Media Misinterpret Pope Francis

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Although the media focused on Pope Francis’s views on the environment, they neglected to mention some of his other notable positions in the highly-publicized encyclical “Laudato Si.” For example, Pope Francis had this to say about abortion, in context of respecting the environment:

“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.”

Similarly, the Pope does not mince words attacking a current fad:

“The acceptance of our bodies as God’s gift is vital for welcoming and accepting the entire world as a gift from the Father and our common home, whereas thinking that we enjoy absolute power over our own bodies turns, often subtly, into thinking that we enjoy absolute power over creation…”

“Learning to accept our body, to care for it and to respect its fullest meaning, is an essential element of any genuine human ecology. Also, valuing one’s own body in its femininity or masculinity is necessary if I am going to be able to recognize myself in an encounter with someone who is different…”

“It is not a healthy attitude which would seek to ‘cancel out sexual difference because it no longer knows how to confront it.’”

Even on the issue of climate change, Pope Francis blasts the Left’s favorite policies of carbon credits, or cap-and-trade. Pope Francis stated:

“The strategy of buying and selling ‘carbon credits’ can lead to a new form of speculation which would not help reduce the emission of polluting gases worldwide. This system seems to provide a quick and easy solution under the guise of a certain commitment to the environment, but in no way does it allow for the radical change which present circumstances require. Rather, it may simply become a ploy which permits maintaining the excessive consumption of some countries and sectors.”