this sort of thing.
WASHINGTON, D.C. — Pope Francis’ favorability rating in the U.S. has returned to where it was when he was elected pope. It is now at 59%, down from 76% in early 2014. The pontiff’s rating is similar to the 58% he received from Americans in April 2013, soon after he was elected pope.
The coronation bounce is it at this point.
The archbishop and the EPA administrator co-author Sun-Times op-ed.
The Most Reverend Blaise Cupich and the head woman of the nation’s whole damn Evironmental Protection Agency, also known as its Employment Prevention Agency, take us from clean air asthma-protection (who can object to it?) to this:
The fight against climate change isn’t a sprint — it’s a marathon. But with continued leadership and committed action from the archdiocese, from Chicago, and from congregations and communities across America, we can turn the challenge of climate change into an opportunity to build a cleaner, healthier, more prosperous future.
A month ago, Pope Francis asked, “What kind of world do we want to leave to those who come after us, to children who are now growing up?”
We all know the answer, and that’s why we’re working together — faith leaders, public officials and private citizens — to make it a reality. [Italics added]
To make what a reality? Give me antecedents to match those pronouns.
And turning challenge of such and such into an opportunity? To build a cleaner, healthier, etc.? How about cleaning up the air for asthmatic children and letting it go at that?
This is such a play for national visibility as to unleash a flood of disbelief. What about flood-prevention while we’re at it?
The crafty Mundelein loved FDR and boosted the New Deal, however. There’s precedent for this, sad to say.
via Opinion: We have a moral obligation on climate change | Chicago.
Mises Daily | Mises Institute.
Pope Francis’s Relentless Pessimism Fuels His Faith in Politics
Pope Francis’s new encyclical “On Care for Our Common Home” has been released to much acclaim from the mainstream media. One Germannews sourcedeclares “Papal encyclical could break climate change deadlock.” “Pope Francis’ views on climate change present a moral challenge to many 2016 GOP contenders,”declares US News and World Report. Not in many decades has a papal document been so easily used as a tool for political and electoral ax-grinding.
When the truth hurts — badly.
. . . if he’s canonized, won’t be their patron saint either, to go by his coming letter to the world, where:
He writes that there is an “urgent and compelling” need for policies that reduce carbon emissions, among other ways, by “replacing fossil fuels and developing sources of renewable energy.”
You know, like the pope of Holy Communion, of peace, that sort of thing.
Well look, even pontiffs have to lie in the beds they make.
We have the once-KGB top dog, now same for the once-USSR, really liking this pope who kept the relatively decent world out of Syria with one of his political forays, as explained in this fairly fatuous piece by once-NC Reporter man John Allen.
When will they ever change, when will they change?
And consider if you will the accompanying photo:
What gives with our pontiff, the way he LOVES those left-wing dictatorial types? What’s he thinking of?
Pope Francis has those old global-warming blues.
Some Catholics are criticizing Pope Francis for his stated positions on environmental issues. On April 28, a Vatican conference on environment and migration commenced that brought scores of business people, activists, and Catholic officials to the ancient city.Among them is Jeffrey Sachs – a wealthy and influential economist who has sometimes been accused of leftist leanings.Also on hand is UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon, who had a private meeting with the pontiff.The conference and Pope Francis’s previous statements on the environment inspired the ire, for instance, of writer Maureen Mullarkey.Writing online in the journal ‘First Things,’ Mullarkey said “Francis sullies his office by using demagogic formulations to bully the populace into reflexive climate action with no more substantive guide than theologised propaganda.”
Addressing Vatican diplomats, he said: (http://www.cruxnow.com/church/2015/01/12/pope-francis-warns-anew-of-a-piecemeal-world-war/?s_campaign=crux:email:ja)
Peace, Francis said, is the indispensable condition for making progress on other fronts, such as economic development, care of immigrants, and the environment.
Second only to freedom. When was the last time a Pope pushed freedom as a sine qua non?
Well, he did talk about it, saying this:
“Before all else be free persons!” said the Pope. “Freedom means knowing how to reflect on what we do, knowing how to evaluate . which are the behaviors that make us grow. It means always choosing the good…. Being free to always choose the good is challenging, but it will make you persons with a backbone, who know how to face life, [and live as] courageous and patient persons.”
But I mean political freedom, Popes and Catholic writers and preachers have talked a lot about personal freedom, as from the chains of Satan and the like.
Thing is, he’s gotten very political. So political freedom? I’m listening.
The media like, even love, him. Is that a good thing?
Among Pope Francis’ challenges for the new year is changing the media’s perception of him. Currently this perception is undoubtedly positive, as is proven by the many polls conducted by several media outlets that rank him among the most beloved and influential people in the world.
But it is also a perception that carries with it somewhat stereotyped images of Church and pope, as if the Church were an NGO or a corporation with the pope serving as a CEO or as a marketing expert hired to revitalize the Church’s disgraced image.
Yes, yes, the devil can quote Scripture to his purpose, but is there a problem making friends with the mammon of iniquity? We can’t love it and God, that much we know. And Popes can be tempted, like the rest of us.
Lest anybody forgot, on announcing his first scarlet batch a year ago this week, the Pope issued a public letter to the cardinals-designate warning them that they were to accept the red hat as “neither an honour nor a decoration,” but “simply a service that requires you to broaden your gaze and open your hearts.” The incoming class was likewise urged to greet their elevations in a manner “far from any expression of worldliness or from any form of celebration contrary to the evangelical spirit of austerity, sobriety and poverty.”“The cardinalate,” Francis said, “does not imply promotion.”
But yr Holiness, but-but-but . . . It’s never been that way!
(I love what he does in ecclesiastical matters, where he knows what he’s talking about.)
Goes around the covering-up archbishop, priests arrested.
An activist pope, to be sure.
FYI: Almodóvar’s “Bad Education” treats clergy abuse in grim detail.
Blithe Spirit 