POPE FRANCIS’ EXHORTATION (THANK GOD, NOT AN ENCYLICAL) RECEIVES GENERALLY GOOD GRADES FROM NON CATHOLICS, EXCEPT PROTESTANTS IN THE USA

Thank goodness that the pope’s ecological document is not an encyclical, the highest form of papal teaching requiring obedience if in context with the perennial magisterium of the Church both ordinary and extraordinary. It is an Apostolic Exhortation.

Reading it you will note that it is time constrained. It won’t do well in reruns, because it deals with current situations which might be quite different even in a few month. 

For example, one of the reasons “I Love Lucy” continues to remain so popular and can be seen on a variety of broadcast, cable and streaming platforms is that even though it is a 1950’s sitcom, its situations transcends the 1950’s. There is no talk or comedy about social issues going on in the 1950’s, no political or economy jokes and seldom is the year announced or who the president is. Occasionally  you might hear President Eisenhower or 1952 or something like that. Of course styles and automobiles are from the 1950’s. But apart from that, the comedy of “I love Lucy” transcends time and is timeless. 

Crux here and the Pillar here have good commentaries on how the pope’s exhortation was developed and is being received.

Somehow, this pope often snatches defeat out of victory by saying or doing something stupid that becomes the fly in the ointment of an otherwise good thing. The same is true with this document. Pope Francis falsely castigates the USA and praises China. But as you will see, he uses faulty information to do it. 

In doing this the pope is showing his dislike of the USA due to his South American Marxist/Peronist political leanings, which gets him in trouble with many Americans and Europeans too. 

It would have served him better to leave specific countries out of the picture or to give a fuller picture. But he politicized it by showing his political leanings, more in tune with Russia and China, than North America and most of Europe!

This is from the Pillar article I link above:

The text has been generally well-received by climate activists, but has proven controversial in the United States, because of its claim that “emissions per individual in the United States are about two times greater than those of individuals living in China, and about seven times greater than the average of the poorest countries.”

Credit: “Emissions Gap Report 2022,” United Nations Energy Program.

While the document’s footnotes said that data came from a 2022 United Nations Report, the report itself showed that U.S. per capita emissions are less than 1.5 times that of China — and that China’s per capita emissions levels — which some thought were framed as laudatory — are significantly higher than the global average.