Pope Francis and climate change: why Catholic skeptics are so alarmed (+video)
On Tuesday, the Vatican hosted a conference on the moral dimensions of climate change, and the pope is said to have prepared a major encyclical on the environment.
By Harry Bruinius, Staff writer
April 28, 2015
New York — With Pope Francis poised to issue a full-throated call to address the looming threats of climate change this year, conservative Catholic skeptics are crying foul.
The pope has already prepared a major encyclical – or moral guide for the globe’s 1.2 billion Catholics – which later this year will stress the imperative of addressing human-caused global warming. And on Tuesday, the Pontifical Academy of Sciences and other organizations hosted a summit at the Vatican called “Protect the Earth, Dignify Humanity: The Moral Dimensions of Climate Change and Sustainable Development,” billed as a meeting to help strengthen “the global consensus” on the issue.
Both are parts of the Vatican’s increasing efforts to influence this year’s United Nation’s Climate Change Conference, which meets in Paris this December with the goal of getting the nations of the world to establish legally-binding protocols to protect the climate.!
It’s the kind of organized effort that sets many conservative skeptics’ teeth on edge. And even though previous popes issued similar teachings on the environment, Francis has sparked a particularly vocal response. For Catholic conservatives, both in the US and overseas, Francis’s progressive views, combined with his overwhelming popularity with the laity, represents a challenge that some critics see as moving from the theological realm to the political. But there is no question that his voice reaches farther – on this and other social issues – than his predecessor.
http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Society/2015/0428/Pope-Francis-and-climate-change-why-Catholic-skeptics-are-so-alarmed-video