The Papacy Losing Credibility By the Day

Climate Change is the Big One

Thomas D. Williams
Breitbart News


Pope Francis tied a lack of water in different parts of the world to global warming Sunday, calling it one of the “inevitable consequences of climate change.”  In his message for World Water Day 2019, the pope called for education of future generations in a greater respect for the environment and a greater awareness of the suffering caused by climate change.

The pontiff also decried the spread of droughts and waterless areas and urged the international community to come to the assistance of those impacted by the phenomenon.  “It may be seen in our days how the aridity of the planet is extending to new regions, and more and more are suffering as a result of the lack of water sources suitable for consumption,” Francis lamented, while calling for “an end to this injustice” and reiterating his conviction that access to clean water is “a fundamental human right.”

The disadvantaged of the earth “challenge us to find a remedy for the lack of water in their countries,” he said, “they also challenge us, from their poverty and limits, to accord the just value to this good, essential for the development of all peoples.”

But . . . 

Let's All Get a Grip

Contumacious Madness

The Pope has been reported as saying some things which are, on the face of it, perverse.  Now, we are very conscious that statements or opinions quoted out of context can easily be distorted.  Maybe this is what has occurred here.  Maybe not.

In a public statement the Pope has presented an argument that runs something like this:

There are many accusations being made against ordained church authorities these days
The Devil is the accuser of Christians.
Therefore, the accusers of Church ordained officers are of the Devil.

On the face of it, this is bizarre.  Are we to conclude that when Paul accused Peter of grave sins which implicitly denied the Gospel of our Lord [Galatians 2: 11-21], he was doing the Devil's work?  Now, it's possible that what the Pope said got lost in translation, as they say.  But if so, the matter needs an expeditious clarification.

The Quick-Step to Irrelevance

Never Dance To Secularism's Hymnody

It behoves all public Christian leaders to stick to Christian knitting.  When Christian leaders begin to pontificate publicly over "global warming" or "climate change" or advocate for "global unity" they are edging towards the precipice.  They begin to sound like just one more empty headed politician seeking to bolster their public appeal and approval ratings.

Pope Francis is falling into this trap.  Consequently, he is undermining his office. 

The approval rating of Pope Francis declined all over Europe during the course of 2018, a new analysis observed Wednesday, in large part because of his ever-less popular pro-immigration stance and other globalist positions.

Among German Catholics, the pope’s popularity plummeted by a staggering 20 percentage points in one year, notes analyst Francesco Galietti, who runs the political risk consultancy Policy Sonar, and with Francis at its helm, the Catholic Church as a whole also suffered a drop of 9 percent in its approval rating among the same constituency. . . .

The pope’s marked political character has heightened the willingness of Catholics to disagree with their pastors, Galietti notes, since the pontiff’s approximation to United Nations positions on global warming and international immigration can easily be brushed aside as simple leftist slogans with little if anything to do with the gospel of Jesus Christ. [Breitbart News]

When Christian leaders forget that their authority does not reside in the institutions they lead they teeter on the cliff.

Scientists, Demagogues, and Lysenkoism, Part I

Not Well Suited to the Task

If we were scientists we would be hanging our heads in collective shame.  These days whenever an utterance commences with the words, "Scientists say . . . " it seems a collective groan arises from the bowels of the body politic.  Not again!  The fruit loops have been scattered from the packet again.

Now this is not to be construed as a verbal barrage against the empirical scientific method.  Not at all.  Empirical research and investigation has been a great boon to the race.  It's just that in our generation, science has all too frequently become the preserve of demagogues and charlatans.  For the most part these folk are exposed, contradicted, and refuted--by other scientists.  However, it is becoming more and more the case that politics and power overtake the issues and science and scientists become the hand maiden of the demagogues.  Think Al Gore.  Barack Obama.  And even, most recently, the Pope--who should know a great deal better.

We have three examples of how science has been degraded to the status of a useful tool for demagogues.  We will deal with the first example in this piece.  Two additional examples will follow respectively.

The first is the Pope's woeful ignorance of the alleged most dismal of sciences--economics.  The editors of the National Review, an excellent rag, representing some of the best Christian social analysis and thought emanating from mainly Roman Catholic convictions, have taken the Pope to task for promoting the faux cause of global warming.  His ideology has trumped reasoned common sense and led him to embrace pseudo-science.

Letter From the UK (About Pope Francis)

Pope Francis, the radical from Flores who will 'reshape' Catholic church

Former colleagues and parishioners say disciplined and divine Jesuit will reform power structure, strictly control finances, and check Vatican pomp

The Guardian

Jonathan Watts and Uki Goni in Buenos Aires
guardian.co.uk, Saturday 16 March 2013

The ascension of Pope Francis is likely to usher in the most radical change in the Catholic church in more than 50 years, claim those who know the Argentinian Jesuit from the barrio of Buenos Aires where he was born and cut his political teeth.  Zero tolerance of sexual abuse, stricter control of church finances, a shift away from Eurocentrism, more emphasis on poverty, and a ruthless purge of high-ranking opponents in the Vatican can be expected in the years ahead, according to priests and laymen who have spent decades watching the career of the first Latin American pope.

Douglas Wilson's Letter From America

Sex and Smithereens 

Culture and Politics - Sex and Culture
Written by Douglas Wilson
Monday, 04 March 2013

The men who drafted the Westminster Confession believed, as do I, that a lifetime of celibacy for a man not specially gifted by God for that calling is an impossibility. They said:

"No man may vow to do any thing forbidden in the Word of God, or what would hinder any duty therein commanded, or which is not in his own power, and for the performance whereof he has no promise of ability from God. In which respects, popish monastical vows of perpetual single life, professed poverty, and regular obedience, are so far from being degrees of higher perfection, that they are superstitious and sinful snares, in which no Christian may entangle himself" (WCF 22.7).

In short, a man may not lawfully vow to do something forbidden by the law of God.