Who Am to Judge Your Carbon Footprint? Pope Francis and Climate Change

Pope Francis is in the news for speaking out on the alleged dangers of man-made Climate Change.

Unfortunately, Francis is outside his field in making comments on this topic, and seems to have accepted uncritically the unproven pop-science of the moment.

Francis himself is not a climatologist, and no one would expect a Pope to be so. Francis, however, is also not a theologian, (no Doctorate, that is) but was a teacher of literature in Argentina, who went on to become Novice Master, Jesuit Provincial and then Rector of the Jesuit Collegio Maximo, prior to his elevation to the episcopacy.

Thoroughly formed according to the new spirit of Vatican II, his work as a diocesan bishop centered primarily not on doctrinal issues, but on pastoral activity with special focus on the “preferential option for the poor.” If Benedict XVI was a Lumen Gentium Pope, Francis is primarily a Gaudium et spes Pontiff.

Thus we read with consternation Pope Francis’ somewhat off-the-cuff remarks at his press conference in-flight between Sri Lanka and the Philippines on January 15.

Speaking about alleged Climate Change, Francis said he didn’t know if human activity “is the only cause” of this, but added that it is “man who has slapped nature in the face.” He went on to say that humans have “exploited nature too much,” and mentioned his upcoming Encyclical on the ecology.[1]

Last month, on December 11, Francis said in his Message to the UN Convention on Climate Change, “The effective struggle against global warming will only be possible with a responsible collective answer, that goes beyond particular interests and is free of political and economic pressures.”[2]

In both of the above statements, Francis appears to accept the prevailing narrative that global warming indeed is taking place, and that man and governments must act to retard or eradicate it.

Such benign – and apparently naïve – statements of Francis make no mention of the neo-pagan agenda of today’s environmentalists, a destructive agenda which calls for even greater alarm bells than any alleged ecological threat.

Granted, no one wants unregulated pollution of the earth, sea or sky, but today’s “Climate-Change - global warming” hysteria has all the appearance of a false crisis with a dark agenda.[3] It is a means of pushing for massive population control and a pretext for more government control into the details of our lives; it is where the “grant money” is for scientific research; the news media seldom tells us the truth regarding the non-threat of so-called man-made global warming. Much of the science itself is fraudulent or at least questionable. We will look briefly at these points.

Here we read, “The equation seems fairly simple: the more the world’s population rises, the greater the strain on dwindling resources and the greater the impact on the environment. The solution? Well, that’s a little trickier to talk about. Public-health discussions will regularly include mentions of voluntary family planning as a way to reduce unwanted pregnancies and births. But, said Jason Bremner of the Population Reference Bureau, those policies can also pay dividends for the environment.”

The Atlantic is mistaken to suggest “no one will talk about” population control as an alleged solution to Climate Change. Such proposals have been in the public discourse for quite some time. In fact, modern environmentalists constantly trumpet their goal of drastically reducing the world’s population. This objective has been a constitutive element of environmentalism from the beginning.

In 1997, Michel Gorbachev’s held what was called the “State of the World Forum” in San Francisco. It was an event billed as a building block to a new world order, and gathered nearly 500 senior states-people, political leaders, so-called spiritual leaders, scientists, intellectuals, business executives, artists and youth from 50 nations.

At the closing plenary session of the forum, Sam Keen said, “There was very strong agreement that religious institutions have to take primarily responsibility for the population explosion. We must speak far more clearly (about sexuality), about contraception, about abortion, about the values that control our population, because the ecological crisis, in short, is the population crisis. Cut the population by 90 percent and there aren’t enough people left to do a great deal of ecological damage.”[4]

A 2007 book by Alan Weisman titled A World Without Us calls on Americans to stop having children for the sake of the environment. He proposes a birth rate of one child per couple, at least for a few generations, which would eventually drop the population by five billion over the next century. His goal is to cut out of existence the billions of people who will allegedly contribute to global warming. Those remaining, he said, will share in “the growing joy of watching the world daily become more beautiful.” Even more disturbing than Weisman’s inhuman scheme is the fact that his book became a mainstream best seller.[5]

The call for a reduction of the world’s population – through sterilization, contraception, abortion, (all of which are mortal sins and contrary to natural law) – continues to the present. Here are some recent examples:

• The Lancet, August 14, 2009: “Future population growth in developing nations could accentuate climate change. A reduction in growth would help mitigate climate change while speeding up poverty-reduction and development.”[6]

• London Times, April, 2009: An advisor to Prime Minister Gordon Brown professed a belief that the UK’s population must be cut roughly in half because “Humans are carbon-producing machines.”[7]

• Hindustan Times, June 5, 2009: Reporting on World Environmental Day: “Other steps [to reduce greenhouse gas emissions] are population control by one and all irrespective of religious considerations for greater public interests (Governments should make it compulsory).”[8]

• The Pasedena Star News, April 21, 2009: This report noted that Senator Gaylord Nelson, who spearheaded the first Earth Day, set up Earth Day as an “anti-pollution, anti litter, population-control campaign.[9] We see that from the beginning Earth Day was steeped in population control, and places human beings on the same level as pollution and litter.

• Desert News, July 5, 2009: “Not too long ago the British Medical Journal urged Britons that ‘the biggest contribution U.K. couples can make to combating climate change would be to have only two children or at least one less than they first intended’.”[10]

• United News of India, September 5, 2008: “India today stressed the need for intensifying strategies to check population explosion, which is the single biggest factor contributing to global warming … “[11]

• The Australian Professor Barry Walters, writing in the Medical Journal of Australia (Dec. 10, 1007) seriously proposed that parents should pay a $5000 tax for the birth of each child, and an annual carbon tax of $800 per child.

Walters claims that every couple that has more than two-children should be taxed to pay for enough trees to offset the carbon emissions generated over each child’s lifetime. He also said that Australia’s government should discontinue the $4200 baby bonus that is given to parents, and should consider population controls like those in India and China. Garry Egger, a high-profile doctor in Australia, endorsed Professor Walters proposals. [12]

At the World Economic Forum in Davos in January 2014, Al Gore and Microsoft’s Bill Gates called for contraception and “fertility management” as crucial elements to combat Climate Change.[13]

In the midst of these hysterical predictions, no one seems to mention Al Gore’s 2008 warning to a German conference that “the entire North Polarized cap will disappear in five years”[14] - that’s 2013! Yet in 2013, the Daily Mail published satellite photos showing that ice caps by 2013 had increased, not decreased.[15] This is one of many examples of reckless predictions and questionable science that are rife within today’s Climate Change mania.

John Coleman, meteorologist and the founder of the Weather Channel, says openly and forcefully that the notion of man-made global warming is “The greatest scam in history.”

Coleman notes that the entire global warming argument is supposed to be about science. “The science of meteorology is my lifelong expertise, “ he says, “And I am telling you global warming is a non-event, a manufactured crisis, a total scam.”

“I have learned since the Ice-Age-is-coming-scare in the 1970’s to always be a skeptic about research,” continues Coleman. “In the case of the global warming scam, I didn’t accept media accounts. Instead I read dozens of the scientific papers. I have talked with numerous scientists. I have studied. I have thought about it. I know I am correct when I assure you there is no runaway climate change. The impact of humans on climate is not catastrophic. Our planet is not in peril. It is all a scam, the result of bad science.”[16]

Coleman is not alone. More than 31,000 scientists across the U.S. – including more than 9,000 Ph.D.s in various disciplines such as such as climatology, atmospheric science, Earth science, environment and various of other specialties – signed a petition called the “Global Warming Petition Project” rejecting the idea that the human production of greenhouse gases is damaging Earth’s climate.[17]

The Petition says, “There is no convincing scientific evidence that human release of carbon dioxide, methane, or other greenhouse gases is causing or will, in the foreseeable future, cause catastrophic heating of the Earth’s atmosphere and disruption of the Earth’s climate.” The Petition continues, “Moreover, there is substantial scientific evidence that increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide produce many beneficial effects upon the natural plant and animal environments of the Earth.”[18]

There are numerous other competent scientists who challenge the modern view concerning man-made global warming.

Reid Bryson, founding chairman of the Department of Meteorology at the University of Wisconsin, believes that the temperature of the earth is increasing, but it has nothing do to with what man is doing. He said, “You can go outside and spit and have the same effect as doubling carbon dioxide.”[19]

Joseph D’Alea, Director of Meteorology at The Weather Channel and former chief of the American Meteorological Society’s Committee on Weather Analysis and Forecast, said, “Carbon dioxide is 0.000383 of our atmosphere by volume. Only 2.75 percent of atmospheric CO2 is anthropogenic [generated by man] in origin. The amount we emit is said to be up from 1 percent a decade ago.” He continued, “Despite the increase in emissions, the rate of change of atmospheric carbon dioxide at Mauna Loa remains the same as the long term average (plus 0.45 percent per year).”

“We are responsible for just 0.001 percent of this atmosphere,” insists D’Alea. “If the atmosphere was a 100-story building, our anthropogenic CO2 contribution today would be equivalent to the linoleum on the first floor.”[20]

On June 26, 2009 the Wall Street Journal ran a revealing piece titled “The Climate Change Climate Change,”[21] documenting that the notion of man-made global warming is being rejected by a rising tide of honest scientists:

• Oklahoma Senator Jim Inhofe recently noted that there are more than 700 scientists who disagree with the United Nations official assessments of man-made global warming;

• Joanne Simpson, the first woman ever to receive a Ph.D. in meteorology, recently retired. After she retired, she expressed her relief that she can finally speak openly about her non-belief in the whole concept of man-made global warming. While she was working – prior to her retirement – it was dangerous for her professionally to speak out against man-made global warming;[22]

• Dr. Kiminori Ith, a Japanese environmental physical chemist – who contributed to a UN committee report –says that the notion of ‘man-made warming’ is “the worst scientific scandal in history;

• A group of 54 noted physicists, which is led by Will Happer from Princeton University, demanded that the American Physical Society revise its position that “the debate is over”, that the “science” is all settled. Predictably, both Nature magazine and Science magazine refused to run the Open Letter from these 54 physicians.

The entire environmental, global warming alarmist movement is really a kind of stealth socialism. It is a means of increasing government control over the smallest aspects of our lives. We should not be surprised that Christopher Hohner – author of Red Hot Lies – points to the fact that “throughout Europe the fallen Communists found refuges in the ‘Green’ parties.”[23]

The Communist Mikhail Gorbachev, who after the alleged fall of Communism openly stated that he was still a Marxist-Leninist, founded the Gorbachev Foundation (mentioned earlier), and became a globetrotting environmentalist.

Likewise Father Leonardo Boff, who was the radical advocate of the Marxist Liberation Theology is now also a proponent of ecology and the new environmentalism.Connections such as this, along with the leftist mindset of most Green leaders, is the reason why we call many environmentalists “watermelons”: green on the outside, red on the inside.

In fact, environmentalism was one of the first positions espoused by German Nazis. Author Jonah Goldberg writes. “The Nazi’s were among the first to make fighting air pollution, creating nature preserves, and pushing for sustainable forestry central planks in their platform.”[24]

Certainly in today’s context, Climate Change alarmists are using the specter of man-made global warming to exert greater control over the details of our lives. Columnist Richard Littlejohn, writing in the London Daily Mail, said, “I doubt there is a single country on earth where the entire political class has so completely taken leave of its senses over alleged global warming. Here in Britain, it has been seized upon as an exciting new weapon with which to inflict more taxes, fines and regulations on us.”[25]

The common objective of many of these anti-global warming initiatives is a vast expansion of government power. Most amazing: by keeping up the scare of global warming, government officials, left-wing academics, media commentator and green activists may be able to achieve a kind of totalitarianism that Communist dictators Tito and Stalin could only dream about. Vast numbers of indoctrinated population may willingly accept these strictures on their lives, all in the name of allegedly saving our planet from frying to a crisp.

British columnist Mark Steyn noted “It’s fascinating to observe how almost any old totalitarian racket becomes respectable once it’s cloaked in enviro-hooey. For example, restrictions on freedom of movement were previously the mark of the Soviet Union. But in Britain, they’re proposing limits on your right to take airline flights to other countries – all in the name of environmental responsibility; and fighting Climate Change -- and everyone thinks it’s a great idea”.[26]

To those who think this an exaggeration, here is what the Carbon Sense Coalition of Australia, a group that warns against Climate alarmists, lists the following measures environmentalists wish to take to fight so-called man-made global warming:

• ban open fires and pot-bellied stoves; • ban incandescent light bulbs; • ban bottle water; • ban private cars from some areas; • ban plasma TVs; • ban new airports; • ban extensions on existing airports; • ban coal fired power generation; • ban electric hot-water systems; • ban ‘standby mode’ on appliances; • ban vacationing by car; • ban three day weekends; • tax babies; • tax big cars; • tax supermarket parking areas; • tax rubbish; • tax second cars; • tax holiday plane flights; • tax showrooms for big cars; • Eco-tax for cars entering cities; • Require Permits to drive your care beyond city limits; • Limit your choice of appliances; • Issue carbon credits for every person; • Dictate fuel-effeciency standards. [27]

Of course, one of the main reasons the Greens want to control your life to force you to reduce your so-called “carbon footprint”, which is the amount of Carbon dioxide you allegedly produce by driving cars, using electricity, consuming any sort of fossil-fuel product, etc. If you use too much, and your carbon footprint is too big, the Greens want the government to punish you – or at least ration the amount of energy you are allowed to receive. The goal: your energy consumption should be closely watched.

In 2007, the California Energy Commission seriously proposed that homes should be required to have “programmable control thermostats.” These fancy new thermostats will give utility officials the ability to regulate your home thermostat or water heaters and refrigerators by even your lights by remote control – some one from remote location will be able to shut down your heat or electricity.[28] (Imagine if Stalin had such a system to use against his political enemies). The proposal was rejected, but it reflects the true mindset of the new Green police. You can be sure they will not give up; they will be back . In Britain, the government recently conducted trials with what are called “smart meters” that set off alarms if your energy use exceeds your allotted energy limit.[29]

In San Francisco, the so-called Catholic Mayor, Gavin Newsome, proposed that anyone in the city who mixes their recyclables with their regular trash be fined up to $1000.[30]

Why do so many scientists pursue Climate Change trendiness? There is an old saying, follow the money.

Today, Climate Change research is where the grant-money is! If you are a scientist or researcher, and you want funding – and you must have funding to make a living in research – you will have a hard time receiving grants if you ask for funds to disprove man-made global warming. But if you get on the Climate Change bandwagon – hook up to the gravy train – there will be plenty of research money for you to make a living.

Sadly, even in the so-called higher world of science and academics, the motivation can be just that crass. John Coleman, the meteorologist quoted earlier who founded the Weather Channel, said, “Scientists are afraid of speaking out against global warming because they’ll lose their grants. I’m not looking for grants.”[31]

In the same vein, Roy Spencer, who is Principle Research Scientist at the University of Alabama, and author of the book Climate Confusion, notes, “The financial incentive for individual scientists to speak out on the global warming is on the side of the global warming alarmists.”[32]

Spencer points out, “Philanthropic foundations with leftist boards of directors routinely give money to alarmist causes.” He talks about the $500,000 no-strings-attached grants have been awarded by the MacArther Foundation to climate research scientists who sound the alarm against man-made global warming. Likewise, James Hansen, director of NASA’s Goddard Institute, received a grant from a foundation headed by John Kerry’s wife to the tune of $250,000.

Spencer goes on to say, “By far, the largest supporters of environmental groups and climate researchers is the federal government, with your tax dollars.”

He also notes there are no such funds given to those scientists who refute man-made climate change. “And based upon its historical record”, Spencer says, “you can bet that a Nobel Prize will never be awarded to the scientist who ever demonstrates that global warming is not the huge threat to mankind that it is advertised to be.”[33]

Of course, do not expect to read about challenges to Climate Change science in the most of the mainstream media. As Spencer points out – and he is not the only one – the mainstream press routinely keeps us uniformed on the true nature of man-made global warming. The media is firmly on the side of the hysteria.

This should not surprise us, as the major networks and news media, CBS, NBC, ABC, CNN, as well as major newspapers such as New York Times, Philadelphia Inquirer, Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune, Boston Globe, and even small-circulation papers are not really interested in objective journalism, but are proponents of the neo-pagan, politically-correct agenda.[34]

Dr. Roy Spencer, whom we quoted earlier, noted, “No one does a better job at keeping you misinformed on environmental issues than the media ... A large part of the public’s concern about the environment can be traced to editorial bias in the major media sources.”[35]

For example, Christopher C. Hohner in his book Red Hot Lies dedicates an entire chapter to the lies and obfuscation of mainstream media regarding the fraud of man-made global warming: Some examples:

• Republican Senator James Inhofe recently produced a peer-reviewed work by more than 400 scientists that countered the so-called “scientific consensus” that claims man is responsible for global warming. The New York Times did not run the story in the newspaper, but only mentioned it on a blog and dismissed it as a “distraction”;[36]

• The Washington Post is quick to give pride-of-place to an hysterical story about alleged record “ice melt”, but the fact that the Antarctic sheet is actually getting thicker, receives virtually no press. The news had to show up on a “newsbusters” website;[37]

• When a researcher recently concluded that the Larson ice shelves that broke off in 2002 was not a result of global warming as the hype at the time claimed, but only the product of natural activities, only the researcher’s local newspaper in Wales bothered to report on it. The rest of the world’s press effectively pretended the research never occurred.[38]

• Likewise the press loves to trot out horror stories about global warming killing off polar bears and threatening them with extinction. But when an expert-in-the-field recently concluded that the polar bear is in no danger, and is likely to be with us for a long time, the only paper to report this was the Nunatsiaq News, published in the city of Iqaliut, which is an artic, Eskimo city in the northern regions of Canada.[39]

Almost simultaneously, Reuters news service published a report by Alistair Doyle who quoted a visitor (not a scientist, a visitor) to the North Pole. The visitor said he saw two polar bears, one looked dead and the other looked fatigued. And Doyle – a so-called reporter – ran a September 2006 story claiming that if a polar bear looked dead and another polar bear looked tired, it must certainly be due to global warming.[40]

Saul Alinsky, the professional left-wing agitator, lists as #5 on his rules for radicals the principle: “Ridicule is man’s most important most potent weapon – Never underestimate the power of ridicule.”[41]

Global warming doubters, global warming deniers, even though they appear to have science on their side, are constantly held up for scorn and ridicule by trendy scientists and media.

Michael Mann, who developed the now-discredited “hockey-stick” graph to predict catastrophic frying of the planet due to man-made global warming, said that for a newspaper to even quote a skeptic of man-made global warning is akin to granting “the Flat Earth Society an equal say with NASA in the design of a new space satellite.” This quote from Michael Mann was dutifully published in the April 9, 2006 edition of the Boston Globe.[42]

In fact, when Michael Mann’s hockey-stick-shape graph of historical temperatures was discredited, the Seattle Post-Intelligence writer Mark Trahant dismissed this discrediting as “quibbling.”[43] We see the mainstream media in most cases cannot be trusted to tell the truth about the Climate Change or global warming. The reports will be slanted or selective; news items will be omitted that challenges their agenda; or there will be outright lies.

As we said at the open, today’s environmental, Climate Change program is a means of advancing population control and more government control into the details of our lives; it is rife with “grant money” for scientific research favorable to the theory; the news media seldom tells us the truth regarding the non-threat of so-called man-made global warming; most of the science itself appears to be fraudulent or at least questionable.

Pope Francis would perform a great service if he addressed this dark side of environmentalism in his proposed Encyclical on the ecology, but given his Conciliar trendiness, it seems highly unlikely.

As we get closer to Francis’ ecology Encyclical, we will further examine a prevailing superstition: we will discuss the false claim that addressing ecology and Climate Change rises to the level of a major Christian imperative for our time.

Notes: [1] “Pope Francis Says there are Limits to Freedom of Expression,” Radio Vatican, January 15, 2015. It should be mentioned that Francis does have an MA in Chemistry,but this is a different field from Climatology or Meteorology.

[2] “Pope’s Message to UN Convention on Climate Change,” Zenit, December 11, 2014.

[3] Steve Milloy, author of the eye-opening book Green Hell: How Environmentalists Plan to Control Your Life opens with a brief synopsis of what the “Green Movement” is really all about: “Green ideologues are bursting with an impatient zeal to begin dictating, through force of law, your mobility, diet, home energy use, the size of your house, how far you can travel, and even … how many children you can have … this is how the greens themselves describe their intentions … Living green is really about some else micro-regulating you – downsizing your dreams and plugging each one of us into a brand new social order for which we never bargained. It’s about you living under the green thumb and having the boundaries of your life drawn by others.” Quoted from Green Hell: How Environmentalists Plan to Control Your Life and What You Can Do to Stop Them, Steve Milloy [Washington: Regnery, 2009], p. 3.

[4] “Environmental Genocide,” William F. Jasper, The New American, July 2, 2001.

[5] “Global Swarming: Is it Time for Americans to Start Cutting Our Baby Emissions?” Daniel Engber, Slate.com, Sept. 10, 2007.

[6] “Climate Change and Population Growth”, Jose Miguel Guzman, The Lancet, August 14, 2009. [Emphasis added]

[7] “Climate Change Could be used as a Means to Power”, Opinion, Syracuse Post-Standard, April 19, 2009.

[8] “Combating Global Warming”, Hindustan Times, June 5, 2009. [Emphasis added].

[9] “For Earth Day, the Issues Change but the Spirit Remains”, Pasadena Star-News, April 21, 2009.

[10] “Climate change and population control: Be careful what you wish for”, Desert News, Joseph A. Cannon, July 5, 2009.

[11] “Population Control Key Factor in Checking Global Warming: Experts”, United News of India, Sept. 5, 2008.

[12] “Baby Tax Needed to Save Planet, Claims Expert”, Jen Kelly, The Advertiser, December 10, 2007.

[13] “Contraception Key in Climate Change Fight: Gore and Gates,” CNBC, January 24. 2014.

[14] See “Al Gore: ‘North Pole Will Disappear in 5 Years’, James Holt, Gateway Pundit, December 13, 2008; and the follow up: “FIVE YEARS AGO TODAY… Al Gore Predicted the North Pole Will Be Ice Free in 5 Years,” James Holt, Gateway Pundit, December 13, 2008

[15] “And now it’s global COOLING! Return of Arctic ice cap as it grows by 29% in a year,” Daily Mail, September 7, 2013 (Updated October 11, 2014). See also “Sorry Irthers: The Arctic Ice Cap Has Returned!,” Gateway Pundit, Sept. 8, 2013.

[19] 31,000 Scientists Reject ‘Global Warming’ Agenda”, Bob Unruh, WorldNewDaily, May 19, 2008.

[20] Ibid. [21] “The Climate Change Climate Change”, Kimberly A. Strassel, Wall Street Journal, June 26, 2009.

[22] Those who deny man-made Global warming are often ridiculed, called a member of the “Flat Earth Society” or called a “Climate Terrorist”. We who have been opposing Evolution over the years – that other scientific fraud – are used to this. There is little or no scientific evidence, but it’s accepted as a scientific dogma that may not be questioned.

[23] Red Hot Lies: How Global Warming Alarmists Use Threats, Fraud, and Deception to Keep You Misinformed, Chrisopher C. Hohner, [Washington: Regnery, 2008], p. 217.

[24] Liberal Facism: The Secret History of the American Left from Mussolini to the Politics of Meaning, Jonah Goldberg, [New York: Doubleday, 2007], p. 384.

[26] “People Who Don’t Need People”, Mark Steyn, National Review Online’s The Corner, Sept. 7, 2007 [emphasis added].

[30] “Exposing the Green New World Order”, James Perloff, The New American, Aug. 21, 2009.

[32] Climate Confusion: How Global Warming Hysteria Leads to Bad Science, Pandering Politicians and Misguided Policies that Hurt the Poor, Roy W. Spencer, [New York: Encounter Book, 2008], p. 7. [33] Ibid.

[34] A good example of this is the documentary Media Malpractice – the way the media abandoned all pretsxt of objectivity and pulled out all the stops to promote Obama and savaged Sarah Palin. The press savaged Sarah Palin because she is pro-life, anti-socialist, anti-homosexual.

[41] Rules for Radicals: A Pragmatic Primer for Realistic Radicals, Saul D. Alinsky, [New York: Vintage, 1971], p. 128.

Father forgive me as I have carbon credit sinned! And Jesus said “Go and carbon sin no more” Than Jesus whipped and chased the carbon credit changers out of the temple.

Great post.

Our dear jet setting Pope is lecturing about global warming as he blows through thousands of gallons of jet fuel.

The Pope proclaims that nature is a deity and a person.

________________________

No, he does not.

He’s also a human being and he speaks and writes a lot like the rest of us. I myself have joked about missing my friend, Mr. Sun, particularly in the middle of winter....but that certainly doesn’t imply that I am deifying the Sun. I don’t deify the moon either when I talk about the “man in the moon.” Neither did the Pope’s choice of words imply anything similar.

The press often distorts (on some occasions has even lied about) what the Pope has said. Imagine that!

Here’s one site where you can get the truth about what the Pope has said...full transcripts too: http://jimmyakin.com/2015/01/the-weekly-francis-12-january-2015.html

If the liberals reported everything the Pope says in his daily homilies...well they won’t...because it doesn’t “fit their narrative.”

Forget it. You can say he is the Pope or not. You know the traditions of the church, he isn’t allowed to make such secular laymen statements.

If this was one case of him making secular proclamations, then I would give him a pass, but there is a pattern of spitting into the face of Jesus.

...he isn’t allowed to make such secular laymen statements.

___________________________

The Pope is not allowed to speak like the rest of us? Says who?

Please define a “secular layman statement.” ;-)

You can say he is the Pope or not.

______________

Huh? What are you attempting to say here?

...there is a pattern of spitting into the face of Jesus.

________________________

That is a very strong statement. Where is the proof?

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.