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More than 40 Catholic institutions are to announce the largest ever faith-based divestment from fossil fuels, on the anniversary of the death of St Francis of Assisi.
The sum involved has not been disclosed but the volume of divesting groups is four times higher than a previous church record, and adds to a global divestment movement, led by investors worth $5.5tn.
[...] Assisi's mayor, Stefania Proietti – a former climate mitigation professor – told the Guardian: "When we pay attention to the environment, we pay attention to poor people, who are the first victims of climate change.
"When we invest in fossil fuels, we stray very far from social justice. But when we disinvest and invest in renewable and energy efficiency instead, we can mitigate climate change, create a sustainable new economic deal and, most importantly, help the poor."
Are they putting their money where their mouth is, or making a smart economic bet?
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 06 2017, @01:51PM (15 children)
I don't think you'll need to wait for long. It should be fairly quick. Protestants don't believe Catholics are Christian. Of course they're going to say that the Vatican is doing this at the devil's command.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 06 2017, @02:39PM (2 children)
I'm a protestant, in theory anyway, and this has to be the first pope in my memory that I actually approve of.
I always wondered how traditional right wing conservatives could gut the EPA and cry foul about environmenal protections while claiming to be part of a religion that states we are the stewards of the earth.
I guess like any set of laws, people obey fully the ones they like, and try not to get caught when ignoring the rest.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 06 2017, @02:46PM (1 child)
what was wrong with JP-II?
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 06 2017, @02:56PM
He didn't talk about the environment enough while helping pedophiles get away with their crimes. This pope does.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Phoenix666 on Friday October 06 2017, @02:57PM (11 children)
I'm Protestant, professing Presbyterian but attended many services at Lutheran, Episcopalian, Baptist, Assemblies of God, and Methodist churches. I've never heard pastors or deacons or lay people in any of those places claim or hint that Catholics aren't Christians. In fact all of them say the Apostle's Creed which expresses a belief in the "holy Catholic church." I think that's "catholic" meant in the sense of "universal," but nevertheless it's a rather positive invocation of that term against zero negative invocations of that term.
I have, however, been to many Catholic services where non-Catholics are specifically dis-invited from taking Communion, which is the central rite of Christianity. So I've experienced more indication that the Catholic church doesn't believe Protestants are Christian. Maybe in the heart of the church in Rome they're secretly hoping things play out with this heresy the way they did with the Cathar Heresy, which took a few hundred years to crush.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 06 2017, @04:04PM
Ah ok. Christian Reformed, Reformed Church of America, and Christian Identity here. Latter one says that even Protestants aren't Christian.
Christian Identity filled me with so much disgust that my personal opinion is that Yahweh is a being of unfathomable evil. Fortunately, such horrors probably don't exist.
(Score: 2) by vux984 on Friday October 06 2017, @04:46PM (3 children)
I recall belonging to a baptist church as a child that was fundraising to send missionaries to Catholic countries in south america with the express intention of converting Catholics. We quit that church. It wasn't the church doing it on its own; it was just signing up with groups like "Gospel Missionary Union", "World Vision", and "The Christian Missionary Alliance" ... all of which were active in South America. They all treated any Catholics they ran into as 'people who needed to be converted to christianity' and not 'fellow christians under a different banner'. And this is South America... after Spanish colonialism...yes, there were some native traditional cultures out there, but a LOT of the villages they were sending missionaries into were 104% catholic with +/-4% error.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Friday October 06 2017, @05:05PM (2 children)
Maybe it's a regional predilection, then, or characteristic of sects I don't have experience with. There are lots of flavors of Protestants. Individual churches can vary quite a bit within the same denomination. So it's not really possible to say "Protestants are this, or that."
Catholic churches seem to take their marching orders from Rome, such that what you hear at one church is what is sanctioned from upon high. Maybe Catholics would dispute that--I dunno.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 06 2017, @05:26PM
I think you're right. There are just two sects of Catholicism (that I'm aware of, anyway):
- Old Catholics [wikipedia.org] (some kind of version of Catholicism from the 1870s. A family in my village were Old Catholics and they were very strict.)
- Opus Dei [wikipedia.org]: Catholics who studied L. Ron Hubbard's recruiting and mind control technologies, it seems.
Posted as AC becaues Scientology and Opus Dei scare the shit out of me.
(Score: 2) by vux984 on Friday October 06 2017, @06:49PM
I agree with you; individual churches vary a lot. But a lot of the small churches pool together into the big protestant organizations such as world vision etc. And it is these BIG missionary / evangelical organizations that are actively targetting catholics for conversion. Even if the individual churches aren't explicity on board with that goal, they're perpetuating it by supporting these organizations.
And While catholics do take their marching orders from rome, it should be pretty obvious that the message isn't universally accepted. Some churches defy the marching orders openly on certain rulings; others pay lip service to the marching orders but turn a blind eye to the violations of the rules on contraceptives for example. And then catholics, like protestants... as individual people largely believe and take from 'religion' what they want; ie... there's a lot of Easter + Christmas catholics AND protestants.
My point here is that its not really possible to meaningfully say that even if the official position of the catholic church is this or that... it still may or may not filter down to the individual person or even priest that you are talking about.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Azuma Hazuki on Friday October 06 2017, @05:16PM (4 children)
The Catholic position--ask me how I know, i was one of them--is that ONLY Catholics are "saved," and everyone else, even other Christians, gets to spend eternity in hellfire. Lovely. Do remember, though, that Catholicism is *not* the original form of Christianity; we'd need to ask the Ebionim about that except, oh wait, we fucking can't, since they're all dead. The Catholic Church proper began with the Council of Nicaea, not Jesus, and I think he'd be very surprised to hear some of the things his supposed oldest church believes about him...
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Friday October 06 2017, @05:30PM (3 children)
That is kind of what it looks like from the outside.
Visiting the Middle East is a useful exercise for people who want to get a flavor of what Christianity was before the Catholic church. The cave churches in Capadocia where Christianity gained its first toehold and really took off, exude a raw kind of spirituality, sort of like a Woodstock moment for the early religion, that you won't detect at all in the Vatican. It was really diverse as well--the iconography from one cave church to another was much, much different, even though the doorway of one was literally 10 yards away from the doorway of another. It must have been a terrifying and exhilirating time for those early Christians.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Azuma Hazuki on Friday October 06 2017, @08:22PM (2 children)
Yeah? Lemme throw some cold water on that for you: the Christians were just another shrieking hysterical largely-illiterate backwoods doomsday cult. If it hadn't been for the Romans the religion would have all but died out in the early fifth century. As it is, their numbers were far lower--and the persecution far less severe--than we are popularly told.
Know who early Christians were most like? Today's alt-right. There, I fucking said it. Bunch of angry, disenfranchised hicks who'd rather burn the whole place down than do anything to help their situation. You REALLY need to study more ANE and Roman history.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Saturday October 07 2017, @11:53AM (1 child)
I think you're projecting your current frustrations with politics onto the subject. One of the early centers of Christianity was Ephesus. It had a chance there because the town hosted the temple of artemis, which generated a lot of income from pilgrims coming to make offerings for fertility. It being a cult dominated by priestesses, women in general had better status in the incredibly absolutist patriarchy of the Roman world. Christianity at the time accorded equal status to women, which was lapped up by the Ephesian women. Soon the artemisian cult had been supplanted by Christianity.
That's right: the early church thrived because it was feminist (at least by the standards of the time).
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Sunday October 08 2017, @07:17PM
Yeah, and early Islam was feminist by the standards of the time too. What's your point? You're confusing historical success with truth.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 06 2017, @09:05PM
Because of this [dumbonyc.com].
Read God's word the holy bible daily. Or burn in hell forever.
When the Witnesses go to ground, you know the end is nigh!
Praise Jesus! The non-believers need to be saved!