The Huffintgon Post, which I read so you don’t have to, breathlessly asks if Governor John Kasich just called Pope Francis a “heretic.” No seriously. Their headline is literally, “Did John Kasich Just Call the Pope a Heretic?”
The problem, of course, is that Kasich, didn’t say anything remotely like that. Here’s what he said:
Asked if he agreed with Pope Francis that climate change is a moral issue requiring action, Kasich told me that he agreed that protecting the environment is good. However, he disagreed with the pope’s economic conclusions, characterizing them as anti-free-enterprise. But the pope’s remarks in his climate change encyclical, Laudato Si, weren’t so much anti-free-enterprise as they were anti-consumerism and anti-profiteering.
It appears that Kasich interpreted the encyclical as pantheistic, because he made a strange implication:
I read a great book on St. Francis Assisi, who the pope kind of models himself after. The environment was given to us by the Lord, and it needs to be taken care of, and it shouldn’t be worshiped; that’s called pantheism.
Who is worshiping the environment here? Pope Francis? Is Kasich implying that the pope is a pagan, a heretic?
Countering the pope’s economic conclusions, the governor defended free enterprise as a solution for global poverty, perhaps suggesting that he worships the markets instead.
Soooo, nowhere did he imply that Pope Francis was a heretic. Not even close. But this is just the latest game to shame those Catholic politicians who don’t believe that man made global warming is a crisis that requires flooding the world with contraception and taxing businesses out of existence.
Every Catholic conservative will surely be asked similar questions. It’s a shame and their answers will be distorted and contorted like Kasich’s. The media, on the other hand, never ask Hillary Clinton if she’s in total agreement with all of Baal’s positions. (Oh wait, she hasn’t fully declared her allegiance to Baal openly yet. What? It’s a joke. Kinda’.
Or they don’t ask Elizabeth Warren if she agrees with everything her Native American tribal leaders say, do they? (Another little joke. I’m in a mood.)
But this is all just an attempt to weaponize the papacy. Catholic Democrats are tired of having a direct commandment from God who said, “Thou Shall not Kill” thrown in their face when it comes to issues like abortion so they’re pretending to see a moral equivalency with a pope’s encyclical that suggests leaving air conditions on all the time might not be acting like a good steward of the planet.
Sorry. Not seeing the equivalency there.
Also, interestingly, the media doesn’t seem to have read the entire encyclical because they’re not asking Democrats about the part of the encyclical that defends the sacredness of life.
“When we fail to acknowledge as part of reality the worth of a poor person, a human embryo, a person with disabilities – to offer just a few examples – it becomes difficult to hear the cry of nature itself; everything is connected,” Pope Francis wrote. “Christian thought sees human beings as possessing a particular dignity above other creatures; it thus inculcates esteem for each person and respect for others.”
He added that, “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?”
I’m sure they’ll be asking Democrats about that in the near future. Or not.
