Fr. Rutler on the overshadowing of saving souls for saving the planet.

Once again, Fr. Rutler affirms and confirms that the conclusions being drawn after watching and listening to the Holy Father's pontificate are right on the money. Pope Francis is unfolding a very serious impediment to the salvation of souls in St. Peter's Square, parishes, educational institutions and homes.

Before you read it, let me point out a few things which are not obvious on the surface of what is unfolding before us.

Pope Francis has spent close to three years now telling us that teaching the people we love to make judgments about the right use of the gift of human sexuality is hateful and divisive. He's been portraying himself as a prophet to undo all the damage done by 2000 years of divisive teachings that led souls to recognize the sin adultery, resist temptation and have their sins absolved. To correct this division, he has assembled theologians to teach souls to commit adultery and use contraception and claims the god of surprises wants us to invite our children to practice these ideas so we can all be happy.

But did you notice that he. does not deploy the concept he uses for the salvation of our children when teaching about the salvation of mother earth?

Many people find happiness in hunting animals and find it divisive when people tell them not to do it.

I did not see any photos of people hunting animals projected in St. Peter's Square, did you?

Many people have health problems, are not happy when temperatures go over 75 and need air conditioners to be happy and healthy. These people take great offense when they are told they should keep the air conditioners off to save mother earth.

I don't see Pope Francis trying to heal the divisions by filling St. Peter's Square with theologians who debunk global warming, do you?

He is well aware of the chaos such a message would deliver. He knows what people to pick to convey the clarity about what actions to take to deliver the outcome he desires.

I have yet to hear Pope Francis warn seminary rectors to keep the mental cases who constantly talk about mother earth out of the seminary, have you?

It stands to reason that he knew exactly what he was saying and doing when he expressed his desire to keep out candidates who take our fiat to live every day in a state of Sanctifying Grace seriously and apply it to their lives.

If this was a problem with a man who lacked the wisdom to know the chaos imposed by surrounding his people with ideas that damage the salvation of their soul, this flaw would be manifesting itself across every outcome he is hoping his pontificate will achieve.

But he clearly knows how to pick the right people to convey the right ideas and exclude people whose ideas are an endangerment to the outcome he is trying to achieve.

There are a lot of things that can be said, but saying he doesn't know the outcome of picking theologians who tell our people to it's ok to commit adultery and use contraception is not one of them.

FROM THE PASTOR

December 13, 2015

by Fr. George W. Rutler

Parameters are measurable factors that define a system, in the sense of a criterion or framework—like the parts that make the whole. The parameters of religion and science complement and serve each other, but are not to be confused. Thus, Cardinal Baronio told his friend Galileo that the Bible tells us how to go to heaven, not how the heavens go.

The Third Sunday of Advent is about heaven, and our Lord commissioned his Church to make people fit for it. The parameters of religion cannot estimate how many people can fit into heaven, since that would mix physics and eternity. But holy religion is obliged to remind physical science of its own limits. The human race was given authority to name all living creatures. That means that we are stewards of God’s creation. “Ecology” is the understanding of all things animate and inanimate, as part of God’s “household,” and thus is related to economics. Debates about climate change invoke serious moral responsibilities and require that religion and science not be confused, so that saving souls not be overshadowed by saving the planet, the latter being an ambiguous concept anyway. This point was lost on a crowd that prostrated themselves on the floor of a chapel in Paris praying that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change save Planet Earth, just days after so many people had been killed in that same city by terrorists.

Jesus loved the lilies of the field, more beautiful than Solomon in all his glory, but he beautified this world incomparably by passing through it with a reminder of its impermanence: “Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words shall not pass away” (Matthew 24:35). The Church has dogmas, but her parameters do not include making a dogma of unsettled science, just as in religion “private revelations” are not binding on the faithful. Science, by its nature, is unsettled, and today’s certitudes may be disproved tomorrow, as with geocentricism centuries ago. Given these parameters, the Church must not allow herself to be appropriated by political and business interests whose tendency is to exploit benevolent, if sometimes naïve, naturalists.

The eleventh-century King Canute is often mistakenly used as a symbol of arrogance for setting up his throne on an English beach and ordering the tides to withdraw. Just the opposite, he set up that drama to instruct his flattering courtiers in the limits of earthly power: “Let all men know how empty and worthless is the power of kings, for there is none worthy of the name, but He whom heaven, earth, and sea obey by eternal laws." He then hung his gold crown on a crucifix in Winchester and never wore it again. It was commentary on God’s words to Job: “This far you may come and no farther . . . Do you know the laws of the heavens?” (Job 38:11, 33).