I'm Begging. Please Stop.

Vatican City, Dec 2, 2019 / 10:59 am (CNA).- Catholic business owners have both a grave responsibility and an opportunity to promote the Church’s social teaching in a difficult atmosphere, Pope Francis told young entrepreneurs Monday.

“I am well aware that it is not easy, in everyday life, to reconcile the needs of the faith and the social teaching of the Church with the needs and constraints imposed by the laws of the market and of globalization,” he said in the Vatican’s apostolic palace Dec. 2.

The pope noted some of the challenges that come with working in the business world, or with owning a business, such as the decisions which impact the survival of one’s company and the support of employees and their families with the payment of a just wage.

“I am thinking of working conditions, wages, job offers and their stability, as well as environmental protection. How can we live these conflicts in serenity and hope, while the Christian entrepreneur is sometimes led to silence his own convictions and ideals?” he asked.

Pope Francis - Putting the MENTAL in Environmental

Speaking to a group of lawyers on Friday, Pope Francis said that the Catholic Church is contemplating the introduction of “ecological sin” to the compendium of Church teaching.
“We have to introduce, we are thinking about it, in the catechism of the Catholic Church, the sin against ecology, the sin against our common home, because it’s a duty,” he said.

The pope’s words came just weeks after the conclusion of a bishops’ summit on the Amazon focused on the environmental threat to the region.

Francis was speaking to the 20^th world congress of the International Association of Penal Law, held in Rome Nov. 13-16, under the scope of “Criminal Justice and Corporate Business.”

He also said that the culture of waste, combined with other widespread phenomena in welfare societies, is showing the “serious tendency to degenerate into a culture of hatred.”

“It is no coincidence that in these times, emblems and actions typical of Nazism reappear, which, with its persecutions against Jews, gypsies and people of homosexual orientation, represents the negative model par excellence of a culture of waste and hatred,” Francis said.

The Intellectual and Scientific Wattage to Be Bishops

Baltimore, Md., Nov 6, 2019 / 12:03 am (CNA).- Catholic Relief Services, the official charitable arm of the U.S. bishops, is expressing strong opposition to the Trump administration’s decision to withdraw from the 2015 Paris Climate Accord.

“With the planet warming at an alarming rate and the poorest of the poor left to withstand the consequences, there will undoubtedly be more global instability, forced migration and conflict,” said Bill O’Keefe, CRS’ executive vice president of Mission, Mobilization and Advocacy.

“It is not too late to take meaningful steps to care for creation and mitigate some of the worst impacts of climate change, which is why we hope our government reconsiders this misguided decision.”

Bill O'Keefe must know his science, huh?

Mr. O'Keefe holds a B.S. from Yale and a master's in public policy from the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard.

You think it's hot here, consider this...

 

Wait For the Suprise Ending!

 Next up...Pope Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez!


Vatican City, Sep 1, 2019 / 12:00 pm (CNA).- In a message for Sunday’s World Day of Prayer for Care of Creation, Pope Francis encouraged Catholics to make simple changes to their lives so that God’s creation is treated with respect.

“Too many of us act like tyrants with regard to creation. Let us make an effort to change and to adopt more simple and respectful lifestyles!” he said in the Sept. 1 message.

“Let us say ‘no’ to consumerist greed and to the illusion of omnipotence, for these are the ways of death,” he said. “Let us inaugurate farsighted processes involving responsible sacrifices today for the sake of sure prospects for life tomorrow.” 

“Let us not give in to the perverse logic of quick profit, but look instead to our common future!”
This is a time, the pope’s message continued, “to reflect on our lifestyles, and how our daily decisions about food, consumption, transportation, use of water, energy and many other material goods, can often be thoughtless and harmful.”

He encouraged, for example, replacing fossil fuels with forms of clean energy, and said indigenous people have “age-old” wisdom that can teach people to live in better relationship with the environment.

“Now is the time,” he said, “to rediscover our vocation as children of God, brothers and sisters, and stewards of creation. Now is the time to repent, to be converted and to return to our roots. We are beloved creatures of God, who in his goodness calls us to love life and live it in communion with the rest of creation.”

Pope Francis established the World Day of Prayer for Care of Creation in 2015, to be celebrated every year on Sept. 1.

"Care for the Earth" Liturgy Penitential Rite

 BROTHER TREE!

 SISTER BIRD!

The Pope Protects the Countries Who Can't Figure Out How to Make Nuclear Weapons, Like Argentina

The Pope addressed the Plenary of the Pontifical Academy of Science recently. Here's some of what he said:


The possible fruits of this mission of service are countless: here I would like to mention only a few. First, there is the immense and ongoing crisis of climate change and the nuclear menace. Following in the footsteps of my predecessors, I reaffirm the fundamental importance of commitment to a world without nuclear arms (cf. Message to the United Nations Conference to Negotiate a Legally Binding Instrument to Prohibit Nuclear Weapons, Leading Towards their Total Elimination, 23 March 2017), and I ask – as did Saint Paul VI and Saint John Paul II – that scientists actively cooperate to convince government leaders of the ethical unacceptability of such weaponry, because of the irreparable harm that it causes to humanity and to the planet. Consequently, I too reaffirm the need for a disarmament which today seems a subject less and less raised at the tables around which great decisions are made. May I be able to thank God, as did Saint John Paul II in his Testament, that in my Pontificate the world was spared the immense tragedy of an atomic war.

Global changes are increasingly influenced by human actions. Hence there is also a need for adequate responses aimed at protecting the health of the planet and its inhabitants, a health put at risk by all those human activities that employ fossil fuels and deforest the planet (cf. Laudato Si’, 23).  Just as the scientific community has made progress in identifying these risks, it is now called to propose workable solutions and to convince societies and their leaders to pursue them.

I had a lawn full of Global Warning this morning!

From an Expert on Economics To an Expert on Global Warming

Pope Francis will meet with some of the world's oil executives next week, likely to give them another moral nudge to clean up their act on global warming.
Climate change policy and science experts are cautiously hopeful but aren't expecting any miracles or even noticeable changes. 

But lighting the witch on fire will cause carbon emissions! What now?

 The conference will be a follow-up to the pope's encyclical three years ago calling on people to save the planet from climate change and other environmental ills, Vatican spokesman Greg Burke confirmed Friday. Cardinal Peter Turkson, who spearheaded the encyclical, set up the June 8-9 conference with the executives. The pope himself will speak to the leaders on the second day of the summit, organized with the University of Notre Dame, Burke said. 

 Oil companies have talked about fighting climate change, but they haven't done much beyond talk, said MIT management professor John Sterman.
The pope offers "moral persuasion," but if it is just a photo opportunity for oil executives to show off "it doesn't mean anything and in fact it's just PR to help oil companies burnish up their image while they continue to delay actions," Sterman said


Dana Fisher, a sociologist who studies environmentalism at the University of Maryland, said the pope is cementing his leadership on climate.
"He certainly is trying to lead for the planet and lord knows we need it," she said. 

Hurray! Leading for the planet. When he gets done, mabe he could lead the Catholic Church!