Note: TradCatKnight does not hold Francis as the true Pope
With
all the talk from the Bishop of Rome about the evils of rigidity, it
comes as quite notable that he thinks differently when ti comes to
"saving the planet." Pope Francis calls on scientists to create a
"regulatory system," with "inviolable limits." We all need an
"ecological conversion." Heaven forbid we have a regulatory system with inviolable limits on sin and sacrilege. Not a word about conversion to Our Lord Jesus Christ. What irony and hypocrisy.
VATICAN CITY Humanity does not own God's gift of creation
and has no right to pillage it, Pope Francis said.
"We are not custodians of a museum and its masterpieces
that we have to dust off every morning, but rather collaborators in the
conservation and development of the existence and biodiversity of the planet
and human life," he said Nov. 28.
The pope addressed experts attending a plenary session of
the Pontifical Academy of Sciences Nov. 25-29 to discuss the impact of
scientific knowledge and technology on people and the planet.
People in the modern world have grown up "thinking we
are the owners and masters of nature, authorized to plunder it without any
consideration for its secret potential and evolutionary laws, as if it were an
inert substance at our disposal, causing, among other things, a very serious
loss of biodiversity," he said.
An "ecological conversion" is needed in which
people recognize their responsibility for caring for creation and its
resources, for trying to bring about social justice and for overcoming "an
unfair system that produces misery, inequality and exclusion," the pope
said. In fact, with sustainable development, the tasks of taking care of both
people and the planet are inseparable, he said.
He lamented how easily well-founded scientific counsel is
"disregarded" and how politics tends to obey technology and finance
instead.
The proof of that, he said, is the way countries are still
"distracted" or delayed in applying international agreements on the
environment as well as the "continuous wars of dominance masquerading as
noble declarations that cause increasingly serious harm to the environment and
the moral and cultural wealth of peoples."
Pope Francis told the scientists that it was up to them to
"build a cultural model to tackle the crisis of climate change and its
social consequences so that enormous productive capacities are not reserved
only to the few."
To do that, he said, the scientists would have to be free of
political, economic and ideological interests, too.
Because scientists have been able to study and demonstrate
many crises facing the planet, the pope called on them to be leaders in
proposing solutions to the many problems, such as water, energy and food
security.
He said it would be "indispensable" for the
world's scientists to collaborate and create "a regulatory system that
includes inviolable limits and guarantees the protection of ecosystems before
new forms of power derived from the technological-economic paradigm produce
irreversible damage not just to the environment but also to coexistence,
democracy, justice and freedom."
