Sorry but you are totally wrong Edwin. The Pope in NO WAY disagrees with the OP.
Here is the OP:
Pease show how the text you quoted from Pope Benedict’s address agrees with the statement from the green website and disagrees with Rahn?
Why would I defend a statement I never made?
The OP did not say “if you don’t recognize that some folks within the green movement hold views opposed to the Catholic faith,” or even "some aspects of the mainstream green movement. . . . " If the OP had said that, I would have had no quarrel.
The OP
chose to use
one website to make a huge generalization, which diametrically contradicts the way Pope Benedict chooses to generalize about the green movement.
You are misrepresenting the Pope and attributing to him something that was not said explicitly nor in any way implied.
No, but you are misrepresenting me by assuming that I’m defending the particular website cited by the OP, when what I’m going after is the OP’s generalization about “the green movement.”
There is a perfectly orthodox way to be “green.” In fact, not to be to some extent “green” is probably to be unorthodox. But that doesn’t mean that there are no evil elements in the “green movement.” It doesn’t even mean that mainstream “green” ideology is consistent with orthodoxy.
I have no doubt that Pope Benedict considers much in the “green movement” to be dubious or even destructive–principally the attitude referred to by the OP. And i would thoroughly agree with him.
The orthodox way to be “green” is to practice traditional virtues of temperance and charity, honoring nature as a creation of God that is there to glorify God and not solely to serve us, and of which we are the stewards and not the unconditional masters, although we have been given lordship over it.
You are trying to pick a fight with a position that is not mine.
If you read the rest of the speech, the Pope argues against a functionalist view of the world. The extract from the green website says exactly that - that the Green Movement holds a functionalist view of the world or more specifically a functionalist view of humanity.
I missed where it said that, and I also missed where one website gets to speak for the entire “green movement.”
And by the way, I would not defend the “green movement” as a whole. The OP, again, set the terms of this debate by implying that one website proves that the “green movement” as a whole cannot be harmless or consistent with Catholicism. This is plainly contrary to the words of Pope Benedict (though I fully admit that Pope Benedict was not speaking ex cathedra!).
The anti-child attitude of many environmentalists is indeed a serious problem with the movement. Their reluctance to recognize the special position of human beings is a serious problem. I don’t dispute these things.
However, the point I’m making, following Pope Benedict, is that the green movement calls modern people to recognize that there is a natural order that they did not create and over which they do not exercise absolute control.
In that speech, the Pope stresses the “inviolable and inalienable human rights as the foundation of every human community, and of peace and justice in the world”.
I suggest that you read the entire text so as to place that little section that you quoted in its right context. Otherwise you end up doing exactly what the secular media does all the time – misrepresenting and misinterpreting the Pope.
It is insulting to claim that someone has not read a text they cite. Please abstain from such tactics–they degrade the conversation.
It is your job to show how I have misrepresented the Pope. In fact you misunderstood me by irrationally assuming that I was defending the website linked to by the OP, when I said absolutely nothing about that.
I am attacking the OP’s untenable generalization about the green movement as a whole.
In the end it is not population growth that is the problem, it was and always will be greed.
Indeed. And environmentalism is one of the most powerful movements in our culture calling people away from greed.
As with any secular movement, without God, the ecology movement becomes nothing more than a deification of the environment - in short idolatry.
Indeed. But, of course, the point made by the OP was supposedly that you can’t reconcile environmentalism with faith. If the OP had used the website to point out how distorted environmentalism can become when *not *subjected to the norms of orthodox Christianity, I would have agreed heartily.
The Nazi and the Environmentalist basically end up in the same camp.
There are many steps and choices that determine where a person “ends up.” Like the OP, you are generalizing too much.
Edwin
They ARE forcing abortions because they want to limit the population. THAT is a fact. Their desire to limit children is what is behind their willingness to force abortions.