Will Catholic politicians be required by their faith to believe in man-made global warming and to act accordingly? That is a proposition being bandied about by global warming activists and some sympathetic bishops.
And that is the concern of many, that the Pope’s encyclical expected on Thursday will make belief in man-man global warming a religious requirement.
The New York Times reports that Archbishop Thomas G. Wenski of Miami “is planning a summer of sermons, homilies and press events designed to highlight the threat that a warming planet, rising sea levels and more extreme storms pose to his community’s poorest and most vulnerable.” It is almost certain, however, that it is his richest and least vulnerable that live near the beaches with the best views. No matter.
There are all manner of Catholic pressure groups poised to pounce on Catholics running for president including Marco Rubio, Bobby Jindal, Rick Santorum, Jeb Bush, and Chris Christie.
Though the 2014 National Climate Assessment, created by the federal government, named Miami as one of the most endangered cities from global warming, Floridian Bush said, “…I don’t get economic policy from my bishops or my cardinals or my pope.”
Rubio questions the assertions of what will probably end up in the much-awaited papal encyclical. He said that climate is constantly changing but “humans are not responsible for climate change in the way some of these people out there are trying to make us believe.”
Something calling itself the Catholic Climate Covenant is ready to chastise such climate recalcitrance. All set with a slick website and a stack of papal teaching on the environment, they seem eager to charge Santorum et al with being bad Catholics, and worse, if they do not toe the line on global warming.
The worry among many Catholics and others who are skeptical of the claims about global warming is that the papal document will take a side in a scientific debate that many insist is closed and settled.
The Catholic Climate Covenant is working with two committees of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops and huge Catholic organizations including Catholic Charities, Catholic Relief Services and the Catholic Health Association, which will be remembered as the group that gave cover to the Obama administration when it required insurance policies to cover abortions. Some of the Catholic Climate Covenant partners are organizing in ways they never have over the question of abortion, even though consecutive popes and the Bishops Conference have wanted them to.
Faithful Catholics have for decades hammered pro-abortion Democrat politicians for being unfaithful to the fundamental teachings of the Church on the sanctity of human life. Politically leftwing Catholics are salivating over a little payback by saying Santorum et al are not faithful Catholics for not believing in the theory of global warming.
Anthony Annett, writing at the lefty Catholic blog DotCommonweal, actually said that not supporting what he calls “decarboniztaion” is directly analogous to being in favor of killing unborn babies.
Follow Austin Ruse on Twitter @austinruse
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