Posted on 09/22/2015 6:49:31 AM PDT by shortstop
Pope Francis doesn’t hate you.
But he does hate your lifestyle, your country, and the economic principles upon which your life is built.
Today, the Holy Father will come to America, the nation which personifies all the evils he sees in the world, the country that is the obvious target of his invective and condemnation.
As he condemns capitalism and consumerism, denounces things like air conditioning and private automobiles, and condemns people who, by overconsumption, engage in what he calls social and racial oppression, he’s talking about you.
You know that, right?
Yesterday he was in Cuba, where he had no criticism for the regime that has locked up people for being Christian. Today he is in America, where he has criticized our way of life from top to bottom.
Most irksome to him is our country’s contribution to supposed manmade global warming. He accepts unquestioningly that the climate is changing and that that change is driven by man’s use of fossil fuels and that stopping that change is a major moral responsibility of the Catholic Church.
Consumption of natural resources, as demonstrated by modern society, he reasons, is destructive of the earth and morally wrong. Internal combustion and the burning of coal to generate electricity all make gases that, the pope says, destroy the earth and allow one people – you – to unrighteously oppress another people – everyone else.
The generation of those gasses is, then, a sin.
And the pope wants you and the United States to stop sinning, to stop consuming more than others and to stop having more than others. Income equality, a lot less electricity, elimination of fossil fuels, and no more air conditioning.
Apparently using air conditioning really ticks God off.
Which raises the question: Why did God make coal?
And oil?
Seriously, if the use of coal and oil is sinful, and presuming God made the earth, then why did he make so much coal and oil? Do hydrocarbons in nature exist merely to tempt man, to test his abilities of self-restraint?
Is a vein of West Virginia coal something akin to pornography, a forbidden fruit that must never be touched? The oil beneath the arctic, did God put that there to see if we would be pious enough not to use it? Do natural resources exist only to tempt us, a creation perhaps of the devil, as opposed to God?
And if it is miserably hot with intense humidity and you turn on the air conditioning to comfort a fretting child or to ease the circumstance of someone else afflicted by the heat, are you sinning?
Only in Pope Francis’ world.
And that is a world in sharp contrast with reality, to say nothing of the teachings of his two predecessors – Benedict XVI and Saint John Paul II. The Roman Catholic Church has gone from one of its most conservative pontiffs of modern time, to one of its most liberal. Imagine how Benedict XVI must be kicking himself, as the Francis papacy was created by the almost-unprecedented retirement of a sitting Benedict XVI.
I believe the pope is mistaken, both about wealth and global warming.
The resources of the earth are in the earth not to tempt us, but to bless us. God created a world replete with coal and oil because he knew of the needs of humans over time. He knew of our current population, and its need for energy and food – two things fossil fuels make possible. He also knew of the populations we shall yet produce, and of their needs.
Natural resources are a gift from God, to be used with thanksgiving, but certainly to be used. And those who argue that the blessings of God should be left in the ground, unused to better the lives of his children, are not doing the work or speaking the truth of God. And they are certainly not helping God's children -- the family of man.
And the blessing of the poor does not come about by the debasing of the rich, but by the lifting of the poor. Technology, a frequent target of the pope’s criticism, is not a curse, it is a blessing – a blessing from God. And just as the advance of technology – in every area – has blessed American life, its continued advance and application around the world will lift the lives of other peoples.
You do not enhance the lives of Third Worlders by attacking the lives of Americans. You enhance the lives of Third Worlders by applying the principles that enriched America to the situations of Third Worlders.
First among those is faith in and fidelity to God. Second is a belief in individual freedom and determination – including the freedom of the marketplace known as capitalism.
The pope is mistaken in condemning America and its lifestyle. Yes, the United States has moral woes which weigh it down, and has great need of repentance. But these are found in its morality, not its marketplace, finances and prosperity.
The pope is preaching a gospel of Marx that depicts America as the hated 1 percent, the oppressive source of the world’s woes. That is consistent with the liberation theology of his youth, but not the realities of the world.
Because the realities of the world are that in the traditional values and priorities of the United States we find not the source of mankind’s problems, but the solution to mankind’s problems.
I hope the pope is open minded enough to recognize that.
I have two words for that idiot pope...F U.
Yeah, well, then he oughta sell all the real estate The Catholic Church owns in New York and around the world. While he's at it, he should sell all the gold, art and historic artifacts The Vatican owns.
Better yet, he should give it all away. Heaven forbid he should be party to turning a profit.
I’m about to stop attending the Catholic Church because of my disdain for this leftist disguised as the Pope
Now we have the bamster and Frankie. Is there a third counterfeit doofus somewhere to balance the original threesome?
Actually if you consider these as random events the odds are low. But they're NOT random events. They're the current culminations of cultural trends where reality is ignored and some sort of socialist utopia where earned wealth is taken from each according to his ability and give to each according to his (self perceived) need.
The problem is that "need" or more accurately "want" is infinite, and resources and finite. The free market economy has done the best job of allocating these resources of any system ever devised, but "social justice warriors" like the pope and the turd in the white hut can't see that. They're blinded by their false and evil redistributionist ideology. The very term "income inequality" tells you that anyone who uses term as if it were a bad thing is your enemy.
I could rattle on for a long time on this, but I'll spare anyone who read this far any further ranting.
“Now we have the bamster and Frankie. Is there a third counterfeit doofus somewhere to balance the original threesome? “
How about Carly? She’s a big enough fraud to fit in!
Pope Che is wrong about just about everything IMHO.
What ELSE is the Pope wrong about?..
Good article.
It seems to me the next time the College of Cardinals have to pick a pontiff they would consider someone who will stick to spiritual issues and keep his big trap shut on political issues. It certainly does not help one’s moral authority.
[“The Vatican has large investments with the Rothschilds of Britain, France and America, with the Hambros Bank, with the Credit Suisse in London and Zurich. In the United States it has large investments with the Morgan Bank, the Chase-Manhattan Bank, the First National Bank of New York, the Bankers Trust Company, and others.
“The Vatican has billions of shares in the most powerful international corporations such as Gulf Oil, Shell, General Motors, Bethlehem Steel, General Electric, International Business Machines, T.W.A., etc.” (...) ] (from the book the Vatican Billions)
“Is there a third counterfeit doofus somewhere to balance the original threesome?”
The “mainstream” media.
Don't leave the church; just stop writing checks to the church. Instead, write checks to Catholic schools.
My suggestion to His Holiness: Spend a few hours meditating on Job, Chapters 38-42, and see what God really thinks about man’s influence on the environment...just saying!
Maybe the pope f. will put Catholics on the right path, that is the straight and narrow path which is diametrically opposed to this pope’s ideology.
The Catholic Church will see attrition when pope Karl spews his Marxist rhetoric on American soil.
And here I thought the Borgias were the worst popes. I think we have a new winner.
Poverty, ignorance and suffering were the natural state of human beings for millennia. The rise of CAPITALISM has finally changed that although ignorance seems to be making a comeback.
Amen!
Funny that two of the 10 Commandments support private property... does the Pope not adhere to the 10 Commandments?
Youre right!
As with Obama, it’s those who elected him who are responsible. Obama and Francis are just being what they are.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.