Seeing the Wood for the Trees
Archimandrite Vassilios Papavassiliou, Pravmir.com
In recent times, the ecological crisis has been brought increasingly to our attention. Scientists, the media, Hollywood, thrash metal bands, and a horde of environmentalists from politicians to tree-hugging hippies and pseudo-Buddhists, have all had their say. But there is one voice on environmental issues that seems to only speak in hushed tones, and this is the voice of Christianity.
Pope Francis Ushers The Second Coming Of Peronism
Maureen Mullarkey, The Federalist
The gospels do not provide economic or political revelation. Christianity offers no syllabus for monetary, industrial, or trade policy. Papal encyclicals are not blueprints for eradicating poverty. They provide no practical means by which fine ideals and morally satisfying solutions to hard problems are best achieved. Papal utterances can even hinder effective discussion. History testifies that the language of justice, delivered with divine sanction, can serve tyranny and disintegration as easily as it gratifies popular emotion.
Huelskamp: Pope Francis chose an ‘important time’ to address Congress
Justin Wingerter, The Topeka Capital-Journal
Since beginning his papacy in March 2013, Pope Francis hasn’t shied away from broadening his rhetorical horizons to weigh in on issues such as climate change and foreign policy.
The Pope, the Encyclical and Notre Dame
Sarah Senseman, Notre Dame & St. Mary’s Observer
Notre Dame is the world’s leading Catholic university and has always been a global force in combatting social justice issues such as poverty and injustice. ‘Laudato si’ has shed light on our new mission. We share a home with 7 billion other people and it is quickly becoming sick. Pope Francis issued a call to save our planet and we are obligated to answer. We can wait for other people to work it out or we can take action now. This is the greatest challenge our generation will face.
California governor lays out ambitious climate-change plan
The Associated Press
Gov. Jerry Brown has made climate change the centerpiece of his final tenure by laying out the most aggressive benchmark in North America, which would reduce California’s carbon footprint and boost the state’s renewable energy use to 50 percent in 15 years.
Pope Francis: Eco-Warrior
Newsweek
Few papal encyclicals can be lauded as “eagerly awaited” by the public at large like May 2015’s Laudato Si’, a 184-page letter “On care for our common home.” In the treatise, which is addressed to everyone on Earth, Francis goes into remarkable detail—all of it underpinned by a sense of scientific fact and civic responsibility—about pollution, overuse of resources, changing landscapes and declining biodiversity. “Greater investment needs to be made in research aimed at understanding more fully the functioning of ecosystems and adequately analyzing the different variables associated with any significant modification of the environment,” Francis writes.
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