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{"id":100384,"date":"2017-06-06T00:39:10","date_gmt":"2017-06-06T07:39:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/markshea\/?p=100384"},"modified":"2017-06-04T10:54:17","modified_gmt":"2017-06-04T17:54:17","slug":"pope-says-responsibility-care-creation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/markshea\/2017\/06\/pope-says-responsibility-care-creation.html","title":{"rendered":"When the Pope says we have a responsibility to care for creation"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

Strangely, they do not say that when he makes remarks pertaining to embryology and gynecology in Humanae Vitae<\/em>, nor when he talks about things pertaining to evolutionary science in Humani Generis<\/em>. Nor do they deem St. Thomas to be worthless junk merely because he too relies on the best that the fallible Aristotle, Averroes, and Avicenna have to say.<\/p>\n

No. It\u2019s only when the pope makes use of human wisdom in teaching things the Right Wing Noise Machine wants to scream down that we suddenly hear that unless it\u2019s an infallible definition about something religiousy sounding, the pope should shut up. So in addition to teaching on our relationship with Creation (which is, in fact, well within the Church\u2019s tradition and the competence of the Magisterium), we are also told that the pope should shut up about everything pertaining to money and economics since, in John Zmirak\u2019s famously arrogant and dismissive phrase \u201cordination is not an economics degree\u201d. Similarly, we heard that the pope was an ivory tower ninny who was incompetent to say the Iraq war was a terrible idea. And the Church was a pack of ivory tower ninnies on the matter of torture too. Refugees? Where does the Church get off giving sanctuary to the desperate stranger when our just and wise White Supremacist-in-Chief prudently says of Syrian children \u201cI will look them in the face and tell them they can\u2019t come.\u201d And indeed, on virtually every point of Catholic social doctrine that is not about abortion or homosexuality or a radically distorted form of subsidiarity called \u201clibertarian dogma\u201d, postmodern conservatism and its court prophets do not merely ignore but actively make war on the Church\u2019s social teaching.<\/p>\n

But when a GOP congressman hands down the fatwa that if climate change is real, \u201cGod will take care of it<\/a>\u201c, these same court prophets pull their chins and thank this agent of Caesar for enlightening the Church with true wisdom about trusting God by doing nothing to disturb oil or coal companies.<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s try it with other things, shall we?<\/p>\n

The phrase this Congressman and his deeply Christian court prophets are looking for is \u201cinshallah.\u201d Except that Muslims are not *that* passive to the Divine Will since they also recognize the proverb \u201cTrust Allah, but tie up your camel.\u201d<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, here in the West, people who actually know Christian theology and not this dimestore bastardized pietism understand that \u201cYou shall not put the Lord your God to the test.\u201d If climate change is a problem, as 97% of climate scientists and Holy Church warn it is (along with the rest of the civilized world) it is our prudent responsibility to address it as stewards of creation, not weary God with stupid lies as this Congressman does.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"