Q. In our parish it is a custom following the final blessing at Mass for the priest to lead the congregation in a prayer to St. Michael the Archangel and a Hail Mary. This past Sunday during that prayer, I was reminded of the tradition in the late 1940s and the 1950s to offer prayers for the conversion of Russia following the final blessing. I assume that tradition was Church-wide in the U.S.
My question: Assuming that it was widely practiced, how was that tradition instituted, and believing in the power of prayer, wouldn’t it seem appropriate, given the many challenges facing our Church and nation today, to offer prayers for a “spiritual renewal” of the people of our great nation? How could that happen today? — D.M., via e-mail.
A. The Prayer to St. Michael at the end of Mass was prescribed by Pope Leo XIII after experiencing a vision of Satan in 1884. It was later accompanied by three Hail Marys, the Hail, Holy Queen, a prayer “for the conversion of sinners and for the liberty and exaltation of our Holy Mother the Church,” the ejaculation “Most Sacred Heart of Jesus, have mercy on us” (three times), and by the Divine Praises (“Blessed be God…). Both Popes Pius XI and Pius XII designated the prayers as being chiefly for the conversion of Russia.
Although these prayers were suppressed when the Mass of Paul VI was promulgated in 1970, we know of parishes where they are still recited to this day, and rightly so since the power of the Devil continues to be very strong. We agree with D.M. that such prayers ought to be mandated by the bishops today to renew both the people of our Church and our country. The American bishops have taken a step in this direction in recent years by promulgating a Prayer for Religious Freedom, but we don’t know how widely this prayer is used.
Q. In a Catholic Replies column last December, you presented a very sound indictment of the global warming movement, and I agreed with you wholeheartedly. So what is your take on Pope Francis’ recent encyclical on the environment and his references to global warming? While a number of his statements are quite sound, such as condemning contraception and abortion and the greedy exploitation of the poor nations, etc., I believe he is far off base on his viewpoint on global warming. — J.M., Missouri.
A. In his encyclical Laudato Si, Pope Francis said that “a very solid scientific consensus indicates that we are presently witnessing a disturbing warming of the climatic system. In recent decades, this warming has been accompanied by a constant rise in the sea level and, it would appear, by an increase of extreme weather events, even if a scientifically determinable cause cannot be assigned to each particular phenomenon.”
He said that “humanity is called to recognize the need for changes of lifestyle, production, and consumption in order to combat this warming or at least the human causes that produce or aggravate it” (n. 23).
As we noted last December, the “very solid scientific consensus” exists only among those members of the climate change establishment, and their media supporters, who have ridiculed the conclusions of hundreds of scientists who disagree with them and who have prevented these dissenting conclusions from being published in scientific journals or in prominent media outlets.
Records show that there has been no global warming over the past 17 or 18 years, which may be why the alarmists have switched the terminology from global warming to climate change.
No faithful Catholic objects to having the Pope express concern about the need to find ways to reverse the degradation of our natural environment — what he calls “our common home” (n. 1).
Previous Popes, and the Catechism of the Catholic Church, have emphasized the “common stewardship” that God has given to each one of us to protect the Earth and its resources and to improve the living conditions of millions of our brothers and sisters in poverty. But when a Pope moves from unquestionable principles to questionable solutions, then Catholics are entitled to disagree respectfully, especially when one considers those who may have colored the Holy Father’s viewpoint.
One scientist who influenced Laudato Si was Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, who is director of the Institute for Climate Impact in Potsdam, Germany, and who was named to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences in June 2015. Schellnhuber had presented a paper — co-authored by Maria Martin — to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences in 2014 entitled “Climate-System Tipping Points and Extreme Weather Events.”
But when these “tipping points,” which include such things as potentially higher global temperatures and melting ice floes, don’t come true and predicted catastrophes fail to occur, their proponents don’t even acknowledge their errors, but move on to new prophecies of doom. Remember all the predictions in the 1970s about “global cooling” and a coming “ice age” that never materialized? But did those false prophets lose any credibility in the scientific community? Of course not. They’re the same people now hawking global warming.
Schellnhuber is known for having said, at the Copenhagen Climate Conference in 2009, that the “carrying capacity” of the Earth is below one billion people. When asked recently about this statement, he said, “All I said was that if we had unlimited global warming of eight degrees warming, maybe the carrying capacity of the earth would go down to just one billion, and then the discussion would be settled.” He denied favoring population control to reach that one billion level, but then added:
“If you want to reduce human population, there are wonderful means: Improve the education of girls and young women. Then the demographic transition will be a little bit faster and, as [Peter] Cardinal Turkson said, you will enhance human capital and have emancipation of many people on earth. So I subscribe to a good education, and that’s the only way of population strategy I would support.”
He didn’t mention that the usual way the population controllers “educate” girls and young women is to impose on them contraception, abortion, and sterilization. How else can the world’s population be reduced from the current seven billion to one billion except by extreme population control measures? But Schellnhuber’s whole argument is worthless since it presupposes eight degrees of warming, when in fact there hasn’t been even one degree of warming in nearly 20 years.
Pope Francis is not supportive of immoral measures to reduce population, as he made clear in criticizing those who would reduce the birthrate in developing countries through “forms of international pressure that make economic assistance contingent on certain policies of ‘reproductive health’” (n. 50). Which raises the question of why he would accept advice from anti-life scientists like Schellnhuber? Or why scientists who dispute the global warming scenario were apparently given no input in drafting Laudato Si. Or why advocates of immoral ways of controlling population, including UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon and Harvard economist Jeffrey Sachs, were invited to address the global warming summit at the Vatican last April.
In the encyclical, the Pontiff somewhat qualified his view on global warming by saying “it would appear” that the alleged warming “has been accompanied by a constant rise in the sea level and . . . by an increase of extreme weather events, even if a scientifically determinable cause cannot be assigned to each particular phenomenon” (n. 23).
He also said later in the encyclical that “there are certain environmental issues where it is not easy to achieve a broad consensus. Here I would state once more that the Church does not presume to settle scientific questions or to replace politics. But I am concerned to encourage an honest and open debate so that particular interests or ideologies will not prejudice the common good” (n. 188).
This is our concern as well, so perhaps His Holiness and his advisers could reach out to those men and women who for solid scientific reasons dispute the global warming theory.
They could start with Dr. Judith Curry, professor of climatology at the Georgia Institute of Technology’s School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences. Once known as the “high priestess of global warming,” Dr. Curry now calls herself a “heretic” because she no longer believes in the so-called evidence presented to support this theory.
“I am mystified as to why President Obama and John Kerry are making such strong statements about climate change,” she said. “Particularly with regard to extreme weather events, their case is very weak.”
Powered by WPtouch Mobile Suite for WordPress