Category: +PopeFrancis

The Weekly Francis – 23 June 2015

francis-reading

This version of The Weekly Francis covers material released in the last week from 24 May 2015 to 23 June 2015.

Angelus

Daily Homilies (fervorinos)

Encylical

General Audiences

Homilies

Speeches

Papal Tweets

  • “We know how unsustainable is the behaviour of those who constantly consume and destroy.” @Pontifex 18 June 2015
  • “A decrease in the pace of production and consumption can at times give rise to another form of progress and development.” @Pontifex 18 June 2015
  • “Reducing greenhouse gases requires honesty, courage and responsibility. #LaudatoSi” @Pontifex 18 June 2015
  • “Interdependence obliges us to think of one world with a common plan.” @Pontifex 18 June 2015
  • “Leaving an inhabitable planet to future generations is, first and foremost, up to us.” @Pontifex 18 June 2015
  • “What is at stake is our own dignity.” @Pontifex 18 June 2015
  • “What kind of world do we want to leave to those who come after us, to children who are now growing up?” @Pontifex 18 June 2015
  • “The world we have received also belongs to who will follow us. #LaudatoSi” @Pontifex 18 June 2015
  • “Having a home has much to do with a sense of personal dignity and the growth of families. #LaudatoSi” @Pontifex 18 June 2015
  • “For indigenous communities, land is not a commodity, but a gift from God, a sacred space.” @Pontifex 18 June 2015
  • “We need an integrated approach to combating poverty and protecting nature.” @Pontifex 18 June 2015
  • “It is contrary to human dignity to cause animals to suffer or die needlessly. #LaudatoSi” @Pontifex 18 June 2015
  • “The culture of relativism drives one person to take advantage of another, to treat others as mere objects.” @Pontifex 18 June 2015
  • “Christian thought sees human beings as possessing a particular dignity above other creatures.” @Pontifex 18 June 2015
  • “There is an urgent need for us to move forward in a bold cultural revolution. #LaudatoSi” @Pontifex 18 June 2015
  • “Scientific and technological progress cannot be equated with the progress of humanity and history.” @Pontifex 18 June 2015
  • “By itself the market cannot guarantee integral human development and social inclusion.” @Pontifex 18 June 2015
  • “We are learning all too slowly the lessons of environmental deterioration. #LaudatoSi” @Pontifex 18 June 2015
  • “It is possible that we don’t grasp the gravity of the challenges before us. #LaudatoSi” @Pontifex 18 June 2015
  • “Each age tends to have only a meagre awareness of its own limitations.” @Pontifex 18 June 2015
  • “Never has humanity had such power over itself, yet nothing ensures that it will be used wisely.” @Pontifex 18 June 2015
  • “For believers, this becomes a question of fidelity to the Creator.” @Pontifex 18 June 2015
  • “Earth is essentially a shared inheritance, whose fruits are meant to benefit everyone. #LaudatoSi” @Pontifex 18 June 2015
  • “We continue to tolerate some considering themselves more worthy than others.” @Pontifex 18 June 2015
  • “We should be particularly indignant at the enormous inequalities in our midst. #LaudatoSi” @Pontifex 18 June 2015
  • “At times more zeal is shown in protecting other species than in defending the equal dignity of human beings.” @Pontifex 18 June 2015
  • “A fragile world challenges us to devise intelligent ways of directing, developing and limiting our power.” @Pontifex 18 June 2015
  • “Every creature is the object of the Father’s tenderness, who gives it its place in the world.” @Pontifex 18 June 2015
  • “”Creation” has a broader meaning than “nature”; it has to do with God’s loving plan. #LaudatoSi” @Pontifex 18 June 2015
  • “Each community has the duty to protect the earth and to ensure its fruitfulness for coming generations.” @Pontifex 18 June 2015
  • “The present world system is certainly unsustainable from a number of points of view. #LaudatoSi” @Pontifex 18 June 2015
  • “We need only to take a frank look at the facts to see that our common home is falling into serious disrepair. #LaudatoSi” @Pontifex 18 June 2015
  • “Whatever is fragile, like the environment, is defenceless before the interests of a deified market.” @Pontifex 18 June 2015
  • “The alliance between economy and technology ends up sidelining anything unrelated to its immediate interests.” @Pontifex 18 June 2015
  • “Economic interests easily end up trumping the common good.” @Pontifex 18 June 2015
  • “There is no room for the globalization of indifference. #LaudatoSi” @Pontifex 18 June 2015
  • “Developed countries ought to help pay this debt by limiting their consumption of nonrenewable energy.” @Pontifex 18 June 2015
  • “A true “ecological debt” exists, particularly between the global north and south.” @Pontifex 18 June 2015
  • “To blame population growth, and not an extreme consumerism on the part of some, is one way of refusing to face the issues.” @Pontifex 18 June 2015
  • “We have to hear both the cry of the earth and the cry of the poor. #LaudatoSi” @Pontifex 18 June 2015
  • “The deterioration of the environment and of society affect the most vulnerable people on the planet.” @Pontifex 18 June 2015
  • “The human environment and the natural environment deteriorate together.” @Pontifex 18 June 2015
  • “One particularly serious problem is the quality of water available to the poor. #LaudatoSi” @Pontifex 18 June 2015
  • “These problems are closely linked to a throwaway culture.” @Pontifex 18 June 2015
  • “The earth, our home, is beginning to look more and more like an immense pile of filth.” @Pontifex 18 June 2015
  • “Climate change represents one of the principal challenges facing humanity in our day. #LaudatoSi” @Pontifex 18 June 2015
  • “The climate is a common good, belonging to all and meant for all.” @Pontifex 18 June 2015
  • “”To commit a crime against the natural world is a sin against ourselves and a sin against God.” (Patriarch Bartholomew)” @Pontifex 18 June 2015
  • “The throwaway culture of today calls for a new lifestyle. #LaudatoSi” @Pontifex 18 June 2015
  • “There is a value proper to each creature.” @Pontifex 18 June 2015
  • “There is a need to seek other ways of understanding the economy and progress. #LaudatoSi” @Pontifex 18 June 2015
  • “There is an intimate relationship between the poor and the fragility of the planet. #LaudatoSi” @Pontifex 18 June 2015
  • “We need a new dialogue about how we are shaping the future of our planet. #LaudatoSi” @Pontifex 18 June 2015
  • “I invite all to pause to think about the challenges we face regarding care for our common home. #LaudatoSi” @Pontifex 18 June 2015
  • “Lord, seize us with your power and light, help us to protect all life, to prepare for a better future. #LaudatoSi” @Pontifex 19 June 2015
  • “Let us sing as we go. May our struggles and our concern for this planet never take away the joy of our hope.” @Pontifex 19 June 2015
  • “An integral ecology includes taking time to reflect on our lifestyle and our ideals. #LaudatoSi” @Pontifex 19 June 2015
  • “Christian spirituality proposes an alternative understanding of the quality of life.” @Pontifex 19 June 2015
  • “Living our vocation to be protectors of God’s handiwork is not a secondary aspect of our Christian experience.” @Pontifex 19 June 2015
  • “The teachings of the Gospel have direct consequences for our way of thinking, feeling and living. #LaudatoSi” @Pontifex 19 June 2015
  • “The emptier a person’s heart is, the more he or she needs to buy, own and consume. #LaudatoSi” @Pontifex 19 June 2015
  • “Many things have to change course, but it is we human beings above all who need to change.” @Pontifex 19 June 2015
  • “Believers must feel challenged to live in a way consonant with their faith. #LaudatoSi” @Pontifex 19 June 2015
  • “God’s love is free. He asks for nothing in return; all he wants is for his love to be accepted.” @Pontifex 23 June 2015

The Weekly Francis – 16 June 2015

This version of The Weekly Francis covers material released in the last week from 4 June 2015 to 13 June 2015.

Daily Homilies (fervorinos)

General Audiences

Homilies

Messages

Regina Caeli

Speeches

Papal Tweets

Draft of Environmental Encyclical Leaked: 12 Things to Know and Share

dry_landscape_258900With just days to go before the release of Pope Francis’s highly anticipated encyclical on the environment, a draft copy has suddenly appeared on the Internet.

Here are 12 things to know and share . . .

 

1) What are the basic facts about this encyclical?

An encyclical is a teaching document issued by the pope. Encyclicals are among the more solemn and thus more authoritative papal documents.

This one is called Laudato Si (“Be praised”)—a line from the Canticle of the Sun by St. Francis of Assisi.

It is Pope Francis’s second encyclical. His first was Lumen Fidei, which was largely drafted by his predecessor, Benedict XVI. Laudato Si is thus the first encyclical prepared entirely at Pope Francis’s initiative.

It is devoted to ecology and related themes, and it is scheduled to be released on Thursday, June 18th.

 

2) Who leaked it?

Veteran Italian journalist Sandro Magister leaked it on the web page of his newspaper, L’Espresso.

For reasons explained below, we will not be quoting from the document, though since it is already all over the Internet and has now become part of this story, we will link Magister’s original story, which includes a pdf of the document in Italian.

Magister’s original story is here.

 

3) What was the Vatican’s reaction?

The Holy See Press Office quickly issued a statement that said:

An Italian text of a draft of the Pope’s Encyclical “Laudato Si’” has been published. Please note that it is not the final text, and that the rules of the Embargo remain in place. We ask journalists to respect professional standards, which call for waiting for the official publication of the final text.

 

4) What is “the Embargo”?

This refers to a journalistic practice in which advance copies of texts are made available to journalists and others to enable them to prepare commentary in advance of the public release of a document.

The practice of letting them see advance copies of texts allows them to read them, digest them, and provide more accurate reporting and commentary than if they got the text at the time of its official release and had to read and report in haste.

Or that’s the theory.

Prior to the official release, such advance copies are said to be “embargoed,” meaning that reporters, etc., are not to publish things based on them until the time the document is officially released, at which point the embargo is lifted.

Movie reviews work the same way: Critics are frequently invited to advance screenings or sent “screener copies” so that they can have their movie reviews prepared by the day the movie is released, as a service to the public. They are not usually supposed to publish their reviews before the day of release, though.

 

5) Is breaking an embargo considered bad?

You bet. It’s a breech of trust with the people who gave you the embargoed text.

I’ve had embargoed texts of various documents any number of times (even years before the final text was released), and I’ve never broken an embargo.

I was shocked to learn that a respected Vaticanista (i.e., journalist covering the Vatican) like Sandro Magister had leaked this one.

Even if he thought he was leaking a pre-final version of the text (which is not clear from his original story), it’s an astonishing breech of journalistic ethics, and his name will likely be mud at the Vatican for some time.

 

6) How did Magister get the text?

This is unknown at present. In his article, he refers to the text having a “troubled” history and alludes to the first copies that the Vatican publishing house made having been pulped (destroyed) because of various places where they needed to be corrected.

It is possible that someone rescued one of the copies meant to be pulped and gave it to Magister. If so, he may have gotten it from a lower level person, such as a worker tasked with arranging for the copies to be pulped.

On the other hand, they could have come from someone higher placed.

If Magister’s text came from the batch that was pulped then that could explain why the Vatican Press Office said that it wasn’t the final version.

On the other hand, Magister may have been given a copy from a different batch, after some corrections were made. In any event, the Holy See Press Office says it isn’t the final copy.

 

7) How different will the final version be?

There is no way to know until Thursday.

Assuming that Magister is correct that a batch was pulped, this may have been due to nothing more than typos that needed to be corrected.

It is not at all uncommon for publishers to pulp runs of a publication that have typos which are caught at the last minute, assuming that the typos are significant enough. In my own experience with publishers, I’ve seen it done.

On the other hand, there may be more than typo fixes. This could happen, for example, if Pope Francis asked for certain editorial changes to be made and then, in the editorial process, these fell through the cracks and their absence was caught only at the last minute.

 

8) Why was the text leaked?

Without knowing who leaked it, there is no way to tell.

If it was a janitor who plucked a copy from a batch that were on their way to be shredded, it may simply have been that he knew Magister would be interested in a scoop and he wanted to be part of an exciting story (or possibly even be paid for his efforts).

Such an employee may not have read the text and there may be no larger agenda on his part.

On the other hand, if a person of higher stature leaked it—someone who had been entrusted with working on the text and read the content of the document—then there might be a deliberate intention to undermine the encyclical and its message.

 

9) How could the leak undermine the encyclical?

Part of the point of having an official release, with a press conference and everything, is to create on opportunity to get the document off on the best footing.

The media hops on it all at once, creating something of a saturation effect in different news channels, and the Holy See has the chance—via the press conference and associated materials given out to the press—to frame the story its way.

For a text to appear early can let some of the air out of the official release, and it can allow the text to be framed in ways contrary to the spin that the Holy See wants put on it.

In this case, because we have a pre-final draft, it will also cause attention to zero-in on the changes that were made between this draft and the final one, which may cause people to speculate about why those changes were made and what significance they might have (if they’re just typos or edits that were accidentally omitted and later caught: not much).

Further, this event raises the specter of the VatiLeaks scandal, in which Benedict XVI’s own butler was funneling private Vatican documents to the press as part of his own agenda.

This event raises the question of whether there are additional leakers—or new leakers—who are in some way seeking to undermine Pope Francis.

 

10) Does the encyclical say anything supporting the idea of manmade global warming?

Yeah, but we knew it would, anyway. Previous statements coming out of the Holy See had made that clear. We didn’t need the leak to tell us that.

I won’t quote from the leaked version, but since it is out there and people are commenting on it, I can report that this isn’t a huge theme in the document.

A machine translation of the Italian original clocks in at around 42,000 English words. Of those, the word “warming” occurs four times, and the phrase “climate change” occurs 14 times.

So it’s not a huge theme. The vast bulk of the document is devoted to other things.

 

11) Does the encyclical oblige Catholics to believe in manmade global warming?

I’ll have more to say about this once the final, official, English version is out, but the short answer is no.

The idea that the planet is getting warmer and the idea that we are responsible for that are both empirical propositions that belong to the domain of science.

As a result, they are matters of science and not of faith.

There is even a place in the draft (no. 188), where Pope Francis makes the point that the Church does not pretend to settle scientific questions.

The Church has the responsibility to urge appropriate responses to what the best science available has to say on matters impacting mankind and the world under man’s care, and Pope Francis thinks that present science is sufficiently in favor of manmade global warming to urge cuts in greenhouse gasses, but if you think that the best science points in a different direction, you are not bound in faith to believe a particular scientific viewpoint.

 

12) Is the encyclical critical of the secular environmentalism that we hear so much about in the media today?

Yes. Again, not quoting it and keeping things at the level of general themes, the draft document is expressly critical of aspects of environmental ideologies that are incompatible with the Christian Faith.

This includes ideologies that would reject the unique place of mankind in creation.

The draft criticizes anti-human and pro-abortion ideologies, which often go hand-in-hand with secular environmentalism.

The Weekly Francis – 9 June 2015

pope-francis2This version of The Weekly Francis covers material released in the last week from 28 May 2015 to 9 June 2015.

Daily Homilies (fervorinos)

General Audiences

Homilies

Messages

Regina Caeli

Speeches

Papal Tweets

  • “We need to build up society in the light of the Beatitudes, walking towards the Kingdom with the least among us.” @Pontifex 4 June 2015
  • “In the Sacrament of the Eucharist we find God who gives himself.” @Pontifex 9 June 2015

The Weekly Francis – 2 June 2015

francis-reading

This version of The Weekly Francis covers material released in the last week from 11 May 2015 to 2 June 2015.

Daily Homilies (fervorinos)

General Audiences

Letters

Messages

Regina Caeli

Speeches

Papal Tweets

  • “Christians are witnesses not to a theory, but to a Person: Christ risen and alive, the one Saviour of all.” @Pontifex 28 May 2015
  • “Lord, grant us the awesome gift of meeting you.” @Pontifex 30 May 2015
  • “The light of the Gospel guides all who put themselves at the service of the civilization of love.” @Pontifex 2 June 2015

The Weekly Francis – 26 May 2015

Pope Francis waves to crowds as he arrives to his inauguration mass on 19 March 2013.This version of The Weekly Francis covers material released in the last week from 30 April 2015 to 26 May 2015

Daily Homilies (fervorinos)

General Audiences

Homilies

Messages

Regina Caeli

Speeches

Papal Tweets

  • “There are times when God is silent, a silence which cannot be understood unless we gaze upon Christ crucified.” @Pontifex 21 May 2015
  • “Lord, send forth your Holy Spirit to bring consolation and strength to persecuted Christians. #free2pray” @Pontifex 22 May 2015
  • “Let us invoke the Holy Spirit each day: He guides us along the path of discipleship in Christ.” @Pontifex 23 May 2015
  • “We can observe the Fourth Commandment by loving visits to our aging grandparents.” @Pontifex 26 May 2015

The Weekly Francis – 19 May 2015

Pope Francis waves to crowds as he arrives to his inauguration mass on 19 March 2013.

This version of The Weekly Francis covers material released in the last week from 30 April 2015 to 19 May 2015.

Daily Homilies (fervorinos)

General Audiences

Homilies

Letters

Regina Caeli

Speeches

Papal Tweets

  • “Dear parents, have great patience, and forgive from the depths of your heart.” @Pontifex 14 May 2015
  • “It is better to have a Church that is wounded but out in the streets than a Church that is sick because it is closed in on itself.” @Pontifex 16 May 2015
  • “God is always waiting for us, he always understands us, he always forgives us.” @Pontifex 19 May 2015

The Weekly Francis – 12 May 2015

popefrancis

This version of The Weekly Francis covers material released in the last week from 29 June 2014 to 12 May 2015.

General Audiences

Homilies

Messages

Regina Caeli

Speeches

Papal Tweets

  • “When we cannot earn our own bread, we lose our dignity. This is a tragedy today, especially for the young.” @Pontifex 7 May 2015
  • “Let us learn to live with kindness, to love everyone, even when they do not love us.” @Pontifex 9 May 2015
  • “Why is it so difficult to tolerate the faults of others? Have we forgotten that Jesus bore our sins?” @Pontifex 12 May 2015

The Weekly Francis – 5 May 2015

Pope Francis waves to crowds as he arrives to his inauguration mass on 19 March 2013.

This version of The Weekly Francis covers material released in the last week from 18 April 2015 to 5 May 2015.

Daily Homilies (fervorinos)

General Audiences

Homilies

Messages

Regina Caeli

Speeches

Papal Tweets

  • “Amid so many problems, even grave, may we not lose our hope in the infinite mercy of God.” @Pontifex 30 April 2015
  • “The love of Christ fills our hearts and makes us always able to forgive!” @Pontifex 2 May 2015
  • “It is good for us to spend time before the Tabernacle, to feel the gaze of Jesus upon us.” @Pontifex 5 May 2015

The Weekly Francis – 28 April 2015

pope-francis2

This version of The Weekly Francis covers material released in the last week from 11 April 2015 to 28 April 2015.

Daily Homilies (fervorinos)

General Audiences

Letters

Regina Caeli

Speeches

Papal Tweets

  • “In the Sacraments we discover the strength to think and to act according to the Gospel.” @Pontifex 23 April 2015
  • “We Christians are called to go out of ourselves to bring the mercy and tenderness of God to all.” @Pontifex 25 April 2015
  • “Every Christian community must be a welcoming home for those searching for God,for those searching for a brother or sister to listen to them” @Pontifex 28 April 2015