Sorry for no posts while I have been traveling, but all I had on the road was my iPad, and I find it very clumsy for posting to my blog. I'm back-but-not-back; I have a wedding tomorrow, in Russia, hence a rehearsal tonight. After the wedding, I'm back on the road for a couple of days.
No, I haven't read the Holy Father's new encyclical. I'll get to it when I get back. I have no comment, other than to say everyone should relax. If you think this is the most important thing evah! get a grip; if you think the pope has done something terrible, because it's part of an encyclical after all, likewise, get a grip. When the pope teaches, that's important; and if you think the pope didn't get it quite right? Well, this wasn't a dogmatic definition (hence, infallible), so just relax. That's what I'm doing.
5 comments:
Welcome "home", Father, and I couldn't agree with you more about the new encyclical!
You're a funny guy. ...telling your parishioners to get a grip. Pretty funny in my book. You must have had a great vacation.
What's for dinner?
Paul:
Thanks! By the way, the "get a grip" comment was aimed at pretty much the entire world, not just my parish.
The vacation is not over. I was just checking in. I'm back next week.
While it is good advice not to get too excited about this encyclical, there are some significant problematic issues with it.
As other commenters better than I have mentioned, the Holy Father seems to be venturing into some imprudent waters in speaking about a scientific "consensus" about climate change, when there in fact is no such consensus.
Likewise, he seems too freely to intermingle prudential judgment with incontrovertible moral truths, which will confuse the faithful and give an easy opportunity for enemies of the Church to distort it (the N.C.Distorter types, for instance).
This Pope is well known for making comments which can be easily twisted by those who oppose the Church's teaching (for example, his "breeding like rabbits" comment) and I fear that the secularist environmentalists will (quite reasonably, to be honest) make the false argument of moral equivalence, something like this:
I practice contraception and don't follow the Church teachings, but you don't turn down your air conditioning [Para. 55] and are a climate change "denyer," so I am just as faithful a Catholic as you are."
Unfortunately, Pope Francis simply doesn't seem to have the clarity in teaching and lucid writing style of his two immediate predecessors, and the Church will unfortunately pay the price in resultant confusion.
-Cincinnati Priest
Let's just sit back and enjoy the media twisting the bootleg copy of Laudato Si to fit their agenda, even though the final version and its proper translation has not yet been released. When the media realizes that respect of the earth ties back to respect for all life, including the unborn, their interest will abate.
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