Pope Francis vs. The Republican Agenda

While Pope Francis' recent remarks in the Philippines against gay marriage indicate that he is clinging to the ignorant 13th century concept of "natural law" and rejecting modern knowledge, on climate change, Francis is taking a totally different approach: he's accepting scientific knowledge and sees climate change as a dire risk.  (Why he embraces modern knowledge in one case and rejects it in the other is baffling).This, combined with his past condemnation of the vulture capitalism and new Gilded Age agenda of the Republican Party, is viewed as heresy by the false Christians so prevalent in today's GOP.  Andrew Sullivan has a good recap of the GOP hysteria with Francis' upcoming encyclical on climate change.   Here are some excerpts:

For the far right, the recent Synod on the Family was bad enough, with its gestures of decency towards gay Catholics. But the impending encyclical on climate change seems to have sparked a new level of mania. At First Things, Maureen Mullarkey calls the Pope “an ideologue and a meddlesome egoist”. Robbie George notes that Francis “has no special knowledge, insight, or teaching authority pertaining to matters of empirical fact of the sort investigated by, for example, physicists and biologists,” and that his views on climate change “could be wrong”. And Steve Moore, writing in Forbes, claims that the Pope has adopted “the language of the radical green movement that is at its core anti-Christian, anti-people, and anti-progress”. 

I find this all preposterous. We have just discovered that last year was the hottest on record, eclipsing 2010. Whole eco-systems are being wiped out; our oceans may be heading toward the point of no return; and the rape – rather than conservation – of our natural habitat is not even faintly defensible in Catholic or Christian terms.

Damon Linker analyzes the revolt:

The problem is simply that Francis has broken from too many elements in the Republican Party platform.

First there were affirming statements about homosexuality. Then harsh words for capitalism and trickle-down economics. And now climate change. That, it seems, is a bridge too far. Francis has put conservative American Catholics in the position of having to choose between the pope and the GOP.
In the hands of the theocons, the Republican platform became more than a parochially American mishmash of positions thrown haphazardly together for contingent historical reasons. Rather, it was a unified statement of High Moral Truth rooted in Thomas Aquinas’ medieval theology of natural law — the most highly developed outgrowth of Christian civilization.

And one that, in many respects, simply falls apart through the prism of modern science. The theocons created an abstract fusion of GOP policy and an unrecognizable form of Christianity that saw money as a virtue, the earth as disposable, and the poor as invisible.
As in so many areas, it’s the American far right whose bluff is finally being called.

Another Step Backwards for The Catholic Church

It seems that the Roman Catholic Church is hell bent on moving backward in time towards the Middle Ages. The latest relic of the past to be reintroduced is the indulgence, a sort of amnesty from punishment in the afterlife, doled out by the Church. In the bad old days, indulgences were purchased with monetary payments and the system became so grossly corrupt that it was a major cause in Martin Luther's demand that the practice be banned which in turn helped launch the Protestant Reformation in 1517. With the way the Church is going, one has to wonder when a pronouncement will be forthcoming lauding the use of the auto de fe. It is amazing how as the world marches forward, Benedict XVI and the Church march backwards. A story in the New York Times looks at the phenomenon. Here are some highlights:

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The announcement in church bulletins and on Web sites has been greeted with enthusiasm by some and wariness by others. But mainly, it has gone over the heads of a vast generation of Roman Catholics who have no idea what it means: “Bishop Announces Plenary Indulgences.” In recent months, dioceses around the world have been offering Catholics a spiritual benefit that fell out of favor decades ago — the indulgence, a sort of amnesty from punishment in the afterlife — and reminding them of the church’s clout in mitigating the wages of sin.

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Like the Latin Mass and meatless Fridays, the indulgence was one of the traditions decoupled from mainstream Catholic practice in the 1960s by the Second Vatican Council, the gathering of bishops that set a new tone of simplicity and informality for the church. Its revival has been viewed as part of a conservative resurgence that has brought some quiet changes and some highly controversial ones, like Pope Benedict XVI’s recent decision to lift the excommunications of four schismatic bishops who reject the council’s reforms.

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According to church teaching, even after sinners are absolved in the confessional and say their Our Fathers or Hail Marys as penance, they still face punishment after death, in Purgatory, before they can enter heaven. In exchange for certain prayers, devotions or pilgrimages in special years, a Catholic can receive an indulgence, which reduces or erases that punishment instantly, with no formal ceremony or sacrament.

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You can get one for yourself, or for someone who is dead. You cannot buy one — the church outlawed the sale of indulgences in 1567 — but charitable contributions, combined with other acts, can help you earn one. There is a limit of one plenary indulgence per sinner per day.

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After Catholics, the people most expert on the topic are probably Lutherans, whose church was born from the schism over indulgences and whose leaders have met regularly with Vatican officials since the 1960s in an effort to mend their differences. “It has been something of a mystery to us as to why now,” said the Rev. Dr. Michael Root, dean of the Lutheran Theological Southern Seminary in Columbia, S.C., who has participated in those meetings. The renewal of indulgences, he said, has “not advanced” the dialogue.

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But for Catholic leaders, most prominently the pope, the focus in recent years has been less on what Catholics have in common with other religious groups than on what sets them apart — including the half-forgotten mystery of the indulgence.

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As I have said many times before, I consider myself lucky to have left the growing insanity of the Roman Catholic Church.