It is the worship of nature and the creation more than the Creator!
Fits in with Saint Francis of Asisi and his worshipping the creature.
Romans 1:22-27
22 Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools,
23And changed the glory of the uncorruptible God into an image made like
to corruptible man, and to birds, and fourfooted beasts, and creeping
things.
24 Wherefore God also gave them up to uncleanness through the
lusts of their own hearts, to dishonour their own bodies between
themselves:
25 Who changed the truth of God into a lie, and
worshipped and served the creature more than the Creator, who is blessed
for ever. Amen.
26 For this cause God gave them up unto vile
affections: for even their women did change the natural use into that
which is against nature:
27 And likewise also the men, leaving the
natural use of the woman, burned in their lust one toward another; men
with men working that which is unseemly, and receiving in themselves
that recompence of their error which was meet.
The most anticipated papal letter for decades will be published in five
languages on Thursday. It will call for an end to the ‘tyrannical’
exploitation of nature by mankind. Could it lead to a step-change in the
battle against global warming?
Pope Francis will call for an ethical and economic revolution to prevent
catastrophic climate change and growing inequality in a letter to the
world’s 1.2 billion Catholics on Thursday.
In an unprecedented encyclical on the subject of the environment, the
pontiff is expected to argue that humanity’s exploitation of the
planet’s resources has crossed the Earth’s natural boundaries, and that
the world faces ruin without a revolution in hearts and minds. The
much-anticipated message, which will be sent to the world’s 5,000
Catholic bishops, will be published online in five languages on Thursday
and is expected to be the most radical statement yet from the outspoken
pontiff.
However, it is certain to anger sections of Republican opinion in
America by endorsing the warnings of climate scientists and admonishing
rich elites, say cardinals and scientists who have advised the Vatican.
The Ghanaian cardinal, Peter Turkson, president of the Vatican’s
Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace and a close ally of the pope,
will launch the encyclical. He has said it will address the root causes
of poverty and the threats facing nature, or “creation”.
In a recent speech widely regarded as a curtain-raiser to the encyclical,
Turkson said: “Much of the world remains in poverty, despite abundant
resources, while a privileged global elite controls the bulk of the
world’s wealth and consumes the bulk of its resources.”
The Argentinian pontiff is expected to repeat calls for a change in
attitudes to poverty and nature. “An economic system centred on the god
of money needs to plunder nature to sustain the frenetic rhythm of
consumption that is inherent to it,” he told a meeting of social
movements last year. “I think a question that we are not asking
ourselves is: isn’t humanity committing suicide with this indiscriminate
and tyrannical use of nature? Safeguard creation because, if we destroy
it, it will destroy us. Never forget this.”
The encyclical will go much further than strictly environmental
concerns, say Vatican insiders. “Pope Francis has repeatedly stated that
the environment is not only an economic or political issue, but is an
anthropological and ethical matter,” said another of the pope’s
advisers, Archbishop Pedro Barreto Jimeno of Peru.
“It will address the issue of inequality in the distribution of
resources and topics such as the wasting of food and the irresponsible
exploitation of nature and the consequences for people’s life and
health,” Barreto Jimeno told the Catholic News Service.
He was echoed by Cardinal Oscar RodrÃguez Maradiaga of Honduras, who
coordinates the Vatican’s inner council of cardinals and is thought to
reflect the pope’s political thinking . “The ideology surrounding
environmental issues is too tied to a capitalism that doesn’t want to
stop ruining the environment because they don’t want to give up their
profits,” RodrÃguez Maradiaga said.
The rare encyclical, called “Laudato Sii”, or “Praised Be”, has been
timed to have maximum public impact ahead of the pope’s meeting with
Barack Obama and his address to the US Congress and the UN general
assembly in September.
It is also intended to improve the prospect of a strong new UN global
agreement to cut climate emissions. By adding a moral dimension to the
well-rehearsed scientific arguments, Francis hopes to raise the ambition
of countries above their own self-interest to secure a strong deal in a
crucial climate summit in Paris in November.
“Pope Francis is personally committed to this [climate] issue like no
other pope before him. The encyclical will have a major impact. It will
speak to the moral imperative of addressing climate change in a timely
fashion in order to protect the most vulnerable,” said Christiana
Figueres, the UN’s climate chief, in Bonn this week for negotiations.
Francis, the first Latin American pope, is increasingly seen as the
voice of the global south and a catalyst for change in global bodies. In
September, he will seek to add impetus and moral authority to UN
negotiations in New York to adopt new development goals and lay out a
15-year global plan to tackle hunger, extreme poverty and health. He
will address the UN general assembly on 23 September as countries
finalise their commitments.
However, Francis’s radicalism is attracting resistance from Vatican
conservatives and in rightwing church circles, particularly in the US –
where Catholic climate sceptics also include John Boehner, Republican
leader of the House of Representatives, and Rick Santorum, a Republican
presidential candidate.
Earlier this year Stephen Moore, a Catholic economist, called the
pope a “complete disaster”, saying he was part of “a radical green
movement that is at its core anti-Christian, anti-people and
anti-progress”.
Moore was backed this month by scientists and engineers from the
powerful evangelical Cornwall Alliance for the Stewardship of Creation,
who have written an open letter to Francis. “Today many prominent voices
call humanity a scourge on our planet, saying that man is the problem,
not the solution. Such attitudes too often contaminate their assessment
of man’s effects on nature,” it says.
But the encyclical will be well received in developing countries,
where most Catholics live. “Francis has always put the poor at the
centre of everything he has said. The developing countries will hear
their voice in the encyclical,” said Neil Thorns, director of advocacy
at the Catholic development agency, Cafod. “I expect it to challenge the
way we think. The message that we cannot just treat the Earth as a tool
for exploitation will be a message that many will not want to hear.”
The pope is “aiming at a change of heart. What will save us is not
technology or science. What will save us is the ethical transformation
of our society,” said Carmelite Father Eduardo Agosta Scarel, a climate
scientist who teaches at the Pontifical Catholic University of Argentina
in Buenos Aires.
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jun/13/pope-francis-intervention-transforms-climate-change-debate#comment-53794230
