Papal Smear
In the midst of a childish, distorting, and very poorly written attack on the Pope, Max Borders and Daniel Bier write:
"Pope Francis never bothers to draw the connection between wealth and health because he thinks of both production and consumption as sinful."
I think this must be the stupidest claim I have ever encountered in my life. Of course one can consume sinfully or produce sinfully. But for what these writers say to be true, the Pope would have to think things like eating or building a church are sinful!
UPDATE: In fact, right in the encyclical, Francis says:
'The biblical texts are to be read in their context, with an appropriate hermeneutic, recognizing that they tell us to “till and keep” the garden of the world (cf. Gen 2:15). “Tilling” refers to cultivating, ploughing or working, while “keeping” means caring, protecting, overseeing and preserving. This implies a relationship of mutual responsibility between human beings and nature.'
So Francis very explicitly says that the Bible itself enjoins us to "work" the earth, i.e., to produce. But I would lay 100-1 odds that these two boobs wrote their entire "critique" of his encyclical without having read more than a handful of excerpts from it.
"Pope Francis never bothers to draw the connection between wealth and health because he thinks of both production and consumption as sinful."
I think this must be the stupidest claim I have ever encountered in my life. Of course one can consume sinfully or produce sinfully. But for what these writers say to be true, the Pope would have to think things like eating or building a church are sinful!
UPDATE: In fact, right in the encyclical, Francis says:
'The biblical texts are to be read in their context, with an appropriate hermeneutic, recognizing that they tell us to “till and keep” the garden of the world (cf. Gen 2:15). “Tilling” refers to cultivating, ploughing or working, while “keeping” means caring, protecting, overseeing and preserving. This implies a relationship of mutual responsibility between human beings and nature.'
So Francis very explicitly says that the Bible itself enjoins us to "work" the earth, i.e., to produce. But I would lay 100-1 odds that these two boobs wrote their entire "critique" of his encyclical without having read more than a handful of excerpts from it.
Well, well. What a surprise that article was. It's been a while since I've seen moronic claims about environmentalism, and I see these two twits played the paganism AND socialism canards. Same old stupid crap from these two that I've seen played by others.
ReplyDeleteAlso, I think this was the dumbest thing they wrote: "He has confused the disease (unhealthy indoor air pollution) with the cure (cheap, clean, abundant and mass-produced energy from fossil fuels)."
Bravo! Nice one, Gene!
ReplyDeleteAlong these lines...
ReplyDeleteWhat do you think about the notion that the sort of writings you have cited ("till and keep the garden of the world") justifies/supports/encourages radical alterations of the natural world in such a manner as to make it more hospitable/healthy/life supporting, etc.?
I've heard of an old, semi-crazy/radical plan to reroute a lot of the water from British Colombia that basically just flows into the ocean back inland into the desert Southwest, (Death Valley and such) so that it would not be a barren desert wasteland and would wind up something like a lake. It could support more plant and animal life, agriculture, etc.
Would this kind of thing be supported by the RC position? It seems like it would be (and I must admit it kind of appeals to me), but I should think standard environmentalists would not like it at all.