The following comes from an August 9 Catholic San Francisco article by Christina Gray:
Parish ‘green teams’ designed to help Catholics walk the talk of Pope Francis’ environmental encyclical have taken root if not yet sprouted at a dozen parishes in the Archdiocese of San Francisco.
Members of the nascent green teams came together on July 30 at St. Teresa of Avila Parish in San Francisco to share progress, aspirations and obstacles during a “green team workshop” led by members of the parish’s own green team.
“We came here today to find out what is working in other parishes so we don’t have to reinvent the wheel,” said Verna Shaheen, a parishioner at Most Holy Redeemer. She and friend Barbara Applegate got the nod from their pastor before talking to parishioners about recycling and composting at after-Mass coffee hour. “Some people are on board and others are resistant,” she said.
The archdiocese encouraged laity to “be the driving force” in forming a parish response to the imperatives of “Laudato Si’: On Care For Our Common Hame” at an April 23 conference organized at the behest of Archbishop Salvatore J. Cordileone. He and an overflow crowd of 100 pastors, parishioners and staff at St. Anne of the Sunset parish hall collectively unpacked the pope’s historic messages.
After going around the room and listening to team members, organizers identified four topics of greatest interest for discussion: how to start a green team, how to work with pastors, how to benchmark energy savings, and how to bring “Laudato Si’” into the Mass and other liturgies.
Another popular discussion led by Father Ken Weare, pastor of St. Rita Parish was focused on weaving the concept of caring for creation into the Mass and other special liturgies.
You really have to help your pastor more than ever if you want to bring the encyclical into the liturgy because there are fewer of them now and more work for them to do, he said. “Approach your pastor with a plan set out ahead of time and even homily ideas,” he said.
Ask these “Green Team” enthusiasts in San Francisco where they fall on all the litmus-test, non-negotiable matters of Catholic faith. Are they as enthusiastic about Dominus Iesus and Ordinatio Sacerdotalis and Considerations Regarding Proposals to Give Legal Recognition to Unions between Homosexual Persons as they are about Laudato Si? Do they oppose abortion? I doubt it.
The end game is not recycling and composting: it’s infiltrating the Mass and catechesis with leftist thought under the guise of care for creation.
The last thing I would want in my parish is a group of Bernie Sanders supporting, Democrat, leftist, climate change hysterics who depart from Catholic faith in substantial ways to form an agitating activist club to…
…to bring socialism into the Mass and catechesis. Those people and groups already exist: they’re called “Jesuits”.
The truth Sawyer is that there are pick-and-choose Catholics on both sides, on the left and on the right. I have found for instance that Catholics here will give short shrift to the Magisterium’s teaching on the death penalty. Or they will embellish words of the Magisterium with erroneous meaning such as “intrinsic disorder.” It’s on both sides. Let’s not throw stones when we ourselves are guilty.
The death penalty is supported by the Catechism, jon. It is your misconstruing of hopes that goes too far. Same thing with your musings that the reconstituted Magisterium of doubling back and eating one’s own head can somehow make homosexual inclinations properly ordered.
Authority is something to be properly understood and obeyed in accordance with what authority is intended to produce. Protection of the flock, not division.
Let us not throw stones at reality and then attempt to call it Catholic. That is no evangelization, but theater.
TOTALLY WRONG is AMalley: Catechism 2267 allows the death penalty, “when this is the ONLY practicable way to defend the lives of human beings effectively against the aggressor.” Because there are now other ways to defend society from a capital criminal, JP2 and the pontiffs after him have judged that the death penalty be abolished.
“I greet the distinguished delegations from various countries taking part in the meeting promoted by the Community of Sant’Egidio on the theme: No Justice without Life. I express my hope that your deliberations will encourage the political and legislative initiatives being promoted in a growing number of countries to eliminate the death penalty and to continue the substantive progress made in…
“conforming penal law both to the human dignity of prisoners and the effective maintenance of public order.” Pope Benedict XVI, November 30, 2011. General Audience.
Ann, you know since you read these threads regularly that I went round and round with jon about this. I even wrote to the USCCB death penalty office to ask whether it is obligatory for a Catholic to support abolishing the death penalty or sinful to oppose abolishing the death penalty. The response I received confirmed my argument that the former is not obligatory nor is the latter sinful.
jon doesn’t engage in discussion; he posts citations but won’t entertain proper analysis and interpretation of those citations. That’s why I won’t go round and round with him about it anymore, but I will remind people that they can write to the USCCB themselves for verification if they desire.
But really folks, my only point is to draw attention to the hypocrisy that is oh-so-common whenever I read castigations here from the right against those of the left. Dissent can be found on both side, folks. “And why seest thou the mote that is in thy brother’ s eye; and seest not the beam that is in thy own eye?” (Matt. 7:3).
But Sawyer, even your supposed “rep” says that you better have a solid reason for dissenting, and YOU DON’T. Your reasoning (prison escapes) is not based on reality (escapes are actually going down), therefore it is not legitimate!
But person the reason why many here are dubious is because the manifest intellectual dishonesty on your part. Deliberately misinterpreting “may be” and “intrinsically disordered” do not engender confidence in your words.
Additionally, just to clarify your alleged “rep”: it is always sinful to dissent from the teachings of the pope. This includes a teaching that’s been repeated many times by JP2 (Lumen Gentium 25 buttresses this) like the death penalty. Because the issue of the death penalty is not the same moral weight as an intrinsic evil, the sin is venial and the dissenter may receive communion. Therefore, your alleged “rep’s” statement that “it is not sinful” can only be interpreted that the alleged “rep” meant mortal sin. For all dissent is sinful.
jon, write to the USCCB death penalty department yourself and ask the same questions that I did Or are you afraid that the answer will contradict your position? I won’t engage you on this topic anymore. Your conclusions are wrong and you don’t discuss rationally.
Capital punishment is a legitimate option for governments in the administration of justice. The Church has always stated that truth and it cannot contradict that truth even though some Catholics will try to conceal or squirm their way around that fact.
Go ahead, write to the USCCB and learn something since you won’t take the informed, rational judgments of the great posters on this board who disagree with you.
For your information, I have. I indicated that in the same article awhile back. And the answer is that yes, the Pope’s teaching on the death penalty falls under Lumen Gentium 25: what is required of Catholics is a religious submission of mind and will. It has always been the teaching of the Church that dissent from the Holy Father’s clear teaching and judgment is a sin. The level of sin is determined by the issue involved—and this is what the CDF Letter clarified. Your question was LOADED and impertinent (if you did asked it), which explains the manner of the response to you.
My questions were not loaded, they were direct and allowed no wiggle room on the part of the responder. “Yes” or “no” questions are usually resented by people who don’t want precision on the matter.
If disagreement with the Holy Father were sinful, Cardinal Ratzinger would not have written that a legitimate diversity of opinion about the application of the death penalty is permissible among Catholics. Sin is never legitimate; since disagreement with the pope about the death penalty can be legitimate, it is not necessarily sinful.
But we’ve been through this before, and you’re still wrong. Repeating yourself and using caps doesn’t make you right.
Do you really want to be honest with identifying where your error is? It’s in your misinterpretation of “may be” in the CDF Letter. It is not permissive. It is expressing a theoretical possibility of a “legitimate diversity of opinion.” Among other things, this is proven by the context and it is proven by the preposition “even among Catholics” found in the same sentence. Otherwise, your interpretation says that the CDF Letter means to give permission principally for non-Catholics and only as an afterthought “EVEN AMONG CATHOLICS”! TOTALLY WRONG!
THe reason YOU can receive communion is not because your opinion is legitimate (I have checked your reason for dissenting and it is found wanting), but because the issue does…
not have the same moral weight as abortion and euthanasia which are intrinsic evils.
Folks, the root of errors like Sawyer’s is always found in deliberate misinterpretation and misapplication of simple words. It’s very CLINTONESQUE: “It all depends on the meaning of the word ‘is.'”
Once again Jon blathers on about something he knows nothing about. Have you ever experienced the real world, Jon? There are people in this world who do not deserve to breathe the same air as ordinary people. In war and law enforcement and emergency medicine you will encounter these people. I have done all three and I know of what I speak. Rabid dogs are put down for the protection of society and some people occupy the same position. Picking and choosing not involved.
From Pope St. John Paul II, this is the unrefutable response hosemonkey to your point that there are people “who do not deserve to breathe the same air as ordinary people”:
“The new evangelization calls for followers of Christ who are unconditionally pro-life: who will proclaim, celebrate and serve the Gospel of life in every situation. A sign of hope is the increasing recognition that the dignity of human life must never be taken away, even in the case of someone who has done great evil. . . . I renew the appeal I made . . . for a consensus to end the death penalty, which is both cruel and unnecessary.”
—Pope John Paul II Papal Mass, St. Louis, Missouri, January 27, 1999
Laudato Si’ central dogma is that air conditioners are bad. Yet we know from the low prevalence of Dengue hemorrhagic fever in the US that air conditioning is great to stop mosquito borne diseases like Zika. It is not scientifically proven that global warming is caused by human activity. The pope’s leftist Jesuit Liberation Theology will turn US into Argentina, Bolivia, Nicaragua, Brazil or Cuba.
Sorry, I forgot Venezuela.
More ridiculous secularism by the Church. There is no man made climate change, Francis doesn’t know anything about science and he really should start familiarizing himself w basic Catholic theology.
The Church is dying before our eyes along with Western Civilization…their is a linkage.
Oh no! Here they come! It’s the smiling idealistic Marxists who love the poor so much that they want us all to be poor. Now they wanna come to our parishes for a “Be-In.” Just mention the evils of abortion, euthanasia, and same-sex marriage to them and they just roll their eyes. They’d rather refer to verses in the Book of Acts to justify their goals for a Utopia here on earth. When confronted with scientific and economic facts that contradict them, all they can say is that we’re hateful and uncharitable. It’s a brave new world.
well, you are being uncharitable when you call people Marxists and say they aren’t willing to be confronted with scientific and economic facts. Both of those statements are lies.
It is not uncharitable to tell it like it is. The great fallacy in this society is that of absolutely dreading causing offense. We would rather allow someone to die in a lie rather than save them with the truth. I’m OK, you’re OK has sent more people to hell than anything else. Like putting a band-aid on cancer. There is evil out there and the Church is obsessing about trivia.
Whoops…….their = there is a linkage
From “In Vatican’s worldview, it’s ‘now or never’ on climate change” by LifeSiteNews’ Steve Weatherbe:
Why … the climate change shibboleth? The National Post’s Peter Foster provides an answer in his column. After the collapse of the Soviet Union discredited socialism, Foster says its adherents have migrated into the environmental movement, justifying their undying goal of government control over the economy and individual action with calls … for suppression of fossil fuel use combined with wealth redistribution. “Radical socialism has far from disappeared. It has simply gone green,” Foster writes.
Read more at http://www.lifesitenews.com/news/in-vaticans-view-its-now-or-never-on-climate-change
Cultural Marxism is achieving many of the goals of the October Bolshevik Revolution.
To add to Warren M.’s cogent post, the takeover of all US church denominations has been in the works going back to at least 2009, when several Soros-funded orgs (Evangelical Environmental Network, Regeneration Project of SF, Eco-Justice Program of Natl. Council of Churches, etc) began designing community-organizer training with the dpecific purpose of going into all Protestant and Catholic Churches (cf. “Greener Than Thou: The American Left Takes Up Christian Envirobnentalusm”, 6/2/09, capitalresearch.org) (In Phoenix area, they were called “Valley Interfaith Project”.)
With the unexpected windfall of the virtually entirely secular atheist message of Laudato Si (2015), it was only a matter of time before their minions would…
..replace Christ with their mascot, the Lorax.
There is absolutely nothing in Christ’s Gospel or His Kingdom conforming to the modern Green Movement agenda.
[Additionally, the Greens are all for abortion, contaception, and euthanizing “old worthless people”, as Rahm Emmanuel’s brother, Ezekiel, put it in his famous “The Atlantic” article in 2014, that everyone should die by age 75 because they are no longer “creative” or productive.]
BTW, regarding the forced “check-out of other old people, Barbara Boxer is 75, Bernie Sanders is 74, and Nancy Pelosi is 76. Anyone want to get themselves in handcuffs and suggest their time has come to an end?
And the author of Laudato Si will be 80 in December.
“Those people and groups already exist: they’re called “Jesuits”.” And, Fr. Weare…
We need spiritual warriors that will proclaim the word of God and Gospel truths in our masses not green teams. It would seem those anti-God secular humanist forces do not want to proclaim the word of God anymore. The world needs to hear the word of God more than at any time in human history. People need to know that we are in the end times and that Jesus Christ the Son of Almighty God is going to come soon like a thief in the night.
Do you think the nasty pollution that invades the body and the ground from contraceptives will be targeted by this “green” group?
not to mention what it does to the soul…
Luke 23:29-31
And there followed him a great multitude of the people, and of women who bewailed and lamented him. But Jesus turning to them said, “Daughters of Jerusalem, do not weep for me, but weep for yourselves and for your children. For behold, the days are coming when they will say, —Blessed are the barren, and the wombs that never bore, and the breasts that never gave suck!’ Then they will begin to say to the mountains, —Fall on us’; and to the hills, —Cover us.’ For if they do this when the wood is green, what will happen when it is dry?”
That’s a lot of white hairs and age in that picture. Like most secular and ideological movements in the Church, it’s lead by the aging elderly and going nowhere. No one cares. No one cares about this green movement with all the problems in the Church and world today. There’s a massive loss of faith and morals. The churches are empty and the world is a dangerous place on the verge of WW3, and people are worrying about recyclables.
Dangerous truths, Asbury Fox.
D’accord.
Just so that I and others can understand this better, you are saying that it is “un-Catholic” to try to develop plans to reduce electric and gas usage, water usage, etc. in a parish. Is that what you are saying? Because I’m even hearing a conspiracy theory that saving the environment is a communist plot from one of the writers. Doesn’t the Bible and our Catechism say that we should be good stewards of the earth? Now, I know some people don’t believe in science, you know, no climate change, etc., but, well, you know!
We’re saying their priorities are probably skewed. They are overly enthusiastic about low-priority matters and, in all probability (given the city) dismissive and hostile toward non-negotiable matters.
One of the parishioners quoted in the story is from Most Holy Redeemer parish. That place certainly should put quite a few things higher on the “to do” list than recycling and composting and saving energy.
They will have to fight for space in the pews with the Alinskyite Thought Police monitoring the Homily for politically Un-Good Catholicism; but like similar ‘scowlers’ in Academentia understand – if they sit in the back and hide behind a computer screen nobody can see them…
– Except of course for God – who may be allowed to Audit, provided He does so silently,
Doubtless God will also be charged with the same ‘hate crimes’ as the Lectors & Priests, only with greater zeal than even Judas could muster.
Perhaps these light hearted and gaily happy types could at least see fit to use ‘eco-friendly’ spray paint to tag the Church – like they did Holy Redeemer, where my Parents (Heterosexual, on both sides) were Married, before…
Since everything is interrelated, concern for the protection of nature is also incompatible with the justification of abortion. How can we genuinely teach the importance of concern for other vulnerable beings, however troublesome or inconvenient they may be, if we fail to protect a human embryo, even when its presence is uncomfortable and creates difficulties? “If personal and social sensitivity towards the acceptance of the new life is lost, then other forms of acceptance that are valuable for society also wither away”. Just use this passage from “Laudato Si” to protect the unborn environment…
Thank you Bizz for quoting paragraph 120 of Laudatio Si. This throws a figurative pie on the faces of those who want to smear the Magisterium and the Holy Father in particular. Concern for the environment = concern for all human life (yes, even the unborn, yes even the imprisoned).
“This throws a figurative pie on the faces ..” Methinks jon has a lust for degradation and humiliation of others.
so·ci·o·path (/ˈsōsēōˌpaTH/), def. (noun) “a person with a personality disorder manifesting itself in extreme antisocial attitudes and behavior and a lack of conscience.”
More similarities at:
https://www.mcafee.cc/Bin/sb.html
Gosh – the ;anonymous’ (Paid?) Troll ‘ certainly seems to dump a lot of (excrement deleted) around here – without even the basic candor or courage to identify who they are – and who is paying them”
I say scroll past the Troll – at least until they are Honest Enough to Identify themselves. ahem.
Classic Watermelons: Green on the Outside, Red on the Inside. Coming to a parish near you.
organic health food stores were in earlier days the ‘church’ for the greens. there flyers and bulletin boards would carry the latest info. since then, the internet has expanded the movement. since the eco movement has been around so long already, is a local presence in parishes really necessary? ironically, one of the best means to thwart the lure of the throw-away world used to be catholic lent which spoke of fasting and penance. we need purple committees.
Is this needed & should it even be a priority? So many parishes, so many teams already. What happened to the year of MERCY? Will anyone be left to carry on saving souls? Don’t parishes have declining priests, school enrollments, baptisms, marriages, low Mass attendance & empty confession lines? No hungary to feed? Poor to clothe? Workers (laid off) to hire? Prisons & elderly to visit? Making THIS a priority (over the spiritual & truly needy) is an example of WHAT IS WRONG with the DIRECTION of our church. God help us.