PECIAL REPORT
CLIMATE
of
FAITH
: Talking Points about
Pope Francis’ Climate EncyclicalD
DDo Catholics have to
believe in man-made
global warming in order
to be good Catholics?
No. The Pope’s view on climate science and its alleged
“solutions” are not part of the faith and moral teachings of
the church. When the Pope speaks on climate change, he is
not speaking authoritatively on Catholic doctrine. He is
merely offering his opinion. Catholics are not bound to
follow the Pope’s view on global warming.
Is climate change a part
of Catholic teachings
now?
No. Climate change is not part of Catholic doctrine. It is just
another political issue to be debated among Catholics and
the general public.
The Federalist
's Rachel Lu: “The pontiff
clearly has high authority to speak (at least to Catholics) on
questions of faith and morals, but when it comes to
predictive pronouncements on the Earth’s climate, he is not
a definitive expert. Nor does he claim that mantle in
Laudato Si
.”
Does the Pope’s
encyclical present
accurate climate science?
No. Noted climate statistician Dr. William Briggs was blunt
in his assessment.
“Most of the scientific claims cited in
Pope’s encyclical are not true,” Briggs said.
“For example,
the claim that the world’s temperature has been increasing
is demonstrably false: it hasn’t, and not for almost two
decades. Another is the claim that storms are increasing in
size and strength: also false; indeed, the opposite is true.
Another is the claim that thousands of species are going
extinct: false, and easily proved to be so,” Briggs added.
September 2015
Who is advising Pope
Francis?
Sadly, there has been nothing short of an “Unholy
Alliance” between the Vatican and promoters of
man-made climate fear. The Vatican advisors can only be
described as a brew of anti-capitalist, pro-population
control advocates who allow no dissent and who are way
out of the mainstream of even the global warming
establishment. Regrettably, the Vatican only listened to
extreme voices within the climate movement with whom
even other climate activists are not comfortable. Many of
the Vatican’s key climate advisors have promoted policies
directly
at odds with Catholic doctrine and beliefs
on such
issues as population, contraceptives, abortion, and
euthanasia. But despite these advisors, “Population
control is condemned at some length, and in no uncertain
terms, in the encyclical itself,” as
The Federalist
's Rachel
Lu points out.
Did the Vatican allow a
climate debate at the
Vatican before the
encyclical was issued?
No, none at all. In fact, the Vatican went out of its way to
exclude skeptics from participating in their meetings.
The
Vatican banned a skeptical French scientist from its climate
summit. The scientist who was invited then uninvited said
the reason was that the Vatican “did not want to hear an
off note”
during the summit with UN officials.
2
Is the Pope hoping to
use the encyclical to
bring Catholic teachings
to the secular
environmental Left?
Father Dwight Longnecker explains the strategy behind
the encyclical: “The Pope successfully integrates a
theology of creation into the ecology debate. He affirms,
as so many environmentalists affirm, that ‘all things are
connected.’ In doing so he then connects the rights of the
unborn, the needs of the poor, the rights of immigrants,
the needs of the elderly and disabled, and the rightful
demands of the workers.” Many non-Catholics who are
interested in reading the Papal encyclical will learn about
Catholic teaching on a host of moral issues that they have
probably have never been willing to listen to before. There
is a lot in this encyclical that the global warming
establishment will not like. For example, warmists will be
challenged by Pope Francis when he states that it is
“incoherent” to be concerned with climate change while
at the same time supporting abortion.
The Pope’s strategy may be working. None other than Al
Gore is being swayed. Gore said: “I was raised in the
Southern Baptist tradition, I could become a Catholic
because of this Pope. He is that inspiring to me.”
Should Catholics ask God
for a successful outcome
to the UN climate
summit in Paris?
No. But Pope Francis did summon a lobbying tone when
he urged prayers for the passage of a UN climate treaty,
specifically exhorting Catholics “to ask God for a positive
outcome” for a Paris UN agreement. Pope Francis: “We
believers cannot fail to ask God for a positive outcome to
the present discussions, so that future generations will not
have to suffer the effects of our ill-advised delays.” So no
matter how nuanced and faithful to Catholic teachings this
encyclical seeks to be, the Pope urging Catholics to “ask
God for a positive outcome” to the current UN global
warming treaty process will overpower every other
message. The Pope is essentially endorsing a specific UN
political climate treaty and implying that God is smiling
upon the treaty process.
3
Is the state of the planet
as dire as
Laudato Si
claims?
No. The Pope’s general point that man has a moral duty to
care for creation is traditional Catholic moral teaching.
However, Catholics need not agree with his encyclical’s
opinion on the dire state of the planet. The Pope declared
in the encyclical: “The Earth, our home, is beginning to
look more and more like an immense pile of filth.” But
Alex Epstein, author of
The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels
,
responded: “If the pope from 300 years ago could see our
world today, he'd say it was actually cleaner and healthier
than his own era.” Another climate skeptic responded:
“We live in luxury that even kings a few centuries ago
could only dream of. You only have to look at the filth and
squalor in which previous generations lived to know that
most people in the past would have given anything to be
born now.” As
FrontPageMag.com
noted in its article
“Sorry Pope Francis, the State of the Planet Is Getting
Better,” “If it’s covered in trash, it’s a strange kind of trash
that has caused global crop yields to increase by 160%
since 1961 and deaths from droughts to be reduced by
99.8% since the 1920s. It’s an odd kind of ‘mistreatment’
of the planet over the life of the Industrial Revolution that’s
resulted in the global life expectancy rising from 26 years
in 1750 to 69 years in 2009. This is in spite of the fact that
Earth’s population increased from 760 million to 6.8 billion
and incomes (in real dollars) rose from $640 to $7,300
during the same period.”
Doesn’t the encyclical
discuss other things
besides climate?
Yes. In fact, climate is a very small part of it, less than 2%.
But it was the focus of intense media coverage.
The
Federalist
's Rachel Lu points out: "It's very misleading to
refer to
Laudato Si
as ‘the climate change encyclical.’
Climate change is one of a variety of environmental
problems with which the pontiff is concerned, but even his
general interest in the environment is embedded within a
broader critique of modernity.”
4
If the encyclical
essentially has clauses
that allow for debate,
why is there such a
media uproar?
The encyclical has many carefully worded clauses and
caveats, but key newsworthy parts were the Pope’s foray
into climate science and his alignment with a UN climate
treaty.
How does the Pope link
economics and climate
change together?
Some observers have speculated that the Pope’s South
American poverty perspective makes him very suspicious
of modern capitalism, and thus more open to the
centralized planning ideas of the UN climate agenda. A
leader of the UN IPCC stated that their goal is to
“redistribute wealth” by climate policy. By contrast, Pope
John Paul II grew up in Soviet-dominated Poland and saw
what centralized planning and restrictions did to human
liberty and development.
Are Catholic climate
skeptics still in good
standing with the
Church?
Yes. The Pope’s opinion on scientific and economic
matters is not the same as his authority on issues of faith
and morals. Climate skeptics can agree with his teaching
that we have a moral duty to care for creation without
agreeing about man’s impact on climate change.
5
Is there a ‘consensus’
inside the Vatican on
global warming?
No. There is major climate dissent inside the Vatican.
Skeptical Vatican Cardinal George Pell took a swing at the
Pope’s climate encyclical, declaring the Catholic Church
has "no particular expertise in science."
Pell, who now
serves at the head of the Vatican bank, declared in 2006:
“In the past, pagans sacrificed animals and even humans
in vain attempts to placate capricious and cruel gods.
Today they demand a reduction in CO
2
emissions.”
How did previous popes
deal with the issue of
global warming?
Previous popes allowed debate and dissent. In 2007,
during the tenure of Pope Benedict XVI, the Vatican
hosted a climate summit through the Pontifical Council
for
Justice and Peace and invited many
different perspectives
in the climate debate to participate. The 2007 event
included atmospheric physicist and climate skeptic Dr.
Fred Singer, skeptic and theologian Dr. E Calvin Beisner,
and the climate skeptic president of the World Federation
of Scientists, Dr. Antonio Zichichi. In 2007,
Cardinal Renato
Martino, president of the Pontifical Council for Justice and
Peace
, sought out different perspectives on climate
change. Also in 2007, Pope Benedict was on record
denouncing the type of alarmist activists that Pope Francis
invited into the Vatican in 2015.
Pope Benedict
condemned what he termed the “climate change prophets
of doom.”
Does Pope Francis have a
degree in chemistry?
Via the myth-busting Snopes.com: This claim is “false.”
“According to the pontiff's official biography on the
Vatican's web site, Pope Francis ‘graduated as a chemical
technician’ before entering the priesthood, received a
degree in philosophy and theology from the Colegio de
San José in San Miguel ... the only mention of the Pope's
chemistry education was the notation that he graduated as
a ‘chemical technician’; whether his training constituted
the equivalent of a university degree, and where he
undertook that course of study, was not specified.”
6
The Pope relies on UN
science claims to
promote climate action.
How reputable is the UN
IPCC?
The UN IPCC is a political organization masquerading as a
“science” body.
Many UN lead authors have now resigned
from the IPCC or had their names removed
due to the
politicization of science to fit the climate “narrative.” The
former chief of the UN IPCC, Rajendra Pachauri, declared
global warming “is my religion.” Former Thatcher advisor
and climate skeptic Christopher Monckton explains: “It is
not the business of the Pope to stray from the field of faith
and morals and wander into the playground that is
science. Do not invite only one narrow and boisterous
scientific viewpoint that has been repeatedly discredited
as events and the science and the data have unfolded.”
Why are skeptics in an
uproar over the Pope’s
climate actions?
Climate skeptics have been shut out of the debate by the
Vatican, and opponents have exploited and exaggerated
the Pope’s support of their side to use his influence.
Having a pope personally lobby for a UN agreement and
hype climate fears is confusing to Catholics who may
falsely believe one’s views on climate change and alleged
“solutions” are now part of being a good Catholic. A
major difference in what this pope has done versus
previous popes is that he is taking the extra step of
endorsing a UN climate treaty. This is a game changer
from previous popes and previous Vatican statements on
climate. It is especially frustrating for Catholic skeptics to
be pitted against the Pope on climate issues because their
political opponents disagree with him on just about all of
the moral issues raised in the encyclical, but they have
ignored their disagreement to “cherry pick” this one issue.
7
Why are many Catholic
pro-life activists upset at
the Vatican’s climate
campaign?
Many pro-life activists believe the Vatican is aligning itself
with a UN climate agenda that is at odds with major
aspects of Catholic teachings and doctrine. The
UN’s
climate agenda includes
heavy doses of development
restrictions,
promotion of contraceptives, population
control, abortions, etc. Despite these strange bedfellows,
the encyclical is clear in condemning abortion,
contraception, and population control. Pro-life activists
believe the Pope is causing Catholics who oppose climate
fear predictions and UN “solutions” to feel as if they are
not properly following their faith.
Yes. The Vatican is being misled on development and
poverty issues as they relate to “climate change.” The
Vatican’s well placed and long established concern for the
developing world’s poor is being hijacked by a radical UN
agenda that seeks to
prevent life-saving fossil fuel energy
development in the world’s poorest regions.
The Pope’s
concern that climate-change impacts are going to harm
the world’s poor the most was entirely misplaced.
Preventing poverty-stricken nations of the world from
obtaining affordable and plentiful fossil fuels means they
cannot develop and thus insulate themselves from climate
change whether it be man-made or natural. The Pope’s
claim tha
t "it is man who has slapped nature in the face"
needs to be weighed against the fact that fossil
fuels have allowed mankind to stop nature from slapping
man in the face. The more we develop with fossil fuels and
increase our wealth and standard of living, the more we
can inoculate ourselves from the ravages of nature.
Centrally planning energy economics by restricting fossil
fuels due to unfounded climate fears in the developing
world is immoral. The Vatican and the Pope should be
arguing that fossil fuels are the “moral choice” for the
developing world for people who don’t have running
water, electricity, or other basic needs.
Will the Pope’s
endorsement of the UN
climate agenda harm the
world’s poor?
8
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