Why I am Boycotting Pope's Address

[channonc 466]

Thought I would share this.

Why I Am Boycotting Pope Francis’ Address to Congress

Congressman Paul Gosar | Sep 17, 2015

It is difficult to convey the excitement I first felt when it was revealed that His Holiness Pope Francis was invited to Washington D.C. to address the world from the floor of the House of Representatives. Many believed, like I did, that this was an opportunity for the Pope to be one of the world’s great religious advocates and address the current intolerance of religious freedom. An opportunity to urgently challenge governments to properly address the persecution and execution of Christians and religious minorities; to address the heinous and senseless murders committed by ISIS and other terrorist organizations. An opportunity to address the enslavement, belittlement, rape and desecration of Christian women and children; to address the condoned, subsidized, intentionally planned genocide of unborn children by Planned Parenthood and society; and finally, an opportunity for His Holiness to refocus our priorities on right from wrong.

Media reports indicate His Holiness instead intends to focus the brunt of his speech on climate change--a climate that has been changing since first created in Genesis.

More troubling is the fact that this climate change talk has adopted all of the socialist talking points, wrapped false science and ideology into “climate justice” and is being presented to guilt people into leftist policies. If the Pope stuck to standard Christian theology, I would be the first in line. If the Pope spoke out with moral authority against violent Islam, I would be there cheering him on. If the Pope urged the Western nations to rescue persecuted Christians in the Middle East, I would back him wholeheartedly. But when the Pope chooses to act and talk like a leftist politician, then he can expect to be treated like one. Artist and columnist Maureen Mullarkey effectively communicated this fallacy stating, “When papal preferences, masked in a Christian idiom, align themselves with ideological agendas (e.g. radical environmentalism) [they] impinge on democratic freedoms and the sanctity of the individual.”

The earth’s climate has been changing since God created it, with or without man. On that, we should all agree. In Pope Francis’ encyclical on the environment (written with the consultation of that great seminary the EPA and its embattled head Gina McCarthy), he condemned anyone skeptical of the link between human activity and climate change and adopted the false science being propagated by the Left. If the Pope wants to devote his life to fighting climate change then he can do so in his personal time. But to promote questionable science as Catholic dogma is ridiculous.

Furthermore, I am a proud Catholic. I chose to attend a Jesuit college in the Midwest, not just for my undergraduate but also my graduate studies (D.D.S.). I received an excellent education where I was taught to think critically, to welcome debate and discussion and to be held accountable for my actions; a trademark of a Jesuit education. And finally, I am a Conservative, a member of Congress, a constitutionalist and adamant defender of our Republic; an American that believes in strict adherence to the rule of law and a firm believer in our First Amendment protections, in this particular discussion, the freedom of religion.

So at this pivotal moment in world history, His Holiness, Pope Francis, is intending to spend the majority of his time on one of the world’s greatest stages focusing on climate change. I have both a moral obligation and leadership responsibility to call out leaders, regardless of their titles, who ignore Christian persecution and fail to embrace opportunities to advocate for religious freedom and the sanctity of human life. If the Pope plans to spend the majority of his time advocating for flawed climate change policies, then I will not attend. It is my hope that Pope Francis realizes his time is better spent focusing on matters like religious tolerance and the sanctity of all life. As the leader of the Catholic Church, and as a powerful voice for peace throughout the world, His Holiness has a real opportunity to change the climate of slaughter in the Middle East… not the fool’s errand of climate change.

[Proud Tiger 4,261]

That is sad. He must not have heard from Jesus lately if he is going to get off on controversial politcal topics

[quietfan 233]

[quietfan 233]

That is sad. He must not have heard from Jesus lately if he is going to get off on controversial politcal topics

Just curious: What defines a "controversial political topic"? Wouldn't gay rights, abortion & birth control, economic justice, etc. qualify as such, yet plenty of religious people express opinions on those.

[Grumps 3,704]

A degree in Chemistry clearly makes the pope an expert on global warming, oops, I mean climate change.

[Grumps 3,704]

That is sad. He must not have heard from Jesus lately if he is going to get off on controversial politcal topics

Clearly, the liberal political agenda is bigger than the pope, for him to be willing to be their pawn.

[cptau 169]

George Will's recent column pope Francis.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/pope-franciss-fact-free-flamboyance/2015/09/18/7d711750-5d6a-11e5-8e9e-dce8a2a2a679_story.html

Pope Francis embodies sanctity but comes trailing clouds of sanctimony. With a convert’s indiscriminate zeal, he embraces ideas impeccably fashionable, demonstrably false and deeply reactionary. They would devastate the poor on whose behalf he purports to speak — if his policy prescriptions were not as implausible as his social diagnoses are shrill.

Supporters of Francis have bought newspaper and broadcast advertisements to disseminate some of his woolly sentiments that have the intellectual tone of fortune cookies. One example: “People occasionally forgive, but nature never does.” The Vatican’s majesty does not disguise the vacuity of this. Is Francis intimating that environmental damage is irreversible? He neglects what technology has accomplished regarding London’s air (see Page 1 of Dickens’s “Bleak House”) and other matters.

And the Earth is becoming “an immense pile of filth”? Hyperbole is a predictable precursor of yet anotherU.N. Climate Change Conference — the 21st since 1995. Fortunately, rhetorical exhibitionism increases as its effectiveness diminishes. In his June encyclical and elsewhere, Francis lectures about our responsibilities, but neglects the duty to be as intelligent as one can be.This man who says “the Church does not presume to settle scientific questions” proceeds as though everything about which he declaims is settled, from imperiled plankton to air conditioning being among humanity’s “harmful habits.” The church that thought it was settled science that Galileo was heretical should be attentive to all evidence.

Francis deplores “compulsive consumerism,” a sin to which the 1.3 billion persons without even electricity can only aspire. He leaves the Vatican to jet around praising subsistence farming, a romance best enjoyed from 30,000 feet above the realities that such farmers yearn to escape.

The saint who is Francis’s namesake supposedly lived in sweet harmony with nature. For most of mankind, however, nature has been, and remains, scarcity, disease and natural — note the adjective — disasters. Our flourishing requires affordable, abundant energy for the production of everything from food to pharmaceuticals. Poverty has probably decreased more in the past two centuries than in the preceding three millennia because of industrialization powered by fossil fuels. Only economic growth has ever produced broad amelioration of poverty, and since growth began in the late 18th century, it has depended on such fuels.

Matt Ridley, author of “The Rational Optimist,” notes that coal supplanting wood fuel reversed deforestation, and that “fertilizer manufactured with gas halved the amount of land needed to produce a given amount of food.” The capitalist commerce that Francis disdains is the reason the portion of the planet’s population living in “absolute poverty” ($1.25 a day) declined from 53 percent to 17 percent in three decades after 1981. Even in low-income countries, writes economist Indur Goklany, life expectancy increased from between 25 to 30 years in 1900 to 62 years today. Sixty-three percent of fibers are synthetic and derived from fossil fuels; of the rest, 79 percent come from cotton, which requires synthetic fertilizers and pesticides. “Synthetic fertilizers and pesticides derived from fossil fuels,” he says, “are responsible for at least 60 percent of today’s global food supply.” Without fossil fuels, he says, global cropland would have to increase at least 150 percent — equal to the combined land areas of South America and the European Union — to meet current food demands.

Francis grew up around the rancid political culture of Peronist populism, the sterile redistributionism that has reduced his Argentina from the world’s 14th highest per-capita gross domestic product in 1900 to 63rd today. Francis’s agenda for the planet — “global regulatory norms” — would globalize Argentina’s downward mobility.

As the world spurns his church’s teachings about abortion, contraception, divorce, same-sex marriage and other matters, Francis jauntily makes his church congruent with the secular religion of “sustainability.” Because this is hostile to growth, it fits Francis’s seeming sympathy for medieval stasis, when his church ruled the roost, economic growth was essentially nonexistent and life expectancy was around 30.

Francis’s fact-free flamboyance reduces him to a shepherd whose selectively reverent flock, genuflecting only at green altars, is tiny relative to the publicity it receives from media otherwise disdainful of his church. Secular people with anti-Catholic agendas drain his prestige, a dwindling asset, into promotion of policies inimical to the most vulnerable people and unrelated to what once was the papacy’s very different salvific mission.

He stands against modernity, rationality, science and, ultimately, the spontaneous creativity of open societies in which people and their desires are not problems but precious resources. Americans cannot simultaneously honor him and celebrate their nation’s premises.

[cptau 169]

Time to retire this cartoon as it is not remotely accurate .

Actually Francis has the equivalent of a junior college or trade school degree in Chemical technology. He worked for several years as a technician in a food lab in Buenos Aires.

He never obtained Masters or Bachelor degrees in Chemistry.

http://ncronline.org...egree-chemistry

Numerous press reports are saying that Pope Francis has a master's degree in chemistry, including one that incorrectly cites me as a source. Sorry, it is not true.

It is true that Pope Francis studied chemistry and worked as a chemist prior to entering the seminary. But Jorge Bergoglio never graduated from university prior to entering the seminary.

"For Bergoglio's generation, a university education was still something pretty much beyond the reach of his social class," explains Jesuit Fr. Arthur Liebscher, associate professor of Latin American church history at Santa Clara University. "Although Argentine education is completely free of charge, there was an elitist air to finishing a licentiate or doctorate. Bergoglio took advantage of what was available, and it wasn't bad."

What he did do was graduate with a título in chemistry from the Escuela Técnica Industrial No. 12*, which is a state-run technical secondary school.

In the Argentine system, "the título (same word used for a secondary diploma or a university degree) was earned at about age 19 after an extended secondary program," Liebscher said. "Not everyone who goes to secondary school gets one of those diplomas, and the título really represents something beyond our high-school diploma, something akin a certificate from a community college in the U.S."

In Liebscher's opinion, "the education offered in such Argentine schools is quite a bit better, certainly in Bergoglio's era, than what we'd find in a North American high school."

"Bergoglio did receive a secular education aimed at employment in a technical field," Liebscher said. "However, he did not receive a university degree in chemistry."

Liebscher said he hopes this does not sound like "we're denigrating his education. Francis certainly respects the scientific method, and careful measurement ranks high in his list of values."

[AURaptor 1,122]

I'm not catholic, so he's not my problem. But when I heard that Obama is eagerly waiting to greet him at the airport, I knew why.

Both are devout socialists.

[homersapien 11,367]

Denier wacko.

And George Will has his head stuck up his ass.

[AURaptor 1,122]

Denier wacko.

And George Will has his head stuck up his ass.

What's the frequency, Kenneth?

[DKW 86 7,419]

I have this on my facebook wall.

I will note that he doesnt have the MS however.

[MDM4AU 332]

Well, with all due respect, it has been pointed out on here many times that unless you are a climatologist, your opinion on climate change isn't worth much.

[homersapien 11,367]

Well, with all due respect, it has been pointed out on here many times that unless you are a climatologist, you have a basic understanding and respect for the scientific process, of your opinion on climate change isn't worth much.

fify

And I expect this Pope qualifies.

[MDM4AU 332]

Well, with all due respect, it has been pointed out on here many times that unless you are a climatologist, you have a basic understanding and respect for the scientific process, of your opinion on climate change isn't worth much. ;)/>

fify

And I expect the Pope qualifies.

Rewrite history much?

[homersapien 11,367]

Well, with all due respect, it has been pointed out on here many times that unless you are a climatologist, you have a basic understanding and respect for the scientific process, of your opinion on climate change isn't worth much. ;)/>

fify

And I expect the Pope qualifies.

Rewrite history much?

I modified my post to say this Pope, if that's what you are talking about.

[quietfan 233]

As I see it:

A climatologist/environmentalist has the proper training to collect and analyze the evidence in that specialized area, just as a neurologist has the proper skill set for studying neurology. But scientists in other fields, familiar with the scientific method, proper research methodology, and techniques of statistical analysis regardless of field, are better trained than non-scientists to read, review, and evaluate a climatologist's published research.

However, upon further reading on my part, I should note that Pope Francis does not actually have a Master's degree in chemistry...that is an internet exaggeration. He does have a "titulo" diploma in chemistry (an Argentine credential somewhat like a 2-year or community college degree in the U.S.) and worked briefly as a chemical technician before deciding to go into the priesthood. http://ncronline.org...egree-chemistry He does have a master's degree and finished his doctoral thesis in theology however, which I'm guessing is where the "Master's in chemistry" story arose: A 2-year degree in chemistry confused with a Master's in another field.

Of course, since Congressman Gosar invokes Genesis and creationism in the opening link, I discount his "scientific" opinion entirely.

He says "to promote questionable science as Catholic dogma is ridiculous", but I would respond: to quote conservative Christian dogma (Genesis creation) as science is even more ridiculous. The Church at least can stand upon the doctrine of Papal Infallibility if the Pope decides to promote global warming as church dogma. No thinking scientist would defend Gosar's Biblical creationist as scientific dogma.

[AURaptor 1,122]

If I were a Catholic, I'm sure I'd have a bit of a problem w/ a Pope who speaks out more against climate change , lonely old folks and the evils of capitalism more than what ISIS is doing to not just a nation but an entire region, as well as the issue of abortion. I'm pretty sure if I were to buy into there being " evil " in the world, that climate change would fall well below militant islam on that list.

[homersapien 11,367]

If I were a Catholic, I'm sure I'd have a bit of a problem w/ a Pope who speaks out more against climate change , lonely old folks and the evils of capitalism more than what ISIS is doing to not just a nation but an entire region, as well as the issue of abortion. I'm pretty sure if I were to buy into there being " evil " in the world, that climate change would fall well below militant islam on that list.

That's illogical and irrational. Congratulations on your double play.

[MDM4AU 332]

Well, with all due respect, it has been pointed out on here many times that unless you are a climatologist, you have a basic understanding and respect for the scientific process, of your opinion on climate change isn't worth much. ;)/>

fify

And I expect the Pope qualifies.

Rewrite history much?

:dunno:/>

I modified my post to say this Pope, if that's what you are talking about.

No, my reply was tongue-in-cheek to quietfan in regards to the responses seen on here (don't remember who specifically) that suggested that scientists other than climatologists weren't in a position to discuss or disagree about global warming. Your crossing that line out appears to suggest that never happened.

[Grumps 3,704]

I don't understand why the liberals aren't going crazy about the POTUS spending millions to honor a religious figure. What about separation of church and state?

[homersapien 11,367]

I don't understand why the liberals aren't going crazy about the POTUS spending millions to honor a religious figure. What about separation of church and state?

The pope is also a political figure and the head of a state.

But it's Boehner who invited him to speak before congress, not the president.

[TitanTiger 20,472]

The conservative establishment freakout over the Pope is because it threatens their current coalition of various interest groups. They've made a lot of hay over the years cobbling together a confederation of hard core economic libertarians and laissez-faire capitalists with social/moral traditionalists. Combined with the Democratic party's utter disdain for anyone who holds to conservative social and moral views, they've managed to get a lot of them to buy into the establishment economic and fiscal views (which plays into environmental views because of regulation and taxes). But Pope Francis threatens to cast that entire alliance into chaos by suggesting that someone who holds to Biblical and traditionalist views of morality need not subscribe to everything else conservatives preach on other matters.

Believe me, if there were a person of similar stature and influence on the liberal side that held to more liberal/Democratic positions on economic policy, trade unions, taxes, universal health care and so on but was adamantly pro-life, the liberal talking heads would be having a conniption as well. There just isn't such a person on that side right now. There are pro-life Democrats but they don't have the following of a Pope Francis and are largely already marginalized within that party.

[quietfan 233]

I don't understand why the liberals aren't going crazy about the POTUS spending millions to honor a religious figure. What about separation of church and state?

The pope is also a political figure and the head of a state.

But it's Boehner who invited him to speak before congress, not the president.

Exactly. Pope Francis has the same diplomatic status as Benjamin Netanyahu: Head of a sovereign state. As such, if invited to address Congress, he is also entitled to speak on any topic that concerns heads of state, including environmental issues!

[Grumps 3,704]

I don't understand why the liberals aren't going crazy about the POTUS spending millions to honor a religious figure. What about separation of church and state?

The pope is also a political figure and the head of a state.

But it's Boehner who invited him to speak before congress, not the president.

Exactly. Pope Francis has the same diplomatic status as Benjamin Netanyahu: Head of a sovereign state. As such, if invited to address Congress, he is also entitled to speak on any topic that concerns heads of state, including environmental issues!

Great points! I just don't remember the same fanfare for Netanyahu. I think the U.S. is treating this more like a visit from Prince William (is that the right prince?) and Kate Middleton. It is interesting that the pope's remarks so far are right in line with the president's. Does the U.S. pay the pope to come or does he/The Vatican foot the bill?