By George Hewes
With transgender this and self-identification that all the rage these days, maybe it shouldn’t come as a shock that Pope Francis now self-identifies as Al Gore in a funny hat. Yes, the Vicar of Christ has thrown in with the global warming crowd and talks about climate change in the same vernacular as an Occupy Wall Street protester.
In his new encyclical, Laudato Si, the Pope has confirmed the suspicions of those who believed he is of a leftist state of mind as relates to income redistribution, climate change and firearms. In one passage the Pope states, “Numerous scientific studies indicate that most of the global warming of the past decades is due to the concentration of greenhouse gases (carbon dioxide, methane, nitrogen oxide and others), emitted especially because of human activities.” Would those studies include the work done at East Anglia University, where researchers started with the alarmist global warming conclusion and then fudged the data to support that conclusion? Pointing to research in the field is a weak argument when so much of the work has been proven to be agenda-driven and corrupt.
Helping the poor has long been a tenet of the Catholic Church, and its charity work around the world has been admirable. This makes it all the more strange that Pope Francis regularly attacks “unfettered capitalism” as a cause of global poverty. Perhaps the Pontiff is in need of a remedial history course on how capitalism has been a driving force since the early 20th century in lifting millions out of poverty and raising their standard of living. Countries where poverty is rampant are almost exclusively run by totalitarian dictators who view capitalism with similar contempt.
How far we have come the 1980s. Back then, a strong American president and a brave Pope worked together to bring down the Iron Curtain and free entire continents of people from the bondage of communism. Today we have a community agitator president and a Pope with Marxist leanings collaborating to push a leftist agenda that would make everyone poorer and with a lower standard of living. As Eddie Money said, “I wanna go back.”
Image Full Credit “Pope Francis meets Barack Obama” by Pete Souza – White House. Licensed under Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons.
