Fishwrap’s Crazy Talk: “Climate change is church’s No. 1 pro-life issue”

I did a double-take when I saw at Fishwrap (aka National Schismatic Reporter) the title of their most recent editorial. I am not making this up:

Climate change is church’s No. 1 pro-life issue

Is there a face-palm icon?

[…]

If there is a certain wisdom in the pro-life assertion that other rights become meaningless if the right to life is not upheld, then it is reasonable to assert that the right to life has little meaning if the earth is destroyed to the point where life becomes unsustainable.

Cardinal Oscar Andres Rodríguez Maradiaga described the problem during a talk opening the Vatican conference. He described nature as neither separate from nor against humanity, but rather existing with humans. “No sin is more heartless than our blindness to the value of all that surrounds us and our persistence in using it at the wrong time and abusing it at all times.”

[…]

Okay, let us stipulate that there is climate change.   That having been stipulated, it is unimaginably far more likely that a big asteroid out there will do us in before we can do anything about climate change on our own.   A coronal mass ejection will take us out before acid rain does.

Let us not be taken in by the n to the nth power attempt by the catholic Left to distract us from abortion by rattling the shiny object of care for Earth.

They never lose an opportunity to diminish the primal significance of defending life from conception.

(NB: We have to acknowledge that a few of the writers at Fishwrap are solidly pro-life and give no quarter on abortion.  Phyllis Zagano, for example, for all her goofy notions about ordination of women, has been, so far as I can tell, a defender of the unborn.  She may not like men, but she defends our right to be born. I give her props for that.)

They want us to divert our resources, attention, and prayers to care of the planet as if that were of greater urgency than defense of the unborn, from conception.

BTW… we can do both.  We can both care for the planet and defend the unborn.

But let us circle back to something upon which the editors of the Fishwrap hang their claim.

No sin is more heartless“… than not caring for the environment in the way that they think it must be cared for?  Thus, NSR to say that “Climate change is church’s No. 1 pro-life issue”.

No sin is more heartless than not fighting climate change?  Really?

Without even engaging my brain, I can think of a few sins that are more heartless.  We could, first of all, consult the classic list of “sins that cry to heaven“.  Hint: ignoring climate change isn’t among them.

Heartless?  How about the slaughter of 6 million Jews?  Serial rape?  Exploitation of the poor?  Human trafficking.  Child labor?

How about sexual abuse of minors by priests?

We could list many others, and they are of far greater urgency than hand-wringing and truisms about climate change, over which we exercise infinitesimally small influence.

The Fishwrap editorial reminds me of the logic of those maniacs who see humanity as a parasite on Gaia, and who would stand by as vast numbers went back into the earth so that Earth and the innocent animals could once again flourish without the repression of blind, heartless humanity.  Fewer births!  More TLC for Mother Earth! The population bomb is ticking!

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105 Comments

  1. acardnal says:

    “Zagano Watch!”

    It’s everything BUT anti – abortion with Fishwrap and LCWR types.

  2. LarryW2LJ says:

    The planet has been around for millions of years. Scientific evidence points to the fact that the earth has warmed, cooled, warmed and cooled again many, many times. In fact, there have been times that earth has warmed when the use of fossil fuels was non-existent. To me, this points to the fact that the sun, moon earth and stars are on naturally occurring, inter-dependant cycles – set up by The Creator. Climate change is part of these cycles.

    As an Amateur Radio operator, I am well aware of the phenomena of the 11 year (more or less) sunspot cycle. We are LEARNING more and more each day and each year how the sun affects our planet and our weather. There is so much we don’t know, that to assume we have the answers to these problems is the height of human folly.

    That said, of course we are called to be good stewards and not damage or waste the gifts that God has given us. But to be presumptuous to the point that we think we can control these cycles is once again, to me, the sin of human pride.

  3. Supertradmum says:

    Of course, the hatred of humans is based on Malthus, the sad cleric who decried human population growth as an evil. He influenced Darwin, surprise, surprise. His ideals created the anti-human baby, pro-abortion stand that there are too many poor people, a la Margaret Sanger et al. That Fishwrap falls into this category of thinking shows the degradation of both reason and faith in that rag.

    The entire lie about climate change is an excuse to push contraception and abortion. BTW, if every Catholic family had large families according to God’s plan, those who abort and contracept would die out and their false, heretical ideas would die with them.

    As to climate change, the nuns in my grade school, (Holy Cross from Notre Dame and smart as whips), taught us we were going into a cooling trend and eventual ice age. I remember the classes with diagrams of the Wisconsonian Glacial Age, etc.

    Sad that this newspaper keeps polluting the minds of those who read it.

  4. LeeF says:

    I have often wondered what would happen if faithful Catholic bloggers and we commentators made a pact not to discuss Fishwrap or visit their site. The kooks on either side of the spectrum need and crave the attention they garner in the MSM when we engage them in various controversies. Ignoring them (and thus not helping drive click ad revenue their way) would be the cruelest wound we could inflict.

    And when a faithful Catholic is asked about their positions by a reporter, he or she should just smile as one would at the antics of an errant child, and just move on. Wholesale dissent on the retail level in parishes is not to my belief the result of the leadership of the Fishwrap type folks, but rather the result of poor catechetics.

  5. wmeyer says:

    Being old, I went to school when they still taught in science class that the earth had gone through heating and cooling cycles. There is a climate site which follows the current data, and has reported that it continues to fall on the continuing cyclic graph. And in passing, I shall note that the total range of deviation on that multi-millenia graph spans just one degree Celsius. Centigrade for us old folks.

    I also remember well the Chicken Little (sorry Chicken) cries about the soon-to-be-upon-us (then) ice age. That was in the mid-seventies, and yet, just a couple of decades later, those same folks were screaming about global warming. Really, I can’t keep up. And now, here it is May, in the deep South, and we’re still getting pretty cold, some nights.

    My favorite recent article was a commentary by Mark Steyn in which he made mincemeat of the people who (in support of global climate change) reach the conclusion that if the “normal” changes from 15C to 20 C that’s… wait for it… a 33% temperature change!

    Science is dead, killed in the government schools. Along with math, rhetoric, and reason.

  6. OrthodoxChick says:

    Father says, “No sin is more heartless than not fighting climate change? Really?

    Without even engaging my brain, I can think of a few sins that are more heartless. We could, first of all, consult the classic list of “sins that cry to heaven“. Hint: ignoring climate change isn’t among them.”

    Indeed. Ignoring climate change isn’t counted among the sins listed in Galatians 5: 19-21 either. One sin that is listed there? Dissension.

  7. Iacobus M says:

    One thing that really is killing people right now (that is, in addition to the mass slaughter of unborn humans): using up farmland to grow grain to produce pointless ethanol as a gasoline additive, all to fight global warm . . . er, climate change. Reducing the food crop drives up prices, creating shortages and less food for those at the very bottom of the economic ladder, mostly in places like Africa and Latin America (http://www.openmarket.org/2013/01/08/guatemalan-children-starve-due-to-ethanol-mandates/). That’s nothing compared to the deprivation that the full anti-warming regime would create. How can they believe their own nonsense?

  8. Liberals love causes that allow them to feel like they’re making a difference in the world, even while they ignore the suffering of particular human beings.

  9. wmeyer says:

    Let’s consider that the climate change folks could be right. It’s a huge stretch, given that we are asked to believe they know what the climate will do over the next century, and yet, we still cannot get a reliable 5 day prediction of weather. But still….

    So we accept that they may be right about what will happen. Then the problem becomes, how can we correct the problem? Likely, if we had certainty a) that we had created it, and more, how we had created it, then we could determine how to reverse the process. Example: The Thames river was all but dead fifty years ago. It was well known that the English had killed it by treating it as a massive disposal system. So they stopped doing that. The natural systems of God’s creation did the rest.

    But even if we are certain of global climate change, it is clear that we have massive disagreements over magnitude and polarity, and that makes repair an iffy proposition.

    On the other hand, we have killed almost 57 million babies since Roe v. Wade. Mass murder. An obvious and unarguable wrong. And we know how to fix that.

    Deflection is not enumerated in a list of sins, either, but I think clearly it is one in this case.

  10. Gerard Plourde says:

    While it’s certainly true that targeting climate change per se as the church’s No. 1 pro-life issue is hyperbole, some of the practices that contribute to climate change are among those that the church has consistently warned against. When God gave us dominion over the world he expected us to be wise stewards of his handiwork. Are we living up to that standard? Or do we fall short and make excuses? For example, the abundance that our society provides can tempt us to engage in the throwaway culture, most insidiously by subconscious practice. Do we buy things that we do not need only to discard them when we get bored of them? Do we waste energy or other resources by leaving lights burning or consume resources by using and not recycling paper, metal and plastics? Do we waste natural resources by practicing agricultural methods that abuse the soil and rob it of nutrients without replenishment? Do we insist on planting non-native plants unsuitable to the area where we live (for example growing lush lawns in areas that are natural deserts, thereby wasting water that could be used more wisely)? Little choices can make big changes. St. Therese of Lisieux gives us example. “I prefer the monotony of obscure sacrifices to all ecstasies. To pick up a pin for love can convert a soul.” and “Miss no single opportunity of making some small sacrifice, here by a smiling look, there by a kindly word; always doing the smallest right and doing it all for love.”

  11. italyportugal says:

    The really funny thing about the constant liberal agitation about the “population bomb” is its basis in a report which concluded that there are too few people inhabiting the planet (if my source, a former NASA employee, is correct…might be worth looking into).

  12. Magash says:

    To me the most telling thing about the AGW AKA Climate Change AKA Climate Disruption agenda is the names of the people associated with it. Yes they are the same as those associated with the Coming Ice Age movement of the 1970’s. Before that they were associated with globalism, socialism and progressivism. In all cases their agendas have several things in common.
    First: They know better than the unwashed masses. Note the continual use of argument from authority, whether they be “scientists”, “experts” or whatever. And the results are always both “uncontested” and un-backedup by facts.
    Second: The rules they wish to impose on the rest of us don’t apply to them. Hence the “Carbon Exchanges” and they push to make things they deem we shouldn’t have access to too expensive for everyone but the richest, like (Al Gore.)
    Third: Central control, for our own good, of course. Be it some Federal Government agency (EPA, BLM, etc), International law or some U.N. agency, a group of unelected bureaucrats make the decisions for everyone else.

  13. excalibur says:

    RSS data shows no warming the past 17 years. There was a blip up, nothing unusual. But it has been used, abused, lied about to give all power to the supreme soviet. Or Washington, D.C. & the U.N.

  14. tcreek says:

    Would it be a bad thing if the states of California and New York ended up under water? The only problem I can see is that we would have to take 2 stars off of the flag.

  15. george says:

    tcreek:

    We can split Michigan’s Upper Peninsula from the Lower to make up for one of them and then maybe keep Northern California. That makes up for the two stars…

  16. Robbie says:

    Why oh why are high ranking officials in the Catholic Church discussing such topics? Wouldn’t it be better if they spent their time figuring out why the pews are empty, why the seminaries are empty, and why the convents are empty? Something tells me climate change and income inequality aren’t what ails the Church today. Since the Church is a religion and not a humanitarian organization with a spiritual bent (at least not yet), it might be wise for them if they concentrated on the religion. That’s just my silly view though!

  17. Josemaria says:

    “No sin is more heartless than our blindness to the value of all that surrounds us and our persistence in using it at the wrong time and abusing it at all times.”

    Not sure about you all, but the preborn surround me, and further, they are indeed of inestimable value. The NCR Editorial Staff need to read Cardinal Maradiaga’s quote through the eyes of the Church.

  18. benedetta says:

    The number one priority for prolife is prolife. And, if we can sacrifice for future generations not yet conceived, then we can sacrifice for those conceived already. Yes we can.

  19. msc says:

    I agree with you, Father. One thing I like to ask climate-change obsessives is what temperature the earth should be. Should New York state be under glaciers or should it be a steamy, tropical swamp? But we also can’t let our annoyance at the climate-change doom mongers deter us from proper custodianship of God’s creation. Every time we make an a species extinct, we destroy something God saw fit to make.

    To quote JPII: “In 1979, I proclaimed Saint Francis of Assisi as the heavenly Patron of those who promote ecology (cf. Apostolic Letter Inter Sanctos: AAS 71 [1979], 1509f.). He offers Christians an example of genuine and deep respect for the integrity of creation. As a friend of the poor who was loved by God’s creatures, Saint Francis invited all of creation—animals, plants, natural forces, even Brother Sun and Sister Moon—to give honour and praise to the Lord. The poor man of Assisi gives us striking witness that when we are at peace with God we are better able to devote ourselves to building up that peace with all creation which is inseparable from peace among all peoples.
    “It is my hope that the inspiration of Saint Francis will help us to keep ever alive a sense of ‘fraternity’ with all those good and beautiful things which Almighty God has created. And may he remind us of our serious obligation to respect and watch over them with care, in light of that greater and higher fraternity that exists within the human family.” (message on the World Day of Peace. January 1, 1990, paragraph 16).

  20. SKAY says:

    wmeyer said-

    “Deflection is not enumerated in a list of sins, either, but I think clearly it is one in this case.”
    Exact;y.

    NCR apparently got their talking point orders from the White House just like the rest of the MSM.
    Truth has nothing to do with it. This is about money and power.
    To say that climate change is the Church’s number one pro life issue is just laughable no matter how they spin it.

  21. mattjd215 says:

    (???)

  22. introibo says:

    Just sent in a letter to the editor of our diocesan newspaper last night, as they had in some silly column along the same lines.

  23. benedetta says:

    This sounds like damage control by the schismatic reporter for the Sr. Jeanine situation.

  24. mburn16 says:

    Climate change alarmism / environmentalism looks an awful lot like neo-pagan earthworship that was stuck in the freezer for 1700 years and then warmed over. No longer do we worship God as creator of man and nature, and see ourselves as an integral and equal part of creation….we’re too busy cutting ourselves to appease the River God.

  25. JustaSinner says:

    So mere mortals have the power to destroy God’s creation, Earth? Sounds like the ants have raised themselves to Diety!

  26. JustaSinner says:

    Also, isn’t pro-life the Church’s #1 pro-life issue? Just sayin’….

  27. benedetta says:

    For about a decade now, those who refuse to ask the exalted party with which they have clout to advocate for preborn humans and eschew torture and coercion towards pregnant mothers, have hid behind the notion that to do all else except permitting preborn life to be born is “prolife enough” such that they need not attend to the positions taken by the Pelosi, the Biden, and the Cuomos. Yet at the same time the party of death under the clutches of the abortion lobby and billionaires who can’t deal with more children pushes constantly for torture and pain causing death in the womb by non physicians at taxpayer expense, during the third trimester, increasing risk to mothers on top of the psychological scars all mothers who sacrifice their children in the womb suffer. This party of death even will countenance infanticide and has no issue letting an infant born alive through botched abortion die an excruciating and lonely death.

    The other calumny is that prolifers are not on the front lines in terms of advocating for protection of the environment and assuring that women in crisis and their babies are cared for. Why the investment in such a crude and divisive portrayal by the Shismatic Fishwrap and its allies? With all their clout in the Democratic Party, it appears to be a smokescreen to deflect from their own obstinacy.

  28. Uxixu says:

    Especially ironic how much these environmental nutjobs hurt the economy which directly impacts the ability of the faithful in being contributing both to Holy Mother Church and other charities directly.

    No one is for dumping waste directly into rivers but the proposals are economic insanity and ignore the the biggest polluters like China and India who won’t obey anyway.

  29. acardnal says:

    Perhaps Cardinal Maradiaga should pay closer attention to what Pope Francis has said about abortion ….especially since Maradiaga is on the Pope’s council of cardinals:

    http://www.lifenews.com/2014/04/11/pope-francis-abortion-is-an-unspeakable-crime-right-to-life-is-central-human-right/

    Pope Francis said human life was inviolable and abortion was an “unspeakable crime” and an “abominable crime.”

    He said every civil right is based on the “first and most fundamental right,” the right to life which is not subordinate to any other.

    “It must be therefore reiterated the strongest opposition to any direct attack on life, especially innocent and defenseless life, and the unborn child in the womb is the most concrete example of innocence,” he said at the time.

    “Let us remember the words of the Second Vatican Council: From the moment of its conception, life must be guarded with the greatest care while abortion and infanticide are unspeakable crimes.”

  30. SimonDodd says:

    Acardnal, Francis also said, just today, that we must “safeguard creation … [b]ecause if we destroy Creation, Creation will destroy us!” It is being spun in the predictable way in the predictable places, as sympatico with this editorial. It’s almost as if NCR was tipped off in advance and “pre-spun” it!

  31. Polycarpio says:

    Card. Rodriguez’s statement (“No sin is more heartless than our blindness to the value of all that surrounds us ”) was a flourish at the end of a crescendo about the tendency to impose science and technology in ways that flush out God and cause great suffering to fellow creatures (not the least of which is Man). Technology, he said, is “transformed into an ever more irrational and dehumanizing myth, as it subjects everything to unconditional objectification.” The ‘heartlessness’ of this ‘sin’ is in its effects: hemispheric imbalance, extreme poverty, forced migrations, health pandemics and disorders, including the resurgence of diseases once thought abated, etc. The Cardinal’s statement also makes sense in light of Pope Francis words at his General Audience today: “when we exploit Creation we destroy the sign of God’s love for us, in destroying Creation we are saying to God: ‘I don’t like it!. This is not good!’” (in contrast to God’s own declaration, at the end of each day of the Creation, that Creation was “good”).

  32. Athelstan says:

    If one wanted further proof that the NCR milieu of Catholic progressivism has degenerated into a kind of pantheism – or at least panentheism – you have it here in spades. When you read an assertion like this:

    If there is a certain wisdom in the pro-life assertion that other rights become meaningless if the right to life is not upheld, then it is reasonable to assert that the right to life has little meaning if the earth is destroyed to the point where life becomes unsustainable.

    The first thought is: Yes, that’s true on its face, obviously. If Earth is uninhabitable, it tends to rend all other questions moot – unless we’re all reduced to living like Morlocks underground. But the problem is that we’re nowhere near such an eventuality. This is so farcical that it’s beyond histrionic panick-mongering.

    The second thought, however, is that this really is a new creed at work. Original Sin is now mutated into our treatment of the natural environment. Sin still exists for these people, but it’s now in quite different categories, categories that now actually *demand* acts in the sexual and life morality area traditionally denounced as sinful. In short, it’s now quite desirable to abort, contracept, and euthanize as much human life as reasonably possible to reduce the impact on the natural environment – the object now being worshiped.

  33. Athelstan says:

    Would it be a bad thing if the states of California and New York ended up under water?

    Well, for one thing, their residents would end up moving into states like yours.

  34. greg3064 says:

    If there is a certain wisdom in the pro-life assertion that other rights become meaningless if the right to life is not upheld…

    As though it were a gracious concession to admit that to possess any rights, one must be alive… and a concession that would be altogether tenuous if not for the issue of climate change.

  35. acardnal says:

    More spiritual reading and less newspaper reading would be my recommendation for many clerics.
    I fear some are nothing more than demagogues.

  36. Priam1184 says:

    What exactly does the mean global temperature have to do with the salvation of souls?

  37. incredulous says:

    Leftist lunatics have a mental disorder. If anything, the past 12 years of data have totally debunked any claim to anthropogenic global warming. Yet, these power crazy dunderheads are immune to fact. God help us all.

  38. LeeF says:

    @Priam1184 who said:
    “What exactly does the mean global temperature have to do with the salvation of souls?”

    Haven’t you ever heard of the dangers of lukewarmness to one’s spiritual life? :)

  39. The Cobbler says:

    Gerard Plourde,

    All very true, but not merely because such wasteful activities impact our planet’s climate, let alone because some folks can conceive of impacting our climate so badly as to wipe out our own race.

    mburn16,

    If this is reheated paganism, the microwave of evil needs to be serviced. Somewhere I read that the gods were supposed to turn people into trees, not sit around listening to people cry about trees.

    And to no one in particular,

    How to Destroy the Earth

  40. ConstantlyConverting says:

    Human caused climate change, understood through the fall and subsequent subjection to decay, would certainly be much less of an issue if we stopped the slaughter of millions of innocent children, endless unnecessary wars engineered by the religion of state worship and promoted orthodox understanding of vocations. Mandating fuel efficiency and forcing people to recycle, at the barrel of a gun probably only speeds along the inevitability of the end of time as we know it.

  41. mrshopey says:

    So, when we have discovered mass graves in the desert, and find out the people there made jewelry for the women out of hippo bone, indicating that at one time it wasn’t a desert but a very fertile and wet place, that climate change was do to _________ what? Not industrialization. They didn’t tax people to keep them from causing carbon (which we are chiefly made of) to keep the planet from dying. They were respecting the land and living off of it. So, what did they know that these people didn’t? That they weren’t in control of everything?

  42. Cantor says:

    Pure self preservation.

    No cold? No cold water.
    No cold water? No coldwater fish.
    No coldwater fish? Who needs Fishwrap?!

  43. Sonshine135 says:

    I would think that along with abortion, human trafficking would be much higher on the list. The same could be said for euthanasia. Besides, if Global Cool…eh…Global Warmi…….eh….Climate Change is killing people, it is probably impacting babies and the elderly first and foremost. I thought Fishwrap supported Nuns and such who liked abortion and euthanasia. Why such a problem with Climate Change? They should be ecstatic.

  44. Johnno says:

    LarryW2LJ –

    “The planet has been around for millions of years.”

    No it hasn’t. It’s another one of those preposterous evolutionary fables without evidence. Changes in nature, on the contrary have been observed to happen very quickly. So it’s no surprise when scientists, conditioned throughout their education on the idea of long gradual changes then suddenly draw the wrong conclusions when faced with things that appear to occur quite rapidly; and then imagine that human activity is the most likely cause, being the only hypothetical factor that’s different from their imaginary past.

    But everything else you say is true. The primary cause of the shifting climate is a result of the relationship between the Earth and the Revolving Sun and the the electric fields and plasma discharges.

    Here’s a video worth sharing:
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TPRdb5x3yi8

  45. frjim4321 says:

    Of course climate change through human agency is a huge moral issue but it’s always a mistake to say that one moral issue is greater than another. They are all interrelated. It’s similar to the problem with anti-abortion people who are pro the death penalty. If life is sacred, it’s sacred.

  46. All these catholics like John Kerry, who called those who doubted global warming as “members of the flat earth society” are becoming the thing these liberals once decried: they have now become the new Inquisition. The Inquisition of Climate Change uses tactics of belittling, intimidating, deriding, and fear mongering to push their opinions down our throats, expecting us all to “convert or kill the planet!”

  47. frjim4321, that makes no sense. The way you put it, there would never be any such thing as a just war. And oh by the way, climate change is not a moral issue. Not only is it not a moral issue, it cannot be. Moral issues are things like abortion, homosexuality, euthanasia, etc. Climate change might – MIGHT – be an ethical issue, but more than likely it’s not even that. Humans and human activity have little to no impact on climate. Volcanic eruptions and solar output affect the climate way more than humans do, and we have no control over those things.

  48. Gratias says:

    Global Warming caused by women and men is a hoax. There has been no warming for 16 years. The
    warming that took place before comes from a long term trend that started 10,000 years ago when the last ice age ended. At that time North America was covered by glaciers throughout the Mississippi valley and when they melted they left the thousands of lakes in Minnesota. Use your reason: there were no cars back then. 650,000 million years ago the Earth was almost completely covered in ice in what is called the Snowball Earth (just Google it). We overcame that because of volcanic eruptions that released massive amounts of CO2. When I was a boy over 60 years ago there was only a single glacier advancing, the Perito Moreno glacier in the Argentine Patagonia. All other glaciers were already receding despite the relative lack of cars and Democrat politician jet planes.

    It is a huge mistake for the Church to equate the Creator with Gaia. Cardinal Maradiaga strikes me as a Marxist agitator that is dangerous because he appears to control the agenda of Pope Francisco’s cabinet of eight cardinals.

    This October Super Synod will be very challenging and we must find the strength to remain smiling Catholics after the deed is perpetrated.

  49. Gratias says:

    CatolicLiving, frjim4321 does not appear to make sense to you because he is a systematic agitator opposing traditional ideas. He is a priest, but having followed him a long time at California Catholic Daily, before FrJim found these more productive pastures, in my personal opinion he is a mean person.

  50. jflare says:

    Interesting: Fishwrap has closed the comment box. Maybe the climate got too hot for them, over there? Perhaps a wee pint too many of environmental nonsense?

  51. frjim,

    The Church doesn’t rule out capital punishment. Where are you forming that opinion? The Catechism of the Catholic Church states the following under the heading Legitimate Defense:

    2267 Assuming that the guilty party’s identity and responsibility have been fully determined, the traditional teaching of the Church does not exclude recourse to the death penalty, if this is the only possible way of effectively defending human lives against the unjust aggressor.

    If, however, non-lethal means are sufficient to defend and protect people’s safety from the aggressor, authority will limit itself to such means, as these are more in keeping with the concrete conditions of the common good and more in conformity to the dignity of the human person.

    Today, in fact, as a consequence of the possibilities which the state has for effectively preventing crime, by rendering one who has committed an offense incapable of doing harm – without definitely taking away from him the possibility of redeeming himself – the cases in which the execution of the offender is an absolute necessity “are very rare, if not practically nonexistent.”68

  52. markomalley says:

    Interesting: last night the following exchange was on the Communist News Network:

    Beck: Denying Climate Change is a “Sin”

    REVEREND EDWARD BECK, CNN RELIGION COMMENTATOR: Well, I don’t say it. The church has indicated this is a moral issue and just today talk about breaking news, just today Pope Francis at his general audience in Rome said this. If we destroy creation, creation will destroy us. Never forget this. The church for a long time now has been talking about climate change as a moral issue.

    John Paul II way back in 1990 was talking about it. Benedict followed. We know that Benedict even said it’s a sin against the commandments to be a polluter against the environment. And so we have to see the earth as we’re stewards of creation. This is god’s gift to us. If you abuse it, you’re really maligning that gift.

    COSTELLO: You know, it’s easy to blow off comments like Pat Sajak’s tweet but tweets like that resonate among some people. What would you like to say to Pat Sajak?

    BECK: Well what’s interesting to me is the racist-unpatriotic, how you link the two. I think the argument could be made that it is more racist to deny climate change because those being affected by it are the poor. The global poor are affected most by climate change, not the rich who can afford air conditioning and can get around all the deleterious effects of climate control — climate change.

    It is certainly nice that such minor goals like, uh, say, the salvation of souls, are fully accomplished of so that we can concentrate on what’s really important </sarc>

  53. Imrahil says:

    Dear tcreek,

    if you’re saying what I think you are saying (I have heard the same argument about Hamburg), then you’re missing the fact that Californians and New Yorkers would then spread over the rest of the U.S.

  54. MrTipsNZ says:

    There needs to be a change in the climate of our media such that they accurately and honestly report on the evil of the abortion. That would be change to believe in.

  55. Cafea Fruor says:

    Honestly, I think the reason some make this ridiculous claim that climate change is more important than anything else in the pro-life cause is that it’s all ruse.

    It’s an attempt to keep contraception and abortion on the table as topics open for discussion. If they make climate change more important than abortion, they could then claim that abortion is a lesser evil than climate change, and then you can argue (or try to) that abortion is OK in some cases because we don’t want to overpopulate the planet because that SO obviously is caused by overpopulation, and contraception is an even lesser evil (because, you know, it never kills anyone, right?), and so contraception MUST be OK if it’s an effort to save the planet…and so on. (Riddled with sarcasm)

  56. bookworm says:

    If you’re looking for some rational, non-biased and non-hysterical perspective on climate and weather issues, a good place to start is here:

    http://meteorologicalmusings.blogspot.com/

    One point that this blog’s author has made repeatedly is that global cooling — which could very possibly be in our future due to downturns in solar activity and other factors — would be far worse for humanity in general than global warming. Global cooling means shorter growing seasons, which in turn means less food, more hunger and more poverty. Another point he made just a few days ago, in response to Secretary of State John Kerry’s rhetorical question “what’s the worst than can happen” if the global warming alarmists prove to be wrong, is that we waste trillions of dollars that could be better spent on much more immediate and pressing concerns (like protecting the electrical grid and providing clean water and reliable electricity to Third World countries).

  57. bookworm says:

    If the predictions of global cooling due to solar inactivity, etc. prove right, then what the Big Climate alarmists are doing right now is exactly in line with the strategy of “Our Father Below” in “The Screwtape Letters”: “The game is to have them all running around with fire extinguishers whenever there’s a flood; and all crowding to that side of the boat which is already nearly gone under.”

  58. robtbrown says:

    frjim4321 says:

    Of course climate change through human agency is a huge moral issue but it’s always a mistake to say that one moral issue is greater than another. They are all interrelated. It’s similar to the problem with anti-abortion people who are pro the death penalty. If life is sacred, it’s sacred.

    That’s like saying if someone is opposed to a man who kidnaps women and keeps them locked up, he should also be against the incarceration of criminals.

  59. Midwest St. Michael says:

    frjim4321 says: “…it’s always a mistake to say that one moral issue is greater than another.”

    The memorandum “Worthiness to Receive Holy Communion” sent by then Cardinal Ratzinger (as we all know former prefect of the CDF – now Pope Benedict XVI) to Cardinal McCarrick (then president of the USCCB) was made public in the first week of July 2004.

    In this memo Cardinal Ratzinger states:

    “Not all moral issues have the same moral weight as abortion and euthanasia. For example, if a Catholic were to be at odds with the Holy Father on the application of capital punishment or on the decision to wage war, he would not for that reason be considered unworthy to present himself to receive Holy Communion. While the Church exhorts civil authorities to seek peace, not war, and to exercise discretion and mercy in imposing punishment on criminals, it may still be permissible to take up arms to repel an aggressor or to have recourse to capital punishment. There may be a legitimate diversity of opinion even among Catholics about waging war and applying the death penalty, but not however with regard to abortion and euthanasia.” (WRHC, pgh 3)

    MSM

  60. Mike says:

    “it’s always a mistake to say that one moral issue is greater than another”

    God help the congregants who must listen to sermons based on such rot.

  61. paladin says:

    frjim4321 wrote:

    Of course climate change through human agency is a huge moral issue but it’s always a mistake to say that one moral issue is greater than another. They are all interrelated.

    There are two problems with this:

    1) It’s absolute bunkum… unless you maintain that shoplifting and rape/torture are of equal gravity. Do even YOU read what you write, Father?

    2) Your second statement doesn’t logically follow from the first. Jesus and the Blessed Virgin are interrelated, as well… but are you saying that the Former is not greater than the latter?

    It’s similar to the problem with anti-abortion people who are pro the death penalty. If life is sacred, it’s sacred.

    You’re taking for granted, of course, that those who support the death penalty must necessarily refuse to believe that life is sacred… and that seems to be an unproven, unprovable assumption of yours. It’s certainly not a necessary conclusion from the premise that “the death penalty is licit in certain circumstances”.

  62. tcreek says:

    frjim4321 …

    “The reversal of a doctrine as well established as the legitimacy of capital punishment would raise serious problems regarding the credibility of the magisterium. Consistency with scripture and long-standing Catholic tradition is important for the grounding of many current teachings of the Catholic Church; for example, those regarding abortion, contraception, the permanence of marriage, and the ineligibility of women for priestly ordination. If the tradition on capital punishment had been reversed, serious questions would be raised regarding other doctrines.” — Avery Cardinal Dulles, 2004, “Catholic Teaching on the Death Penalty”, in Owens, Carlson & Elshtain, op. cit., p. 26.

  63. greg3064 says:

    It’s similar to the problem with anti-abortion people who are pro the death penalty. If life is sacred, it’s sacred.

    There are relevant differences between the voluntary killing of innocent life and the voluntary killing of guilty life (even if it turns out, as say John Paul II taught, that the death penalty is immoral). The latter can be argued for in terms of proportionate retribution or in terms of the state’s right to/duty of self-defense. Neither avenue of argument is open to the defender of abortion.

  64. greg3064 says:

    The latter can be argued for in terms of proportionate retribution or in terms of the state’s right to/duty of self-defense.

    I should add that neither of these constitutes a denial that life is sacred. Proportionate retribution acknowledges that people are moral agents responsible for their own actions. The state’s has a right to and duty of self-defense because of the sanctity of life of its constituents.

    There are issues with the death penalty in practice, but opposition to abortion on the basis of the sanctity of life certainly does not imply that the death penalty is wrong in principle.

  65. JoseTomas says:

    BTW, now On Topic.

    For your science files:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AybBEuIpy44#t=31

    I am not really into RAP, and I suspect neither you, but this one is really good!

    My 12 years old daughter loved it from the moment I showed it to her :-)

    Don’t worry, I always show her Gregorian pieces too ;-)

  66. JoseTomas says:

    And this too:

    Vatican representatives backs UN efforts on climate change

    http://www.catholicculture.org/news/headlines/index.cfm?storyid=21469

    From a commenter:

    “One more example of the Vatican talking about something they know nothing about. The Global Warming / “Climate Change” scam is in its ebb tide. One would think that long term and recent dealings with the UN would make the Vatican know better, but, as usual, the Vatican will probably be the last to know it.”

  67. “Of course climate change through human agency is a huge moral issue “

    I’m surprised that so few appear to see that Fr. Jim is entirely correct in this statement.

    So far I can ascertain–on the basis of my training as a scientist in the evaluation of empirical data–there is as yet little or no accumulated scientific evidence that climate change through human agency is occurring.

    But if it is ever demonstrated scientifically that either degradation of climate can be avoided or its improvement for human benefit can be effected by human efforts, then surely their proper deployment will be a significant moral issue (as well as a political and prudential one).

  68. Gerard Plourde says:

    ” There may be a legitimate diversity of opinion even among Catholics about waging war and applying the death penalty, but not however with regard to abortion and euthanasia.”

    This is precisely why opinions about issues like waging war and applying the death penalty are potentially more dangerous to one’s soul. As humans subject to the effects of Original Sin and the blandishments of Satan the analysis used to justify a particular war or use of the death penalty in a particular case leaves open the temptation to succumb to prejudices or some self-serving criteria in coming to the decision. The temptation to evil is most comfortable lurking in the shadows waiting for an opportune moment and an opportune weakness.

  69. wanda says:

    Over-population? Not a chance. The opposite is true. This year in Japan alone more adult diapers will be sold than diapers for infants and children.

  70. Del says:

    I remember when we used to make jokes about people who were so dumb, they wrote their Congressman because they didn’t like the weather.

    Now, we are faced with people who insist that our primary moral imperative is to vote for the candidates who promise to change the weather.

  71. Elizabeth D says:

    As a former progressive I definitely think this has to do with casting Catholic beliefs about contraception and abortion as harmful to the natural environment, “unsustainable” and contrary to the common good. That is the sincere belief of many, many people in our society. I am fully expecting Pope Francis’ forthcoming encyclical on “ecology” to rebut that point of view while very much upholding protection of natural beauty and not wasting natural resources as positive values, but ultimately for the benefit of man. It remains to be seen what he will actually say, it is entirely likely to challenge both the typical political liberals and the typical political conservatives, but there is a possibility of a document on this topic being hugely valuable as a corrective response to the widespread belief even among Catholics that being pro life and caring sincerely for ecology are opposed to each other.

  72. Imrahil says:

    The rev’d dear Fr Jim said,

    if life is sacred, it’s sacred.

    The Church does not favor capital punishment; but she favors even less the common arguments of those opposing it, such as, I might say (no offense!), this one.

    Capital punishment means, as last resort, to exterminate an offender for the defence of the order of law, penance for the crime and deterrence against the particular sort of crime. It is not feasible – not feasible in any way – t0 equate such laws with murder, abortion and the like.

    The argument the Church brings forward against capital punishment, is that capital punishment, being a punishment of last resort, is not necessary today*, and that the life of the offender is still sacred enough that it should not be taken if not necessary.

    (Which is true. There certainly is error enough among those in favor of capital punishment, also: such as that “murderers just have to be killed, period”, that some sins are not redeemable at all, that some sins, as according to a rumour the Mormons believe, are redeemable by the offender’s own death, and the like).

    [*Is it too much to assume that St. John Paul II, when he wrote the parts of Evangelium vitae in question, thought of Europe and the United States, primarily?]

    But Catholic morality does not allow us to make no moral distinction between an execution according to a law by a legitimate state on the one, and a murder on the other hand side.

    (Which, alas, is the constant cry of all those other than the Catholic Church who oppose the death penalty, and hence all to often also one of Catholics who oppose the death penalty.)

  73. AvantiBev says:

    “BTW… we can do both. We can both care for the planet and defend the unborn.”

    Thank you for that, Father Z. I am so tired of the false dilemma rhetoric of some Catholics I have encountered whose so-called “reasoning” goes something like: we CANNOT care about (dog-fighting, poaching elephants into extinction, volunteer at the local animal shelter, etc.) because there’s still abortion! To which I answer: ” I am woman see me multi-task. Moreover, I am chaste woman, so I do my bit to not partake in the chief cause of abortion”.

    Seems to me though that there is almost a pathological NEED to believe in anthropogenic climate change – note, they no longer all it “global warming” and indeed here in Chi town this winter one would be stoned to death with ice chunks were one to call it “warming”. That need seems to stem from the need to believe we humans are in control; to be ABLE to DO something. If warming, cooling or any change is admitted to be part of a much larger cycle and series of astronomical events out of our control, then for the godless that is truly scary.

  74. slainewe says:

    Are not Catholics who oppose the death penalty on principle in heresy, period? Is this not just another one of those heresies that our last popes have allowed to flourish, and even helped flourish by foggy teaching?

  75. acbprop says:

    This past weekend we had some wonderful nice cool weather in central Florida–unseasonable and likely the last of the season (it will be 96 here this weekend). It struck me that in the past we would have thanked God for such pretty weather. Now the first reaction is to blame man for the unpredictable fluctuations. Shows how much God has been driven from the public perception and discourse. Seems to me it would be most effective to get on our knees and pray for good weather. I particularly like General George S. Patton’s battlefield prayer provided, the story goes, by a Catholic chaplain on the Feast of the Immaculate Conception 1944. Fitting prayer for the battle now raging:

    “Almighty and most merciful Father, we humbly beseech Thee, of Thy great goodness, to restrain these immoderate rains with which we have had to contend. Grant us fair weather for Battle. Graciously hearken to us as soldiers who call upon Thee that, armed with Thy power, we may advance from victory to victory, and crush the oppression and wickedness of our enemies and establish Thy justice among men and nations.”

  76. Priam1184 says:

    @Johnno: Actually you’re right the planet hasn’t been around for millions of years, but BILLIONS of years. There is nothing in Genesis that contradicts this observation and in truth the idea that creation is far older than the 6,000 years posited by the heretic bishop Ussher actually confirms some observations in the Scripture. For example, the apostles in their letters in the New Testament continually refer to their own time as ‘these last days.’ How would this be possible if creation was only 4,000 old years then, and is 6,000 years old now? But, if the universe is 13 billion years old then it makes a bit more sense. We shouldn’t hold the Divine to our conception of time.

  77. Priam1184 says:

    @Johnno: Actually you’re right the planet hasn’t been around for millions of years, but BILLIONS of years. There is nothing in Genesis that contradicts this observation and in truth the idea that creation is far older than the 6,000 years posited by the heretic bishop Ussher actually confirms some observations in the Scripture. For example, the apostles in their letters in the New Testament continually refer to their own time as ‘these last days.’ How would this be possible if creation was only 4,000 old years then, and is 6,000 years old now? But, if the universe is 13 billion years old then it makes a bit more sense. We shouldn’t hold the Divine to our conception of time.

  78. SKAY says:

    Interesting website bookworm–Thank you.

    “Another point he made just a few days ago, in response to Secretary of State John Kerry’s rhetorical question “what’s the worst than can happen” if the global warming alarmists prove to be wrong, is that we waste trillions of dollars that could be better spent on much more immediate and pressing concerns (like protecting the electrical grid and providing clean water and reliable electricity to Third World countries).”
    Great point.
    The boat tipping over analogy also seems to fit the NC Reporter and the rest of the msm on the global warming/climate change issue. Being on the wrong side of the boat doesn’t matter as long as you are with the correct group even if you have to twist yourself into a pretzel to get there.

  79. tcreek says:

    Those who equate opposition to abortion with opposition to capital punishment claim that the Church teaches that “All human life must be protected from the cradle to the grave.” That is false. In the 1960s one word that the Catholic faith has always used in statements about the protection of life, “innocent”, was not included in the statement by opponents of the death penalty.

    The Catechism of the Catholic Church
    Article 5 – The Fifth Commandment

    2270 – … From the first moment of his existence, a human being must be recognized as having the rights of a person—among which is the inviolable right of every innocent being to life.

    2273 – The inalienable right to life of every innocent human individual is a constitutive element of a civil society and its legislation.

    2258 – … no one can under any circumstance claim for himself the right directly to destroy an innocent human being

    2261 – Scripture specifies the prohibition contained in the fifth commandment: “Do not slay the a righteous.” The deliberate murder of an innocent person is gravely contrary to the dignity of the human being, to the golden rule, and to the holiness of the Creator.

    2263 – The legitimate defense of persons and societies is not an exception to the prohibition against the murder of the innocent that constitutes intentional killing.

    2272 – The Church does not thereby intend to restrict the scope of mercy. Rather, she makes clear the gravity of the crime committed, the irreparable harm done to the innocent who is put to death, as well as to the parents and the whole of society.

    2297 – Except when performed for strictly therapeutic medical reasons, directly intended amputations, mutilations, and sterilizations performed on innocent persons are against the moral law.
    —–
    Pope Pius XII, 9/14/1952
    “Even when there is question of the execution of a condemned man, the State does not dispose of the individual’s right to life … by his crime, he has already dispossessed himself of his right to life.”

  80. Johnno says:

    Priam1184

    The plain words of Scripture state 6 Days, and God Himself in Exodus states that we are to observe the 7-day week because He completed the Creation in 6 Days and rested on the 7th. Was God lying Priam? Or was God using some of that open-to-interpretation ecumenical language because I guess the Israelites were not initiated in such esoteric things and lacked words to refer to vague passages of time that didn’t require the usage of ‘day’ and couldn’t divorce it from the strict imposition of a passage of day/night cycle that when used in conjunction actually took pains to define that yes, God wants you to know it was an actual day-day, perhaps because He wished to counter the error that would re-occur to undermine Israel and the Church?

    The Entire tradition and history of the Church has interpreted the text as literal 6 days up until our modernist era where now we engage in this scientific ecumenism with atheism, willing to throw away our Christian truth, just as we are willing to bury our Catholic truths for the sake of making Protestants happy. There is NO EVIDENCE from the scientific record that the Earth or the universe is billions of years old. This is just atheist speculation to accomodate the necessity of an unimaginable magical period of time into which they can happily imagine making the astronomical odds required by their belief about origins, palatable. The Earth exhibits the appearance of age inasmuch as Adam exhibited the appearance of a fully grown adult male when in reality he was a new-born, or that Christ’s transformation of water into the finest wine skipped the long fermentation period necessary to produce good wine.

    Your argument that the Apostles referred to these days as ‘these last days’ is a poor one. Even if we were to assume that Ussher’s chronology was correct, it could still very well be ‘the last days’ even within a period of a recent creation, unless of course you happen to know with certainty the date of Christ’s return and that it won’t be in your lifetime. So in keeping with your argument, how instead would you consider interpreting Christ’s words that “At the beginning of Creation, God made them male and female”? Was Christ mistaken and Darwin correct, Priam? It makes much more sense that when Christ referred to the ‘beginning’ He meant Day 6, and not Day 6-billion.

    It is not I who is holding the Divine to my conception of time; it is those who compromise God’s word and the Church’s Tradition who are choosing to reject God’s clear words by ignoring the inerrancy of Scripture, and ignoring the Tradition of the Church Fathers who all held to a 6-day Creation, including Aquinas who for the sake of argument about Scriptural interpretation hypothetically stated that the scale of the Days could be seen as instantaneous moments, but still passages of a Day if defined as a movement of a day/night cycle.

    But because you wish to synthesize our Faith with the heresy of atheistic philosophy, now the truths of God’s creative power are ignored by the world at large so that they can behave however they like, including ignoring Christ’s definition of marriage from the beginning of Creation so that homosexuals can have pretend-weddings as part of the great evolutionary revolution of progress that the nuns on the Bus look forward to more than Christ’s Coming. There are no ‘last days’ for them, it’s just the beginning of summer fun.

  81. Imrahil says:

    Dear Johnno,

    I said it before so I’ll be brief:

    there is no “entire tradition of the Church” opposing St. Augustine.

  82. frjim4321 says:

    “He is a priest, but having followed him a long time at California Catholic Daily, before FrJim found these more productive pastures, in my personal opinion he is a mean person.” – Gratias

    Gratias, that is totally bogus. No, I am not the same person as I don’t even know what the CCD is. And no, frankly, I’m not a mean person.

  83. frjim4321 says:

    “The reversal of a doctrine as well established as the legitimacy of capital punishment would raise serious problems regarding the credibility of the magisterium. Consistency with scripture and long-standing Catholic tradition is important for the grounding of many current teachings of the Catholic Church; for example, those regarding abortion, contraception, the permanence of marriage, and the ineligibility of women for priestly ordination. If the tradition on capital punishment had been reversed, serious questions would be raised regarding other doctrines.” — Avery Cardinal Dulles, 2004, “Catholic Teaching on the Death Penalty”, in Owens, Carlson & Elshtain, op. cit., p. 26. tcreek

    Very good, tcreek, that was a nice pickup.

    I’ve no problem with the tradition . . . which holds that CP is legitimate as a defense of society. However as we know the currently availability of Life Without Parole trumps the tradition on this.

  84. frjim4321 says:

    I’m surprised that so few appear to see that Fr. Jim is entirely correct in this statement. – Henry

    Henry and I are on a roll with respect to agreeing with each other.

    Henry, I’ll stand with NOAA and NASA and 97% of climate scientists, and you can stand with the scant remainder.

  85. wmeyer says:

    I shall stand with Henry, and with proper scientific evaluation of data. Science is not an ally to politics, or should not be. It’s nothing to do with the maundering of those scientists with no qualifications in the field. And where, frjim, can you show us any proof for your assertion that “97% of climate scientists” support the madness of AGCG? The climate scientists whom I have read have, to a man, been skeptical of the projections, and as a software designer, I am hugely skeptical of the numerous computer models which fail to agree, and are endlessly tweaked in the effort to support political claims.

  86. wmeyer says:

    Kindly see a discussion of the 97% claim here.

  87. Elizabeth D says:

    I have thought for a long time that FrJim4321 is a sock puppet of someone very intelligent for purposes of goading readers into articulating and arguing persuasively for their beliefs. At least, it is often hilarious reading the FrJim conversations through this hermeneutic.

    [I do not think he is a “sock puppet” being operated in my combox.]

  88. wmeyer – my husband and I are software designers too. We share your skepticism!

  89. JoseTomas says:

    Dear frjim, just like you, I was a believer in “Global Warming” until very recently. Then I started to investigate the issue by myself.

    The paper which claims that 97% consensus is so bad methodologically that even its authors acknowledge it by refusing to release data about it (making it uncriticizable, unfalsifiable, and unreproducible). As a scientist myself, I can assure you that not releasing data about your research is the number one cardinal sin against Science.

    Coincidence or not, this discussion is raging on just now. I am providing a link that you can backtrack to the previous ones to see the whole story. As you will be able to see, the claim about the 97% consensus is as bogus as it gets.

    http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/05/22/an-open-letter-puts-the-university-of-queensland-in-a-dilemma-over-john-cooks-97-consensus-paper/

    Anyway, I am surprised to see that you uncritically accept authority claims from scientists, while your posts here show clearly that you are always very supportive of a critical attitude towards Church Magisterium.

  90. Gerard Plourde says:

    A timely warning from Pope Francis –

    http://www.news.va/en/news/pope-at-audience-if-we-destroy-creation-it-will-de

    We should be cautious in the use of the technology we have developed and not assume that everything we can accomplish is necessarily good. We can misuse the gifts we are given as surely as we can use them to God’s glory. Superbia (Pride) is the greatest of the seven deadly sins. Reversing the course of rivers (like the Chicago River in Illinois) or the diversion by the Soviet Union of the Amu Darya and Syr Darya rivers which fed the Aral Sea leading to its desertification can have catastrophic effects. No lees should we recognize that the activities of the Industrial Revolution have led to a production of heat and carbon emissions whose effect on the climate are still being understood. Climate change does not necessarily mean warming so much as potential destabilization of existing patterns which plant and animal life may not be able to adapt to quickly (as we can learn from the work in genetics done by Fr. Gregor Mendel O.S.A. in the 19th century and his successors).

  91. robtbrown says:

    FrJim4321 says,

    I’ve no problem with the tradition . . . which holds that CP is legitimate as a defense of society. However as we know the currently availability of Life Without Parole trumps the tradition on this.

    Whether life without parole exists or not has nothing to do with this matter.

    NB1: In no way am I advocating capital punishment. It is generally an argument I avoid.
    NB2: Two of the more heinous murderers in US history are buried a few hundred yards from my parents’ graves.

  92. robtbrown says:

    Johnno,

    Have you read St Thomas’ Treatise on the Work of the Six Days?

  93. JoseTomas says:

    I have to say that I agree that “Climate Change” is a serious moral issue.

    That is why I think that every Catholic should study the issue and act accordingly.

    After carefully studying the issue, the only rational, logical (and, thus, moral) position is to do whatever one can to fight the “Global Warming / Climate Change” scam.

    Carbon Taxes, Energy Regulations, “Renewable” subsidies etc. are causing poverty and deaths NOW. It is not a morally neutral issue.

    Want to combat poverty, as Pope Francis (and Jesus) urges us? Then fight against this scam.

    http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/05/22/analysis-what-the-world-needs-now-is-a-lot-less-poverty/

    (For an entertaining 5 min summary of the issue, see the video I linked to above. The young Austrian guy managed to include all the major key points of this veritable scandal in his piece. Even a 12-year-old can understand it.)

  94. bookworm says:

    “here in Chi town this winter one would be stoned to death with ice chunks were one to call it “warming”.

    Well, better start gathering those ice chunks because here’s a study claiming that the extremely cold winter just past was… you guessed it… further “proof” of global warming:

    http://www.nbcnews.com/science/environment/global-warming-linked-frigid-u-s-winter-scientist-says-n111676

    Granted, one extremely cold winter does not, in and of itself, DIS-prove global warming. But apparently, human-caused global warming has become one of the first, if not the first, hypothesis in the history of science that can never be disproven and which no evidence can contradict — no matter what happens, whether it’s hot, cold, dry, wet, windy, calm, no storms, lots of storms, etc. etc. , it’s all “proof” of global warming.

  95. JoseTomas says:

    @ bookworm: “But apparently, human-caused global warming has become one of the first, if not the first, hypothesis in the history of science that can never be disproven and which no evidence can contradict ”

    Nope.

    Not the first, and it won’t be the last.

    Karl Popper called “pseudo-science” every “science” who could not be disproved by any experiment. He called them “unfalsifiable”.

    The examples he gave himself were Marxism (Scientific Materialism), Freudianism and Darwinism.

    “Climate Science” has an impressive pedigree.

  96. Elizabeth D says:

    Fr Z says: “[I do not think he is a “sock puppet” being operated in my combox.]”

    I didn’t think it was you, very intelligent though you are. :-) My theory is based on observing FrJim takes delight in being just a little bit off kilter in every single comment from what anyone else here would consider to be truth or right thinking. And just how funny some of the resulting conversations are if you interpret them in that way. FrJim makes a definite contribution. Of course, it is altogether possible he is who he represents himself to be.

  97. tcreek,

    Not to mention the language from the Catechism which expands to say under the heading Legitimate Defense:

    2267 Assuming that the guilty party’s identity and responsibility have been fully determined, the traditional teaching of the Church does not exclude recourse to the death penalty, if this is the only possible way of effectively defending human lives against the unjust aggressor.

  98. Pingback: Climate change a pro-life issue? - Jill Stanek

  99. Imrahil says:

    Maybe, btw., there is a quite simple explanation for Cardinal Maradiaga’s expression.

    It seems to be part of the clerical jargon (of recent history) to say “nothing but” when meaning “also”. If I remember correctly, that appears even one or the other time in the Pope Emeritus’s works in apparently this sense, but, for instance, the work of a Fr Karl Rahner is full of such “nothing but”s.

    So, when the Cardinal said “no sin is more heartless than”, all he meant perhaps was “it is truly a heartless sin to”.

  100. The Masked Chicken says:

    “@ bookworm: “But apparently, human-caused global warming has become one of the first, if not the first, hypothesis in the history of science that can never be disproven and which no evidence can contradict ”

    Of course, it can be disproven. A few simple thought experiments:

    1. In 1918, unleash a deadly virus that destroys everyone except meteorologists. Leave a note explaining that you are doing this so that the earth will not change dramatically because of human intervention. Since all meteorologists at the time were male, they would have 70 years to wait and see what happens. Travel forward to 1988 to receive the final report from the last dying meteorologist. If no effect is found, go back to 1918 and sequester patient zero so that no outbreak occurs. Return to present, publish findings.

    So, to prove or disprove ACC, all you need is a time machine.

    2. Develop a series of rockets. Fly all of mankind to the moon, except for meteorologists. Wait. Publish.

    3. Same as #2, except fly all meteorologists to the moon. Wait. Publish.

    4. Turn up all of the CO2 producers to full blast. Wait. Publish.

    5. Mutate mankind to have gills. Abandon the surface. Wait. Publish.

    See, there certainly are ways to test the hypothesis (it is NOT a theory).

    “Karl Popper called “pseudo-science” every “science” who could not be disproved by any experiment. He called them “unfalsifiable”.

    The examples he gave himself were Marxism (Scientific Materialism), Freudianism and Darwinism.”

    Popper was against Logical Positivism, but the notion of falsifiability is, itself, unfalsifiable. The notion is too strong. The best one can give are Bayesian probabilities for any empirical statement. There are logically falsifiable propositions, however. The set of possible worlds is a set composed of logically possible worlds, metaphysically possible worlds, morally possible worlds, materially possible worlds, etc. Falsifiability belongs to the logically possible worlds. Logic invades the material world, but empirical tests, especially in light of the quantum measurement problem, cannot be made sharply enough to satisfy the absolute truth-tests of anything but fuzzy logic. I prefer the Quine-Duhem approach. From Wikipedia:

    “The Duhem–Quine thesis (also called the Duhem–Quine problem, after Pierre Duhem and Willard Van Orman Quine) is that it is impossible to test a scientific hypothesis in isolation, because an empirical test of the hypothesis requires one or more background assumptions (also called auxiliary assumptions or auxiliary hypotheses). The hypothesis in question is by itself incapable of making predictions. Instead, deriving predictions from the hypothesis typically requires background assumptions that several other hypotheses are correct; for example, that an experiment worked as designed or that previous scientific knowledge was accurate. For instance, as evidence against the idea that the Earth is in motion, some people noted that birds did not get thrown off into the sky whenever they let go of a tree branch. Later theories of physics and astronomy could account for this fact while also positing a moving Earth.

    Although a bundle of hypotheses (i.e. a hypothesis and its background assumptions) as a whole can be tested against the empirical world and be falsified if it fails the test, the Duhem–Quine thesis says it is impossible to isolate a single hypothesis in the bundle. One solution to the dilemma thus facing scientists is that when we have rational reasons to accept the background assumptions as true (e.g. scientific theories via evidence) we will have rational—albeit nonconclusive—reasons for thinking that the theory tested is probably wrong if the empirical test fails.”

    By the way, Freudianism is, almost certainly, correct, to a degree. We have isolated a moral center of the brain (superego), a labido center (id), but not yet an ego center (since this is, probably a cooperative phenomenon of several regions of the brain). Of course, ego != soul.

    As for whether or not ACC is correct, hey, it will take, maybe, 200 years before we develop long-range interplanetary travel. We should know by then.

    The Chicken

  101. @ ElizabethD – I have thought the same thing actually!

  102. JoseTomas says:

    @ The Chicken

    Impressive :)

    BTW, you thought experiment #4 is essentially what has been happening for 17 years :)

  103. Pingback: "Honor Thy Children" - BigPulpit.com

  104. Cathy says:

    ….and the USCCB responds accordingly! EPA, please increase your regulations! http://www.indcatholicnews.com/news.php?viewStory=24850

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