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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: 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.