Jeb Bush Describes His Conversion to Catholicism

Presidential hopeful discusses how a public official can act on his faith

Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush let a gathering of evangelical activists in on the journey he took in becoming a Catholic, and while he used terms that may not be common among Catholics, his reasons will no doubt find resonance in many others who have "swum the Tiber."

June 23, 2015

World Affairs Council-cc

Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush let a gathering of evangelical activists in on the journey he took in becoming a Catholic, and while he used terms that may not be common among Catholics, his reasons will no doubt find resonance with many others who have "swum the Tiber."

In his talk at the Faith and Freedom Coalition convention in Washington, DC, the Republican presidential candidate focused on following his wife into the Church and the "comfort" that his faith gives him.

“I converted to the Catholic Church—Christ came into my life a little earlier, but I converted to being Catholic in honor of my wife and because I believe in the blessed sacraments and they give me great comfort,” he said at the beginning of his speech. “On Easter Sabbath of 1995, I had lost an election in 1994 and found a total serenity and solace in the RCIA class, and converted to being a Catholic and it’s been an organizing part of my architecture, if you will, as a person and certainly as an elected official.”

Catholics normally refer to the Eucharist as the "Blessed Sacrament," but the other six simply as "sacraments," not "blessed sacraments." It's not clear that "Easter Sabbath" refers to Easter itself, the Easter Vigil (Holy Saturday) or the Saturday after Easter (Easter Saturday), but many adults who come into the Church do so at the Easter Vigil Mass on the eve of Easter.

RCIA stands for Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults, the process by which those seeking to enter the Church prepare for Baptism and/or Confirmation and Eucharist.

Bush, the son and brother, respectively, of former presidents George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush told the gathering of falling in love "at first sight" with a 16-year-old Mexican girl, Columba Garnica de Gallo, when he was a 17-year-old exchange student near Leon, Mexico. The couple married four years later, and Bush was affected by his wife's Catholicism.

Their son, Geoge P. Bush, said during his father's presidential campaign launch event last week that Bush started going to Mass with Columba soon after they met.

To say that his Catholicism has been an "organizing part of my architecture" speaks to the question that he took up in the speech—whether a person's religion can inform his decisions in public life.

"How strange in our time today to hear that our faith and our moral traditions spoken as some kind of a backwards or oppressive force when in fact it is really the moral foundation of our country, the greatest country on the face of the earth," he said. "It has also been, I think, in many ways, if we're objective about this and take a step back, the greatest force for good in the world, the greatest force that has ever been known in the world. Feeding the hungry, healing the sick, welcoming the stranger, these are the tenets of our faith. If we act on our faith each and every day we'll create a more just, a more loving world. The instinct to do these things didn't come from nowhere. They came from our religious tradition. We must stand together to protect those freedoms that are so sacred and so important for a free society."

He said that as governor of Florida from 1999-2007, he "insisted that we build a culture of life, from beginning to end. It was one of the guiding principles... We took special care for the most vulnerable in our society because I do believe, I honestly believe, that as a conservative that believes in limited government, we need to put the most vulnerable in our society first... because they're of value, they're of, as much value as everybody else."

He said that he led efforts to pass a constitutional amendment requiring parental notice for abortions and to pass health and safety regulations on abortion clinics; signed into law a partial-birth abortion ban and a parental notification bill, and pushed for state funding for crisis pregnancy centers.

Bush said that in addition to beginning-of-life issues, "we better start focusing [on] the end-of-life issues as well. He said he intervened on behalf of Terri Schiavo, the incapacitated woman who faced euthanasia at the direction of her husband.

He lamented that religious freedom is "under attack in ways we have never seen before, whether it is the Obama administration or just the general culture. ... There seems to be attitude when the prevailing government policies runs headlongs into the views of the faithful, the faithful must yield. I'm reminded what [former Secretary of State Hillary] Clinton said, when people that have religious beliefs, they run into conflict with a woman's right to choose for example, that the people that have religious conscience have to get over it, have to take a step back. Well, in a big diverse country we need to make sure we protect not the right of having religious views but the right of acting on those views."

"This conscience should also been respected when people of faith want to take a stand for traditional marriage in a country like ours," he continued. "We should recognize the power of man and a woman, loving their children with their, all their heart and soul as a good thing, as something that is positive and helpful for those children to live a successful life. And while there are people that disagree with this, we should not push aside those that do believe in traditional marriage. I for one believe it is important and I think it has to be important over the long haul irrespective what courts say."

Hundreds of Thousands of Italians Hit Streets to Protest Gender Theory Education

Massive outpouring follows pope reportedly calling theory "demonic"

Hundreds of thousands of people from all over Italy responded to Pope Francis’ repeated warnings about gender ideology by taking part in an enormous demonstration in Rome on Saturday.  

Diane Montagna

June 22, 2015

Edward Pentin

ROME — Hundreds of thousands of people from all over Italy responded to Pope Francis’ repeated warnings about gender ideology, by taking part in an enormous demonstration in the square of St. John Lateran in Rome on Saturday.

The “Family Day” was aimed at defending the traditional family and stopping the spread of gender ideology in schools. It was also a protest against the Cirinnà bill passing through the Italian Parliament. The legislation, which was introduced by Socialist Senator Monica Cirinnà, proposes giving same-sex couples many of the same rights as married couples.

“We say ‘no’ to any form of education which denies sexual differences,” said the Secretary of the Center-Right Party, the UPC, Antonio Satta. “We have to recognize the rights of the individual, but this should not lead to a distortion of the family institution.”

The demonstration was organized in less than three weeks, and despite the poor weather and little support from the Italian Bishops’ Conference, organizers said it attracted close to one million participants, many of whom were families.

Many pro-life and pro-family organizations were behind the event. These included the Neocatechumenal Way, Parliamentarians for the Family, Lawyers for Life, the Movement for Life, and the French pro-family lobby La Manif Pour Tous. Also present were leaders from the Orthodox, Muslim and Sikh communities of Italy. Rome’s chief rabbi, Riccardo Di Segni, and Archbishop Vincenzo Paglia, President of the Pontifical Council for the Family, sent messages of support.

Speakers rallied the crowd with impassioned pleas to end the indoctrination of “gender ideology” in schools. One father explained how his son came home from school telling him his teacher taught his class that Italy is cruel and unjust because it doesn’t allow same-sex “marriage.”  “Basta! Basta! Basta!” (Enough! Enough! Enough!) the father shouted to rapturous cheers and applause.

Many of the participants credited the leadership given by Pope Francis, particularly on the issue of gender ideology.

Gender theorists hold that “sex” may be what a person is biologically, but gender is what the person believes himself or herself to be. Such theorists posit that people should be able to identify as male, female, neither or both, despite increasing evidence to suggest that gender theory is confusing and harming children.

In fact, in April 2014, Pope Francis lambasted the indoctrination of children, who have increasingly been taught what the Church considers to be nefarious and highly destructive ideologies, tantamount to emotional, psychological and even sexual abuse of children.

“[We need to support] the right of parents to decide the moral and religious education of their children. And in this regard I would like to express my rejection of any kind of educational experimentation on children. We cannot experiment on children and young people. They are not lab specimens!” the Pope said.

He continued: “The horrors of the manipulation of education that we experienced in the great genocidal dictatorships of the 20th century have not disappeared; they have retained a current relevance under various guises and proposals and, with the pretense of modernity, push children and young people to walk on the dictatorial path of “only one form of thought”. A little over a week ago a great teacher said to me… ‘At times with these projects — referring to actual educational projects — one doesn’t know whether the child is going to school or to a re-education camp’.” (Pope Francis, Address to Members of the International Catholic Child Bureau, April 11, 2014). 

 

The Pope has repeatedly warned of the dangers of gender politics. Not only has he compared it with the educational policies of Hitler; he has even reportedly called gender ideology “demonic,” saying it fails to recognize “the order of creation.”

And just days ago, in a June 14th opening address at a meeting for the diocese of Rome, the Holy Father advised parents to be vigilant in defending their children against gender ideology, saying: “Our city needs [a] revival. And this commitment is so important when it comes to educating children and young people, for whom you parents are primarily responsible. Our children, our little children, who are beginning to hear these strange ideas, these forms of ideological colonization that are poisoning their souls and the family: we must act against this.”

A lawyer, publisher and father of six who was present at the demonstration told Aleteia: “The Parliament is putting forward legislation to criminalize saying that marriage is only between one man and one woman. In this legal project, schools would be obliged to teach gender ideology, and they begin with children as little as two years old, having them touch the sexual parts of the other infants. It’s horrible … I am so tired of this.”

Another Italian demonstrator, a deacon soon to be ordained a priest, said: “I am not one to demonstrate but I believe in some circumstances we need to visibly manifest dissent. Because this liberal culture is advancing, also through legislative projects that go against the very foundations of civilization, I believe it’s time.”


Diane Montagna is Rome correspondent for Aleteia’s English edition.
 

The disgraced bishop and the loyal parish: Catholic double standards at their finest

Damian Thompson

   

The Catholic bishops of England and Wales are to hold an inquiry into the case of the Rt Rev Kieran Conry, he of the two (or is it three?) girlfriends, who resigned as Bishop of Arundel and Brighton when he had a crisis of conscience caused by the tabloids knocking on his door.
Displaying their celebrated transparency, the bishops have decided to keep the name of the ‘chair’ of the inquiry secret. The committee will focus on whether Conry breached guidelines on ‘vulnerable adults’. I very much doubt whether it will ask why Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor persuaded Rome to make his protégé a bishop when his relationship with a woman was already common knowledge. Conry was ‘one of us’, you see: a member of the Magic Circle of ambitious liberals (life president, Cardinal Cormac Murphy O’Connor; honorary press officer, Doctor A. Ivereigh) who had various nuncios wrapped round their little fingers.

Meanwhile, what about Catholics who are not ‘one of us’? You can’t get further from the Magic Circle than the parishioners of Our Lady of the Rosary, in Blackfen, Kent. The previous parish priest, Fr Tim Finigan, is a traditionalist who celebrated the Tridentine Latin Mass on Sundays – but also the New Mass, in strict conformity with rules laid down by Pope Benedict XVI. No sooner had he left earlier this year than the new PP, Fr Steven Fisher, cancelled the traditional services. Fr Fisher has the backing of his boss, Archbishop Peter Smith, but it’s a decision that has caused terrible distress to traditional Catholics for whom the old Mass at Blackfen was the centre of their spiritual lives. Now, you could argue that an incoming pastor is entitled to change – gently – the way things are done in his parish; but in this case the new man, having apparently concluded that the traddies were ‘divisive’, has effected change in a brutal fashion that has left his flock truly divided. More of a Cromwell than a Fisher, you might say.

This is what I can’t stand about the Catholic Church in England and Wales: one rule for the bishops, another for the little people. And before you accuse me of bias, let me say that it would have been just as bad if the Church were dominated by Cardinal Burke-style traditionalists, one of whom had been promoted despite lots of people knowing he had a mistress, and Blackfen were a liberal but faithful parish whose service book had been torn up.
Let me say it again: one rule for the bishops, right-on priests and ‘empowered’ liberal laity; another for the little folk telling their beads. The Magic Circle turned a blind eye to Conry’s domestic arrangements (as did many Catholic journalists, including me). But they were not prepared to tolerate the goings-on at Blackfen depicted in the photograph below:

Thomas More and John Fisher: two saints who died for the integrity of the Catholic Church

by Fr Alexander Lucie-Smith

posted Monday, 22 Jun 2015

A detail from Hans Holbein's portrait of St Thomas More

    

Fisher and More lived exemplary lives and were content to be martyred for the faith

Today the Catholic Church celebrates two great English saints and martyrs. I am forever grateful to my history master at Ratcliffe College, back in the day, Fr Bill Curran, who explained this great truth to me: “They were martyrs because they were saints, not saints because they were martyrs.” How true that is! Both John Fisher and Thomas More were men of exemplary life, one a bishop, one a lawyer and family man. And it was because they lived such upright lives that they were content to be martyred for the faith.
It is often held, correctly so, that Fisher and More were martyrs for the rights of conscience. Certainly, both men believed, as does the Church, that there are certain rights that the State can never arrogate for itself, and that includes those matters which are matters of conscience. But to see Fisher and More going to their deaths for freedom of religion, and for the rights of the individual against those of the over-mighty state, victims of Tudor totalitarianism, is only part of the story.
Both died for the integrity of the Catholic Church. Both firmly held that what Henry VIII wanted to do was not simply wrong, but impossible. A King could not be head of the Church; there was no such thing as the Church “of England”; there was one Catholic Church, holy and indivisible, under the visible headship of the Vicar of Christ, the Pope. The Pope of the day, Paul III, understood this, as that is why he made Fisher a cardinal, much to the fury of Henry VIII. The scarlet of the Cardinalate is the sign that members of the Sacred College are prepared to shed their blood for the faith, yet St John Fisher remains the only Cardinal who has ever been martyred. Contemporaries of Fisher and More also understood that the Papal Supremacy was what was at stake, and many of them, such as Bishop Bonner, indulged in some very impressive mental gymnastics to try and find reasons for the royal supremacy in the Church’s tradition.
But the royal supremacy, then as now, was never more than a religious fiction covering up a political necessity. Nor is England the only country to have gone down this route, but wherever the State has grabbed control of the Church, the result has been bad for the State and even worse for the Church. Moreover, the concept of a “national Church” is clearly a bad one, and the alliance between faith and nationalism deeply deforming for faith.
On Sunday we are celebrating the feast of Saints Peter and Paul, the traditional time to show our loyalty to the See of Peter, and to acknowledge that the authority of the See is founded in the words of Jesus Christ Himself. I am sure both Saints John Fisher and Thomas More are rejoicing in heaven at the way the Papacy survived the storms of the Reformation. As then, as always: ubi Petrus, ibi ecclesia, ibi vita eterna: where Peter is, there is the Church, there is eternal life. May Saints John Fisher and Thomas More continue to inspire us, and bear witness to the truth for which they died.

The plot to sterilise the world’s poor

by Dennis Sewell

posted Thursday, 18 Jun 2015

A sterilisation ward in Chhattisgarh. Four million Indian women are sterilised each year (AP)

   

First it was eugenics - now, under the guise of environmentalism, governments across the world are trying to force the poor and ‘culturally backward’ not to breed

Last month, prosecutors in Lima reopened a criminal investigation into the part Peru’s former president, Alberto Fujimori, played in a state programme that sterilised close to half a million poor Peruvians in the late 1990s. At the time, Fujimori received plaudits from feminists, reproductive rights groups and progressive opinion around the world for his determination to bring his country’s birth rate under control and for his political courage in standing up to the Catholic Church, which opposed the policy.
Fujimori prepared the ground for his initiative by framing it as a liberalisation of Peru’s strict contraception laws. He was, he claimed, empowering women by allowing them to get their fallopian tubes tied without having to seek their husbands’ consent. Women’s organisations enthusiastically collaborated with the state in setting up family planning clinics. A travelling circus of outreach workers and doctors hosted colourful “tubal ligation festivals”, complete with dancing and bunting, in remote Andean villages. But very quickly what had been sold as giving women autonomy began to do the opposite. Under the weight of bureaucratic quotas and political expectations, the Voluntary Surgical Contraception Policy, as it was branded, became increasingly coercive.
Documents seized by human rights investigators detail how health workers were paid bounties to “capture” women, some as young as 20 and childless, for sterilisation. Some, speaking only indigenous languages with no words for “tubal ligation”, had no idea what was being done to them. Others were threatened and cajoled, told they would be denied food aid or disqualified from medical care if they refused. It is now apparent that the poor and the indigenous population were specifically targeted and that there may have been a national security dimension to the campaign. Peru was facing at the time a terrorist threat from the Maoist Shining Path guerrilla group, and military documents from the period advocate the sterilisation of “surplus beings” from “culturally backward and impoverished groups” as part of a strategy of terrorist prevention.
What exactly the president knew and when he knew it, whether Peru’s sterilisation programme was cynically conceived and motivated by racial, class and security considerations from the outset, or was a well-intentioned policy that went badly wrong on contact with practical realities, are matters still contested in Peru. The criminal investigation was abandoned last year, but has now been reopened just as Fujimori’s daughter Keiko has taken the lead in opinion polls ahead of the presidential election in 2016. Whether it turns up any new evidence to settle the outstanding questions may well hang on the result.
Despite so much remaining unresolved and the pervasive sense that justice has not been done, the story of Peru’s forced sterilisations nevertheless has the feel of something that belongs to the past. Although the late 1990s may not be that long ago, they are sufficiently distant for the scandal to cease to qualify as current affairs and become reclassified as recent history. Besides, those international agencies that were embarrassed by the initial revelations – USAID, which paid for the surgical instruments, and the UN, which also helped fund the programme – have moved on, haven’t they? Isn’t everyone now agreed that coercive sterilisation is a crime against humanity and taking pains to see it never happens again?
There will always be some event to jolt us out of complacency. Last November’s harrowing story from Chhattisgarh, among India’s poorest states, was one such. There, 15 women died and dozens more were hospitalised after undergoing laparoscopic tubectomies at a state-run sterilisation camp. The word “sterilisation” has a strong whiff of disinfectant about it, but where doctors are performing large numbers of procedures, with minimal budgets for nursing assistance, or where quality control of antibiotics is unreliable, serious infections can quickly take hold. Many of the operations are conducted with old, sometimes rusty, scalpels, inadequate anaesthetics in unhygienic, multiple-occupied operating theatres. Doctors typically spend three to four minutes on each patient. The 15 deaths in Chhattisgarh generated headlines round the world because they took place in the same spot and within a short time-frame. But for years, deaths ascribed to botched sterilisations have been running at over 200 per annum, occasioning little comment.
As in Peru, people have since come forward to testify that some of the women were coerced into having the procedure. And the financial incentives offered by the state can amount to more than a week’s income. In areas of poverty exacerbated by low standards of education, the bar for “informed consent” needs to be set higher, rather than lower, than it is in Western countries. But what was perhaps most astonishing about the reports of the Chhattisgarh tragedy was the sheer scale of India’s current sterilisation programme. It turns out that approximately four million women are sterilised in India each year. The country accounts for almost 40 per cent of all female sterilisations worldwide and the procedure has become the most commonly used method of contraception and the main focus of the nation’s population control activities.

This is all the more surprising in view of India’s past experience. In the mid-1970s, while civil liberties were suspended under a state of emergency, the Prime Minister’s son, Sanjay Gandhi, launched a campaign of compulsory sterilisation aimed at poor males. Police would seal off roads outside villages in preparation for sterilisation sweeps that saw desperate victims dragged, protesting, to the operating table.
More than six million men were sterilised in a single year, but the programme prompted a vigorous political reaction. It is significant that today’s sterilisation campaign is overwhelmingly targeted on women, who are doubtless seen as a ofter touch. Nor is India the only country where sterilisation – forced, unforced or ambiguous – is creeping back into fashion. Across Africa human rights groups report cases of sterilisation, often associated with HIV infection, and in China local officials were mounting vigorous campaigns of compulsory sterilisation in support of the country’s one-child policy, despite disapproval from the political centre. In a campaign launched in 2010 in Guangdong, it was reported that family members were seized and held as hostages against women surrendering to family planning workers and agreeing to being sterilised.
In the West, including the US and even Britain, we are once again seeing the occasional moral panic over benefits fraud prompting some daft populist legislator or airhead newspaper columnist to call for bringing back sterilisation of the poor.
And “bring back” is the correct formulation, for this was once a policy that disfigured the Western political landscape, too. In the United States it was the brainchild of the eugenics movement, which hoped to improve the quality of the national gene pool by limiting the rate at which the poor and the feckless (eugenicists barely distinguished between the two) were able to breed. This saw the enforced sterilisation of 70,000 poor Americans over a period stretching from the 1920s to the 1970s, with round-ups of Appalachian mountain men conducted by the police in much the same way as in 1970s India. Native Americans were targeted in Vermont; and in the Deep South, predictably, poor blacks were the focus, with sterilisation so common it was known within the medical profession as “the Mississippi appendectomy”.
But if America’s practice of sterilising the poor grew out of the junk science of eugenics, what sustains it around the world today? It seems far-fetched that there is some global conspiracy of unreconstructed eugenicists at large. What does seem to be the case, though, is that the idea of sterilising the poor attaches itself to any passing concern or enthusiasm. Thus, at the height of the Cold War, when international security was the big issue, alarmists would warn darkly of the wars, conflicts and uncontrollable migrations that would result from population growth unrestrained by sterilisation. As international development rose up the agenda, junk economics would tell us that sterilising the poor in the global south was the only way to sustainable growth. Nowadays junk ecology tells us that sterilising the poor is the appropriate response to the challenge of climate change.
The marriage of alarmism over anthropogenic global warming with misanthropic population control is the most toxic combination of all. In 2006, Dr Eric Pianka, a leading evolutionary ecologist, former Fulbright and Guggenheim scholar and a professor at the University of Texas, gave a speech stating that the world could not survive unless its population was reduced by 95 per cent, and that the planet might be “better off” after a disease such as Ebola had made this a reality. After a public outcry, Dr Pianka had to row back and bring his rhetorical boat within bounds. But perhaps more worrying than the lecture was the response of the audience. The massed ranks of the Texas Academy of Sciences gave it a standing ovation.
It is rapidly becoming the scientific orthodoxy in climate alarmism circles that human beings are the real problem. We are forever consuming scarce resources, breathing out CO2 and leaving our carbon footprints all over the planet. We are the cause of global warming and sterilising large numbers of us is the only long-term solution. Another related theme asserts that climate change will degrade agricultural production in the south, making it impossible to feed a growing population. This is the “conspiracy against life” of the kind that Pope John Paul II warned against in his 1995 encyclical Evangelium Vitae, where a person “just by existing compromises the wellbeing or lifestyle of those who are more favoured” and so “tends to be looked upon as an enemy to be resisted or eliminated”.
Population alarmism is, of course, nothing new. Paul Ehrlich, a Stanford University academic with a claim to being once regarded as the world’s greatest expert on population issues – and whose 1968 book The Population Bomb introduced the idea of the “population explosion” – predicted: “The battle to feed all of humanity is over. In the 1970s hundreds of millions of people will starve to death in spite of any crash programs embarked upon now. At this late date nothing can prevent a substantial increase in the world death rate.”
Such pessimism has characterised population studies ever since Malthus, despite the worst predictions never being borne out. The same kind of pessimism is already being repeated among climate commentators. In 1989, the director of the New York office of the United Nations environment programme warned that entire nations would be washed away by rising sea levels if global warming was not reversed by the year 2000. In 2009 the Prince of Wales gave us 96 months to save the planet in his Dimbleby Lecture.
Al Gore’s deadline is fast coming up. It is this too-little questioned urgency of “tomorrow morning” concerning climate change and its threatened effects that fuels the demand for population control, and consequently the botched and bloody sterilisation schemes that pervade around the world.
Dennis Sewell is the author of The Political Gene: How Darwin’s Ideas Changed Politics (Picador)
This article first appeared in the latest edition of the Catholic Herald magazine (19/6/15).

Laudato si’ – It is not health “to cancel out sexual difference”

Posted on 20 June 2015 by Fr. John Zuhlsdorf

   

The other day Stream.org posted a piece about 11 good things in the Pope’s new encyclical, Laudato si’, which you will not see covered by the MSM.  I’m going through some of them.
The following is a paragraph that I knew about well-before the encyclical was released.   I had mentioned it in a couple posts, saying, pay attention to this one when the document comes out (no pun intended).

(2) Human ecology means recognizing and valuing the difference between masculinity and femininity:

(155) Human ecology also implies another profound reality: the relationship between human life and the moral law, which is inscribed in our nature and is necessary for the creation of a more dignified environment. Pope Benedict XVI spoke of an “ecology of man,”[We can also speak of “natural law” as “human ecology”… if using “natural law” in your discussions puts off your interlocutors (because they don’t know what it is or they have been conditioned by liberals to reject it because it sounds oppressive, speak of “human ecology”.] based on the fact that “man too has a nature that he must respect and that he cannot manipulate at will.” It is enough to recognize that our body itself establishes us in a direct relationship with the environment and with other living beings. The acceptance of our bodies as God’s gift is vital for welcoming and accepting the entire world as a gift from the Father and our common home, whereas thinking that we enjoy absolute power over our own bodies turns, often subtly, into thinking that we enjoy absolute power over creation. Learning to accept our body, to care for it and to respect its fullest meaning, is an essential element of any genuine human ecology. [This is where the Pope will lose a bunch of our brothers and sisters out there…] Also, valuing one’s own body in its femininity or masculinity is necessary if I am going to be able to recognize myself in an encounter with someone who is different. In this way we can joyfully accept the specific gifts of another man or woman, the work of God the Creator, and find mutual enrichment.  because it no longer knows how to confront it.”  [Trying to blur differences between male and female, is not healthy.]

Another good moment in the encyclical!
This paragraph puts a pin into the balloon of “gender theory”.
Also, remember, “gender” is a linguistic concept.  “Sex” is biological.

25th June 2002 ... Royal visit to Uxbridge

25th June 2002 ... Royal visit to Uxbridge

On the morning of June 25th, 2002 the Queen visited  Uxbridge - a truly historic occasion for Her Majesty. Having met the Mayor of Hillingdon, Councillor Josephine Barrett, and members of Hillingdon Borough Council, The Queen and Prince Philip began a walkabout in the town centre. They met children from local schools, who showed her their art projects, including masks, sculptures and clay figures. 

 

The Queen then unveiled a new bronze sculpture entitled 'Anticipation', commissioned by the Hillingdon Arts Association. After a fanfare from RAF Uxbridge trumpeters, 500 purple and yellow balloons were released from a net to reveal the sculpture .

'Anticipation' can be interpreted in many ways - as a young family waiting to meet other family members, expecting the arrival of friends from the station, looking forward to going to the shops in Uxbridge, visiting the surrounding countryside or, taking a longer perspective, anticipating the future for the two children. 

Transgenderism? No way Jose

Transgenderism? No way Jose

by  Paul McHugh
within Bioethics, Culture, Science

June 10th, 2015

 131K  2518  136K

The idea that one’s sex is a feeling, not a fact, has permeated our culture and is leaving casualties in its wake. Gender dysphoria should be treated with psychotherapy, not surgery.

For forty years as the University Distinguished Service Professor of Psychiatry at Johns Hopkins Medical School—twenty-six of which were also spent as Psychiatrist in Chief of Johns Hopkins Hospital—I’ve been studying people who claim to be transgender. Over that time, I’ve watched the phenomenon change and expand in remarkable ways.
A rare issue of a few men—both homosexual and heterosexual men, including some who sought sex-change surgery because they were erotically aroused by the thought or image of themselves as women—has spread to include women as well as men. Even young boys and girls have begun to present themselves as of the opposite sex. Over the last ten or fifteen years, this phenomenon has increased in prevalence, seemingly exponentially. Now, almost everyone has heard of or met such a person.
Publicity, especially from early examples such as “Christine” Jorgenson, “Jan” Morris, and “Renee” Richards, has promoted the idea that one’s biological sex is a choice, leading to widespread cultural acceptance of the concept. And, that idea, quickly accepted in the 1980s, has since run through the American public like a revelation or “meme” affecting much of our thought about sex.
The champions of this meme, encouraged by their alliance with the broader LGBT movement, claim that whether you are a man or a woman, a boy or a girl, is more of a disposition or feeling about yourself than a fact of nature. And, much like any other feeling, it can change at any time, and for all sorts of reasons. Therefore, no one could predict who would swap this fact of their makeup, nor could one justifiably criticize such a decision.
At Johns Hopkins, after pioneering sex-change surgery, we demonstrated that the practice brought no important benefits. As a result, we stopped offering that form of treatment in the 1970s. Our efforts, though, had little influence on the emergence of this new idea about sex, or upon the expansion of the number of “transgendered” among young and old.
Olympic Athlete Turned "Pin-Up" Girl
This history may clarify some aspects of the latest high-profile transgender claimant. Bruce Jenner, the 1976 Olympic decathlon champion, is turning away from his titular identity as one of the “world’s greatest male athletes.” Jenner announced recently that he “identifies as a woman” and, with medical and surgical help, is busy reconstructing his physique.
I have not met or examined Jenner, but his behavior resembles that of some of the transgender males we have studied over the years. These men wanted to display themselves in sexy ways, wearing provocative female garb. More often than not, while claiming to be a woman in a man’s body, they declared themselves to be “lesbians” (attracted to other women). The photograph of the posed, corseted, breast-boosted Bruce Jenner (a man in his mid-sixties, but flaunting himself as if a “pin-up” girl in her twenties or thirties) on the cover of Vanity Fair suggests that he may fit the behavioral mold that Ray Blanchard has dubbed an expression of “autogynephilia”—from gynephilia (attracted to women) and auto (in the form of oneself).
The Emperor’s New Clothes
But the meme—that your sex is a feeling, not a biological fact, and can change at any time—marches on through our society. In a way, it’s reminiscent of the Hans Christian Andersen tale, The Emperor’s New Clothes. In that tale, the Emperor, believing that he wore an outfit of special beauty imperceptible to the rude or uncultured, paraded naked through his town to the huzzahs of courtiers and citizens anxious about their reputations. Many onlookers to the contemporary transgender parade, knowing that a disfavored opinion is worse than bad taste today, similarly fear to identify it as a misapprehension.
I am ever trying to be the boy among the bystanders who points to what’s real. I do so not only because truth matters, but also because overlooked amid the hoopla—enhanced now by Bruce Jenner’s celebrity and Annie Leibovitz’s photography—stand many victims. Think, for example, of the parents whom no one—not doctors, schools, nor even churches—will help to rescue their children from these strange notions of being transgendered and the problematic lives these notions herald. These youngsters now far outnumber the Bruce Jenner type of transgender. Although they may be encouraged by his public reception, these children generally come to their ideas about their sex not through erotic interests but through a variety of youthful psychosocial conflicts and concerns.
First, though, let us address the basic assumption of the contemporary parade: the idea that exchange of one’s sex is possible. It, like the storied Emperor, is starkly, nakedly false. Transgendered men do not become women, nor do transgendered women become men. All (including Bruce Jenner) become feminized men or masculinized women, counterfeits or impersonators of the sex with which they “identify.” In that lies their problematic future.
When “the tumult and shouting dies,” it proves not easy nor wise to live in a counterfeit sexual garb. The most thorough follow-up of sex-reassigned people—extending over thirty years and conducted in Sweden, where the culture is strongly supportive of the transgendered—documents their lifelong mental unrest. Ten to fifteen years after surgical reassignment, the suicide rate of those who had undergone sex-reassignment surgery rose to twenty times that of comparable peers.
How to Treat Gender Dysphoria
So how should we make sense of this matter today? As with any mental phenomenon, what’s crucial is noting its fundamental characteristic and then identifying the many ways in which that characteristic can manifest itself.
The central issue with all transgender subjects is one of assumption—the assumption that one’s sexual nature is misaligned with one’s biological sex. This problematic assumption comes about in several different ways, and these distinctions in its generation determine how to manage and treat it.
Based on the photographic evidence one might guess Bruce Jenner falls into the group of men who come to their disordered assumption through being sexually aroused by the image of themselves as women. He could have been treated for this misaligned arousal with psychotherapy and medication. Instead, he found his way to surgeons who worked him over as he wished. Others have already commented on his stereotypic caricature of women as decorative “babes” (“I look forward to wearing nail polish until it chips off,” he said to Diane Sawyer)—a view that understandably infuriates feminists—and his odd sense that only feelings, not facts, matter here.
For his sake, however, I do hope that he receives regular, attentive follow-up care, as his psychological serenity in the future is doubtful. Future men with similar feelings and intentions should be treated for those feelings rather than being encouraged to undergo bodily changes. Group therapies are now available for them.
Most young boys and girls who come seeking sex-reassignment are utterly different from Jenner. They have no erotic interest driving their quest. Rather, they come with psychosocial issues—conflicts over the prospects, expectations, and roles that they sense are attached to their given sex—and presume that sex-reassignment will ease or resolve them.
The grim fact is that most of these youngsters do not find therapists willing to assess and guide them in ways that permit them to work out their conflicts and correct their assumptions. Rather, they and their families find only “gender counselors” who encourage them in their sexual misassumptions.
Those with Gender Dysphoria Need Evidence-Based Care
There are several reasons for this absence of coherence in our mental health system. Important among them is the fact that both the state and federal governments are actively seeking to block any treatments that can be construed as challenging the assumptions and choices of transgendered youngsters. “As part of our dedication to protecting America’s youth, this administration supports efforts to ban the use of conversion therapy for minors,” said Valerie Jarrett, a senior advisor to President Obama.
In two states, a doctor who would look into the psychological history of a transgendered boy or girl in search of a resolvable conflict could lose his or her license to practice medicine. By contrast, such a physician would not be penalized if he or she started such a patient on hormones that would block puberty and might stunt growth.
What is needed now is public clamor for coherent science—biological and therapeutic science—examining the real effects of these efforts to “support” transgendering. Although much is made of a rare “intersex” individual, no evidence supports the claim that people such as Bruce Jenner have a biological source for their transgender assumptions. Plenty of evidence demonstrates that with him and most others, transgendering is a psychological rather than a biological matter.
In fact, gender dysphoria—the official psychiatric term for feeling oneself to be of the opposite sex—belongs in the family of similarly disordered assumptions about the body, such as anorexia nervosa and body dysmorphic disorder. Its treatment should not be directed at the body as with surgery and hormones any more than one treats obesity-fearing anorexic patients with liposuction. The treatment should strive to correct the false, problematic nature of the assumption and to resolve the psychosocial conflicts provoking it. With youngsters, this is best done in family therapy.
The larger issue is the meme itself. The idea that one’s sex is fluid and a matter open to choice runs unquestioned through our culture and is reflected everywhere in the media, the theater, the classroom, and in many medical clinics. It has taken on cult-like features: its own special lingo, internet chat rooms providing slick answers to new recruits, and clubs for easy access to dresses and styles supporting the sex change. It is doing much damage to families, adolescents, and children and should be confronted as an opinion without biological foundation wherever it emerges.
But gird your loins if you would confront this matter. Hell hath no fury like a vested interest masquerading as a moral principle.
Paul McHugh, MD, is University Distinguished Service Professor of Psychiatry at Johns Hopkins Medical School and the former psychiatrist in chief at Johns Hopkins Hospital. He is the author of The Mind Has Mountains: Reflections on Society and Psychiatry.

No Catholic is free to dissent from the teaching of Laudato Si’

by Fr Ashley Beck

posted Friday, 19 Jun 2015

Catholic social teaching is a vital part of the ordinary Magisterium of the Church

One of the hymn books popular in our churches, the Complete Celebration Hymnal, contains an English version from the 1980s of the Italian hymn of St Francis of Assisi, “Laudato sii, O mi Signore” (no. 527 – it retains the Italian chorus). I don’t know how much it is sung these days but it would be good to revive it to celebrate Pope Francis’s new encyclical of the same name.
There are already some good initial appraisals of the letter. I simply want to draw attention to one thing the Holy Father writes early on (section 15): “It is my hope that this encyclical letter, which is now added to the body of the Church’s social teaching, can help us to acknowledge the appeal, immensity and urgency of the challenge we face.” The letter is therefore in the tradition of papal encyclicals, beginning with Leo XIII’s Rerum Novarum in 1891, right up to Benedict XVI’s last encyclical from 2009, Caritas in Veritate (a very important text which Pope Francis liberally quotes).
Even at this early stage there have been negative reactions to Laudato Si’, even from some Catholics. These attacks are really only for one reason – a lot of people simply don’t understand what Catholic social teaching is or, when they have been told, think that they can simply ignore it.
This encyclical, deep and astute in so many ways, is not a work about the environment, or economics, or political theory – rather, it is theology. The Church teaches that Catholic social teaching is simply a branch of moral theology: papal social encyclicals like Laudato Si’ are part of the ordinary Magisterium of the Church. Vatican II’s great constitution on the Church, Lumen Gentium, makes it clear that the faithful are to adhere to all this teaching “with religious assent” (section 25).
What this means is that while the Church does allow for divergent viewpoints on some issues (Laudato Si’ 61), we are simply not free to dissent from the teaching of this encyclical, any more than we are free to dissent from Catholic teaching about other moral issues. Our duty as Catholics is to learn about what the Holy Father has said and share it with others.
To return to liturgy, at the end of this month we celebrate the feast of Ss Peter and Paul: a good day to pray for the Pope, St Peter’s successor, and to give thanks for his teaching ministry.
The Revd Dr Ashley Beck is assistant priest of Beckenham, south-east London, and also Programme Director of Pastoral Ministry at St Mary’s University, Twickenham, where he also teaches Catholic Social teaching and Liturgy

How did the Turin Shroud get its image?

On Sunday, Pope Francis will "venerate" the famous Shroud of Turin, which is thought by some to be the burial wrapping of Jesus Christ - and by others to be a medieval fake. Whatever it is, it's a mystery how the cloth came to bear the image of a man. Science writer Philip Ball discusses the theories.

In a carefully worded announcement, the Archbishop of Turin says that the Pope "confirms the devotion to the shroud that millions of pilgrims recognise as a sign of the mystery of the passion and death of the Lord".
You'll notice that this says nothing about its authenticity. The Catholic Church takes no official position on that, stating only that it is a matter for scientific investigation. Ever since radiocarbon dating in 1989 proclaimed the 14ft by 4ft piece of linen to be roughly 700 years old, the Church has avoided claiming that it is anything more than an "icon" of Christian devotion.
But regardless of the continuing arguments about its age (summarised in the box near the bottom of this page) the Shroud of Turin is a deeply puzzling object. Studies in 1978 by an international team of experts - the Shroud of Turin Research Project (Sturp) - delivered no clear explanation of how the cloth came to bear the faint imprint of a bearded man apparently bearing the wounds of crucifixion.
There's no shortage of hypotheses. Some suggest that the image came about through natural processes; some impute considerable ingenuity to medieval forgers of relics; others invoke wondrous physical processes associated with the Resurrection. But do any have any merit?

1. It's a painting

If this were true, it should be possible to identify the pigments used by chemical analysis, just as conservators can do for the paintings of Old Masters. But the Sturp team found no evidence of any pigments or dyes on the cloth in sufficient amounts to explain the image. Nor are there any signs of it being rendered in brush strokes. In fact the image on the linen is barely visible to the naked eye, and wasn't identified at all until 1898, when it became apparent in the negative image of a photograph taken by Secondo Pia, an amateur Italian photographer. The faint coloration of the flax fibres isn't caused by any darker substance being laid on top or infused into them - it's the very material of the fibres themselves that has darkened. And in contrast to most dyeing or painting methods, the colouring cannot be dissolved, bleached or altered by most standard chemical agents. The Sturp group asserted that the image is the real form of a "scourged, crucified man… not the product of an artist". There are genuine bloodstains on the cloth, and we even know the blood group (AB, if you're interested). There are traces of human DNA too, although it is badly degraded.
That didn't prevent the American independent chemical and microscopy consultant, Walter McCrone, who collaborated with the Sturp team, from asserting that the red stains attributed to blood were in fact very tiny particles of the red pigment iron oxide, or red ochre. Like just about every other aspect of the shroud, McCrone's evidence is disputed; few now credit it. Another idea is that the image is a kind of rubbing made from a bas-relief statue, or perhaps imprinted by singeing the fabric while it lay on top of such a bas-relief - but the physical and chemical features of the image don't support this.

2. It was made by a natural chemical process

If the coloured imprint comes from the darkening of the cellulose fibres of the cloth, what might have caused it? One of the doyens of scientific testing of the shroud, Raymond Rogers of the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, argued in 2002 that a simple chemical transformation could do the job. He suggested that even very moderate heat - perhaps 40C (104F) or so, a temperature that post-mortem physicians told him a dead body could briefly attain if the person died from hyperthermia or dehydration - could be enough to discolour the sugary carbohydrate compounds that might be found on the surface of cotton fibres. It doesn't take a miracle, Rogers insisted. This is a reassuringly mundane idea, but there is little evidence for it in this particular circumstance - it's not as if it happens all the time on funeral shrouds.
Another idea is that the discoloration of the fibres was caused by a chemical reaction with some substance that emanated from the body. The French biologist, Paul Vignon, proposed in the early 1900s that this substance might have been ammonia, produced by the breakdown of urea in sweat. That won't work, though: the image would be too blurry. In 1982, biophysicist John DeSalvo suggested instead that the substance could be lactic acid from sweat. This compound is one of those responsible for so-called Volckringer images of plant leaves, left for years between the pages of a book: substances are exuded from the leaf and react with paper fibres to produce a dark, negative image.

3. It's a photograph

Secondo Pia's photograph showed that the image on the cloth is a negative: dark where it should be bright. This deepens the mystery, and Pia himself casually suggested that the shroud could have been made by some primitive kind of photography. That idea has been inventively pursued by South African art historian Nicholas Allen, who argues that it could in principle have been achieved using materials and knowledge available to medieval scholars many centuries before genuine photography was invented. The key to the idea is the light-sensitive compound silver nitrate, the stuff that darkened the emulsion of the first true photographic plates in the 19th Century, as light transformed the silver salt into tiny black particles of silver metal.
This substance does seem to have been known in the Middle Ages, Allen says: it was described in the writings of the 8th Century Arabic alchemist, Jabir ibn Hayyan, and also by the German Dominican Albertus Magnus in the 13th Century. It could have been coated on to the cloth in a darkened chamber and exposed to sunlight through a lens - made of quartz not glass, since the silver is in fact darkened by ultraviolet light, which glass absorbs but quartz does not. Allen has made replicas of a shroud this way using model figurines. But how the image stays on the cloth when the silver is removed, and how mediaeval forgers gathered all this sophisticated knowledge about optics and chemistry without there being any trace in surviving documents poses problems for the idea. So do various issues about the exact shape and contrast of an image made this way. For most Turin Shroud theorists, Allen's idea is a triumph of ingenuity over plausibility.

4. It was made by some kind of energy release

According to an international team of scientists and other interested folk called the Yahoo Shroud Science Group, hypotheses about the genesis of the shroud "involving the Resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth cannot be rejected". Among them, the group members write, "are hypotheses correlated to an energy source coming from the enveloped or wrapped Man, [and] others correlated to surface electrostatic discharges caused by an electric field". Since these hypotheses appear to invoke processes unknown to science, which presumably occur during a return from the dead, it's technically true that science can't disprove them - nor really say anything about them at all.
Some, however, are not deterred by that. Italian chemist Giulio Fanti of the University of Padua has proposed that the image might have been burnt into the upper layers of the cloth by a burst of "radiant energy" - bright light, ultraviolet light, X-rays or streams of fundamental particles - emanating from the body itself. Fanti cites the account of Christ's Transfiguration, witnessed by Peter, John and James and recounted in Luke 9:29: "As he was praying, the appearance of his face changed, and his clothes became as bright as a flash of lightning." This is, to put it mildly, rather circumstantial evidence. But Fanti suggests we might at least test whether artificial sources of such radiation can produce a similar result on linen.
According to Raymond Rogers, all kinds of pseudoscientific theories have been put forward that invoke some mysterious radiation, which not only made the image itself but distorted the radiocarbon dating. In general they start from the notion that the shroud must be genuine and work backwards from that goal, he said. Little has changed in the decade and more since Rogers made this complaint. But still it has to be said that the piece of cloth Pope Francis will venerate is genuinely and stubbornly perplexing.

How old is the Shroud of Turin?

In 1989 it looked for a moment as though the link between the Turin Shroud and the burial of Christ was finally broken. Three independent teams of scientists had been given scraps of the linen, which they analysed using radiocarbon dating - a technique that uses the decay of a natural, radioactive form of carbon to figure out how long ago a once-living sample ceased to be alive (and thus in this case when the cloth was made from plant fibres). The verdict: the shroud dates from between about 1260 and 1390. It was a medieval item.
But almost at once, objections were raised. Some argued that the samples tested had come from later additions to the original cloth. Others said that the radiocarbon "clock" had been reset by a fire in the 16th Century that damaged parts of the shroud, or that the findings were distorted by the more recent growth of bacterial or fungal "biofilms" on the threads. The authors of the 1989 paper have discounted those possibilities, but the controversy won't die down. In 2013 Giulio Fanti described dating studies on the shroud using a non-standard method involving spectroscopy (absorption of light of different colours), which he says place the age instead between 300 BC and 400 AD: perfect for true believers.

Unpacking the Shroud of Turin

• The first historical reference to the shroud was in 1357 in Lirey, France
• The 14ft-long cloth has survived a number of fires, the first in 1532 and the last in 1997

Encyclical: The planet is at breaking point, says Pope Francis

by Carol Glatz

posted Thursday, 18 Jun 2015

Pope Francis holds a dove before his weekly audience in St Peter's Square (Photo: CNS)

   

In Laudato Si' Francis calls for humanity to rethink what progress actually means

Pope Francis has said the planet is “reaching a breaking point” in his encyclical on the environment, Laudato Si’, released today.
He said: “Hope would have us recognise that there is always a way out, that we can always redirect our steps, that we can always do something to solve our problems.
“Still, we can see signs that things are now reaching a breaking point, due to the rapid pace of change and degradation; these are evident in large-scale natural disasters as well as social and even financial crises, for the world’s problems cannot be analysed or explained in isolation.
“There are regions now at high risk and, aside from all doomsday predictions, the present world system is certainly unsustainable from a number of points of view, for we have stopped thinking about the goals of human activity.”
The Earth, which was created to support life and give praise to God, was crying out with pain because human activity is destroying it, Pope Francis said.
On climate change specifically, the Pope said “a very solid scientific consensus indicates that we are presently witnessing a disturbing warming of the climatic system” that was either “produced or aggravated” by human activity.
He said that all who believe in God and all people of good will have an obligation to take steps to mitigate climate change, clean the land and the seas, and start treating all of creation — including poor people — with respect and concern.
A lack of respect for creation is a lack of respect for God who created all that exists, the Pope said. In fact, he continued, a person cannot claim to respect nature while supporting abortion, nor can one claim to be pro-life without a commitment to reversing damage to the environment.
With unusually blunt language for a papal document, the Pope decried centuries of exploiting the earth, exploiting other people and acting as if the point of human life is to buy and consume as much as possible.
“The Earth, our home, is beginning to look more and more like an immense pile of filth,” the Pope writes in the document.
Situating ecology firmly within Catholic social teaching, Pope Francis not only insisted that wealthier nations — who contributed more to despoiling the earth — must bear more of the costs of remedying the damage, he also called for their solidarity with the poorest of the earth. He urged generosity in transferring clean technology, protecting small farms, opening access to markets and protecting people’s jobs.
Quoting St John Paul II and a constant theme of the Church’s social doctrine, Pope Francis said the Church recognised the “legitimate right” to private property, but that right is never “absolute or inviolable,” since the goods of the Earth were created to benefit all.
Regarding pollution and environmental destruction in general, he said it was important to acknowledge “the human origins of the ecological crisis”, and while ecology was not only a religious concern, those who believe in God should be especially passionate on the subject because they professed the divine origin of all creation.
Pope Francis singled out for special praise Orthodox Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew of Constantinople, who has made environmental theology a key topic of his research and teaching since the early 1990s. Before the encyclical’s release, the Pope told a group of priests that he had asked the patriarch to join him for the public presentation of the encyclical, but the patriarch had a scheduling conflict and so sent one of his top theologians, Metropolitan John of Pergamon.
People are fooling themselves, Pope Francis said in the document, if they think “things do not look that serious, and the planet could continue as it is for some time”. Such people in all honesty are giving themselves permission to carry on with their current lifestyles and habits; their attitude is “self-destructive”, he said.
In large sections of the encyclical, Pope Francis’s language is poetic, echoing the tone of St Francis of Assisi’s “Canticle of the Creatures,” which is the source of the “laudato si’” (praised be you) in the encyclical’s title. He quotes a large section of the hymn of praise in a section on the place of each creature in the harmony of creation. The canticle is most famous for its references to “Brother Sun,” “Sister Moon” and “our sister, Mother Earth.”
But, the Pope said, “sister earth” is crying out, “pleading that we take another course” marked by healing and protecting the earth and all its inhabitants.
While Christians cannot “put all living beings on the same level nor … deprive human beings of their unique worth and the tremendous responsibility it entails”, St Francis’s hymn expresses the truth that God is creator of all things, that every part of creation speaks of God’s love and power and that every created being is part of interdependent whole, the pope writes.
“Everything is related,” the Pope said, “and we human beings are united as brothers and sisters on a wonderful pilgrimage, woven together by the love God has for each of his creatures and which also unites us in fond affection with brother sun, sister moon, brother river and mother earth.”
In the document, Pope Francis called on national governments and the leaders of international institutions to be serious and courageous in adopting strict measures to slow and reverse global warming, protect the rain forests and ensure the availability of clean water for all. Courage will be needed, he says, to adopt policies that initially may slow the pace of economic growth, but which will be farsighted in ensuring a future for their voters, their voters’ grandchildren and all humanity.
“We know that technology based on the use of highly polluting fossil fuels — especially coal, but also oil and, to a lesser degree, gas — needs to be progressively replaced without delay,” he said.
But he also called on every Catholic and all people of good will to do their part by, for example, using only non-polluting detergents, recycling paper, using public transportation and putting on a sweater instead of raising the heat in the winter.
And he urged Catholics to return to the practice of saying grace before meals, a habit that reminds them regularly that the food they are about to eat is a gift that comes from the earth and from God.
At the end of the document, Pope Francis offered two prayers he composed himself: “A Prayer for Our Earth” and “A Christian Prayer in Union with Creation.”
The first prayer includes asking God to “bring healing to our lives that we may protect the world and not prey on it, that we may sow beauty, not pollution and destruction.”
The second prayer includes the petition, “O Lord, seize us with your power and light, help us to protect all life, to prepare for a better future, for the coming of your kingdom of justice, peace, love and beauty.”
In the encyclical, Pope Francis urged Catholics to cultivate simplicity; it is good for the soul and for the planet, he says. “A constant flood of new consumer goods can baffle the heart and prevent us from cherishing each thing and each moment,” the pope writes.
The encyclical presents the vision of an “integral ecology” that highlights not only the interconnectedness of all created life, but recognises how political, economic, social and religious values and decisions are interrelated and impact the way people live with one another on the planet and use its resources.
“A sense of deep communion with the rest of nature cannot be real if our hearts lack tenderness, compassion and concern for our fellow human beings,” Pope Francis said.
For example, he said, “it is clearly inconsistent to combat trafficking in endangered species while remaining completely indifferent to human trafficking, unconcerned about the poor, or undertaking to destroy another human being deemed unwanted.”
“Everything is connected,” the Pope said. “Concern for the environment thus needs to be joined to a sincere love for our fellow human beings and an unwavering commitment to resolving the problems of society.”

The Ancient Song Behind the Title of Pope Francis’ New Encyclical

Enrique López-Tamayo Biosca / Wikimedia Commons

Pope Francis is set to release (or has just released, depending on when you read this!) a full encyclical on the environment titled Laudato Si. Its the first papal encyclical to be dedicated to care for the environment and so represents an important development of the Church’s teachings on the matter.
Its title, Laudato Si, is the first two words of the encyclical, which opens with the line: “Laudato si, mi Signore!” (“Be praised, my Lord!”) This is a quote from the 13th century song “Canticle of the Sun,” written by Pope Francis’ namesake, St. Francis of Assisi. So it seems like a fitting title!


St. Francis of Assisi was born in the late 12th century to a rich family and at first indulged in selfishness and immorality. But then as a young man he had a radical conversion experience, renounced his family’s wealth, and began roaming the countryside preaching the Gospel, caring for the poor, and rebuilding run-down churches.
He also had a deep appreciation of nature. This wasn’t simply because he thought nature was useful, but because he saw that, like him, it was all created by God for His glory. When he beheld the natural world around him, he saw that he was a part of God’s harmonious natural order, and the beauty of it all proclaimed the wondrous majesty of God.
So, about two years before his death, while recovering from an illness, he wrote his “Canticle of the Sun,” in which he identifies various parts of creation as his brother and sister, and exults in how they give praise to God. Apparently, he was suffering from blindness at the time, and so he dictated the words to someone nearby.
He may have been inspired by Psalm 19.1-4, which proclaims:

The heavens are telling the glory of God; and the firmament proclaims his handiwork. Day to day pours forth speech, and night to night declares knowledge. There is no speech, nor are there words; their voice is not heard; yet their voice goes out through all the earth, and their words to the end of the world.

He also may have been inspired by the great “Canticle of the Three Children” found in Daniel 3.51-90, in which Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego sing a long song of praise to God, listing how various parts of creation praise God, while they were miraculously protected in Nebuchadnezzar’s furnace.
So there is a solid tradition in Scripture for seeing nature as something that reveals and glorifies God. St. Francis of Assisi’s “Canticle of the Sun” is a particularly beautiful expression of this tradition.

Here is the full text of “Canticle of the Sun”:

Most high, all powerful, all good Lord!
All praise is Yours, all glory, all honor, and all blessing.
To You, alone, Most High, do they belong.
No mortal lips are worthy to pronounce Your name.
Be praised, my Lord, through all Your creatures,
especially through my lord Brother Sun,
who brings the day; and You give light through him.
And he is beautiful and radiant in all his splendor!
Of You, Most High, he bears the likeness.
Be praised, my Lord, through Sister Moon and the stars;
in the heavens You have made them bright, precious and beautiful.
Be praised, my Lord, through Brothers Wind and Air,
and clouds and storms, and all the weather,
through which You give Your creatures sustenance.
Be praised, my Lord, through Sister Water;
she is very useful, and humble, and precious, and pure.
Be praised, my Lord, through Brother Fire,
through whom You brighten the night.
He is beautiful and cheerful, and powerful and strong.
Be praised, my Lord, through our sister Mother Earth,
who feeds us and rules us,
and produces various fruits with colored flowers and herbs.
Be praised, my Lord, through those who forgive for love of You;
through those who endure sickness and trial.
Happy those who endure in peace,
for by You, Most High, they will be crowned.
Be praised, my Lord, through our sister Bodily Death,
from whose embrace no living person can escape.
Woe to those who die in mortal sin!
Happy those she finds doing Your most holy will.
The second death can do no harm to them.
Praise and bless my Lord, and give thanks,
and serve Him with great humility.

The Pope and climate change: Francis is slapping his conservative critics in the face

   Damian Thompson

 

Image: Getty

Pope Francis’s encyclical on the environment comes down firmly on the side of the global warming consensus/lobby (delete according to taste) and is a slap in the face to climate sceptics of every hue. Thwack! It’s very much this Pope’s style.
Laudate si says several important things about climate change. Here’s the Catholic Herald’s summary, based on the infamous leak:

According to a translation by the Wall Street Journal, the Pope says there is a ‘very consistent scientific consensus’ that we are in the presence of ‘an alarming warming of the climatic system’.
He writes that there is an ‘urgent and compelling’ need for policies that reduce carbon emissions, such as ‘replacing fossil fuels and developing sources of renewable energy’.
He adds that ‘numerous scientific studies indicate that the greater part of global warming in recent decades is due to the great concentration of greenhouse gases (carbon dioxide, methane, nitrogen oxide and others) emitted above all due to human activity’ and calls on people to change their lifestyles.

To Catholic sceptics, and there are plenty of them, this will sound as if the Holy Father has said: ‘The science is settled and if you think otherwise perhaps you should consult your confessor.’ They’ll be furious.
But, of course, the encyclical’s position is more nuanced than that.
When Francis talks about a scientific consensus about man-made climate change, he’s stating a fact. When he says we need policies to reduce carbon emission – well, it depends what the policies are. As for ‘changing lifestyles’ having any effect on global warming, I’ll believe it when I see it.
I used to be a paid-up climate sceptic until I realised that (a) I didn’t know nearly enough to state an opinion on the subject and (b) there isn’t a simple chasm between ‘alarmists’ and ‘deniers’, as they call each other.

For a nicely balanced reaction to Laudate si, I recommend an article by Bjorn Lomborg, the ‘skeptical environmentalist’, in USA Today:

[T]oday’s climate policies themselves have a cost, which predominantly hits the poor.
Cuts in electricity consumption require price hikes that hurt the worst-off and elderly. Relying on expensive green energy sources like wind and solar power makes electricity pricier and less available for those who desperately need it.

The biggest problem with today’s climate change policies is that they will cost a fortune for very little good. The toughest global warming policy today is the European Union’s commitment to cutting 20% of greenhouse gas emissions by 2020. This will cost $235 billion. And cut temperatures at the end of the century by a measly 0.1ºF.

Lomborg isn’t dismissing the Pope’s views. He agrees with Francis that we need to do more to fight pollution and climate change. So he’s in favour of an end to fossil fuel subsidies, which benefit the middle class by making oil cheaper while adding to pollution that devastates poor communities. He also wants ‘a big global increase in green energy research, to speed the day when renewable energy sources can outcompete fossil fuels’.
However, says Lomborg, ‘we also need to recognise that the actions that would most help the world’s poor are not climate policies’. He criticises the UN for setting 169 development targets instead of concentrating on big (and achievable) goals such as improving nutrition and lowering trade barriers.
There’s not much trace of this argument in Laudato si. Lomborg is too diplomatic to say so, but the new encyclical creates the impression that – yet again – a Pope is genuflecting before the United Nations. Every recent pontiff has developed this bad habit. Their intentions are honourable, but I can’t help wondering whether the long Catholic-UN romance owes something to a natural fit between the corrupt Roman Curia and its sleazy counterparts in the UN.
In this document, however, Francis goes further than his predecessors: he endorses the UN’s diagnosis of and solutions to the complex problem of climate change. That’s his prerogative, but don’t let anyone tell you that he’s speaking ex cathedra. Jeb Bush, a Catholic, has every right to say – as he did this week – that, with all due respect, he doesn’t take his economic policies from the Supreme Pontiff.
Laudato si isn’t just about the environment: it’s a political statement by the Pope. He knows very well that climate change has been dragged into the Left vs Right culture wars, not only in the secular arena but also in the Catholic Church.
One of the world’s leading climate sceptics is Cardinal Pell, who is also the most influential conservative in the Church – though, significantly, he is loyal to the Pope and charged with implementing his financial reform agenda. This must be a difficult encyclical for Pell; I’d love to know what he says about it privately.
For less loyal conservatives, Laudato si will be evidence that ‘Bergoglio’, as they call him, is as unsound on climate change as he is on preserving the purity of Catholic teaching on marriage and sexuality. American traditionalists in particular will hate it. They are an influential lobby in US public life and especially in the Republican Party – but not influential at all in the Vatican under this pontificate. Pope Francis seems to go out of his way to antagonise them: witness the ugly defenestration of Cardinal Burke.
This encyclical will further increase tension between Right-wing Americans and the Pope as we approach the second session of the Synod on the Family in October. It also puts the former at a disadvantage. If the Synod discusses the UN and climate change, they will find that the Africans who supported them on marriage and homosexuality are also pro-UN. (This is no surprise, given the disproportionate influence Africa wields in the UN General Assembly.)
Pope Francis may have worked this out for himself. Then again, perhaps I’m ascribing to him a Jesuitical cunning that he doesn’t actually possess. Anyone can see that he is drifting towards Left (and specifically the anti-American Left) as he settles into the job. But whether this is part of a coherent plan for the Church is still frustratingly unclear.