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Wednesday, August 2, 2017

Al Gore: “Because of Pope Francis, I Really Could Become a Catholic” Featured

By:   Robert Andrews
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Al Gore: “Because of Pope Francis, I Really Could Become a Catholic”

Last night I and tens of other people had the misfortune to see part of CNN’s “Town Hall” with none other than Al Gore himself.  First, the fact that CNN is wasting time talking to the long since discredited Al Gore about fictitious man-made global warming is a testament to their growing irrelevancy and lack of credibility as a news organization. But beyond that, there was a special guest at last night’s Town Hall that made things interesting from a Catholic perspective.

It appears that a Fr. John Rausch, an environmental activist priest from Kentucky, found time out of his busy schedule to attend Al Gore’s town Hall. That schedule apparently includes Fr. Rausch driving 22,000 miles a year belching pollutants into the atmosphere as he travels to save the planet. However, Fr. Rausch is quick to apologize for this as he seems to see it as a necessary climate sin. In 2011 he wrote the following for Yes magazine:

I come with a faith perspective, and confess to you that this coming week I will drive about 700 miles doing my ministry, yet I will be mindful and aware of how much I am consuming…

While looking at the carbon footprint of how much we drive, we need to include some grid about why we drive.  If your mother is seriously ill, you may need to drive 300 miles by yourself to see her. Alternately driving 100 miles for some sporting event may need a closer examination.  For essential driving, we rely on community members to contribute some of their “carbon miles,” so others can bring compassion to outside situations.

…Dealing with issues in Appalachia requires me to drive 22,000 miles a year. My carbon footprint may be big, but the region is ever expansive and demanding my driving.

Yes, as the American Catholic Church goes down in flames due to rampant clerical equivocation on abortion, homosexuality, marriage, and transgenderism, Fr. Rausch warns that driving 100 miles for a sporting event somehow requires close moral examination of conscience. Thus, for Fr. Rausch, Hell might be populated only with climate deniers and football fans. But what Fr. Rausch lacks in his carbon emissions, he makes up for in ecumenism. A 2013 article, “Kentucky: A Priest Takes on the Coal Industry,” talks about Fr. Rausch’s “ministry”:

On a September day in 2010, more than 75 people from across Appalachia gathered at a site on Pine Mountain for an ecumenical prayer service, “The Cross in the Mountains,” to protest the practice of mountaintop removal [MTR] coal mining. The service was organized by Father John Rausch, a Catholic priest in Appalachian Kentucky who directs the Catholic Committee of Appalachia (CCA). Father Rausch views his fight against this environmentally destructive mining practice as “Holy Spirit work.”

Yes, who can forget the Holy Ghost’s utter disdain for mountaintop removal coal mining. To protest the magnitude of this sin, Fr. Rausch led a modified “Way of the Cross” during the ecumenical prayer service:

“Protestants, Catholics, and non-believers alike carried small, handmade wooden crosses bearing slogans about MTR’s destructiveness to symbolize Jesus’ long, arduous walk to his crucifixion…The traditional theological meanings associated with each station were recast to illustrate the suffering caused by the practice and consequences of MTR. Examples included: “Jesus Takes Up His Cross: Corporate greed abuses the people and the land;” “Jesus Falls for the First Time: Water pollutes the streams and rivers;”Jesus Meets His Sorrowful Mother: Earth mourns her destruction;” “Simon of Cyrene Helps Jesus Carry the Cross: Religious leaders and friends of creation speak out;” “Jesus Dies on the Cross: Death stalks our land in many forms;” and,The Resurrection of Jesus: Hope springs from sustainable jobs and lifestyles.” At the end of the service a huge cross, with a heart-shaped lump of coal affixed to its center with barbed wire, was erected in view of the MTR operation and flowers were laid at its base.

A female protestant minister in the video above equates MTR coal mining to “spitting in the face of God.” This is interesting, since said minister just participated in a Way of the cross that compares Our Lord and Savior’s suffering and crucifixion to that of inanimate dirt being removed from a mountain.

Enter Al Gore. Last night at the CNN Town Hall, Anderson Cooper introduced Fr. Rausch who proceeded to have a deep theological conversation with the former Vice-President and climate alarmist:

FATHER JOHN RAUSCH, CATHOLIC PRIEST: Thank you very much. Vice President Gore, as a priest living in Central Appalachia, I've come to realize that the climate crisis, I believe, is a crisis in spirituality…And I mean by spirituality a connectedness, a connectedness, a spiritual connectedness that we all are connected, we are connected to nature. We're also connected to God. OK…So my question, Mr. Vice President, how can we influence people to see a spiritual connection in their consumer habits that they can see the consequences of their buying, those consequences have on people in Appalachia and also in other parts of God's kingdom?

I know I shouldn’t, but I continually find it amazing that Catholics like Fr. Rausch can recognize a so-called “climate crisis” with no visible evidence, yet not see the crisis in the Church despite constant evidence of desolation, apostasy, heresy, and blasphemy. Further, he actually attributes the so called “climate crisis” to a defect of “spirituality.” Meanwhile, the lack of any real Catholic spirituality is precisely what is leading Fr. Rausch to devote his life as a Catholic priest to saving a mountain while souls in Appalachia and the rest of the U.S. fall to Hell like snowflakes. Not stopping there, Fr. Rausch then echoes the veiled pantheism of Pope Francis’ Laudato Si by saying God, man, and nature are all “spiritually connected.” Speaking of Pope Francis, Al Gore then added the following shocking response:

GORE: Well, thank you, Father.

And thank you for what you do. I'm a Protestant, but I'll tell you, because of Pope Francis, I really could become a Catholic.

RAUSCH: Yes.

GORE: He -- I'll tell you, he is really an amazing spiritual leader.

And one way to answer your question would be for people in all faith traditions to read "Laudato Si," the encyclical from Pope Francis, which really addressed the question that you're asking here.

Yes, despite calling proselytism “solemn nonsense” it looks like Pope Francis may unintentionally convert Al Gore! Welcome to the New Evangelization. That a pro-abortion, pro-gay marriage, pro-transexual, pro-euthanasia former Vice-President believes he could become a Catholic without changing any of these views, based on Pope Francis’ non-binding, rambling, 300 page screed on leading animals to Heaven and condemning air conditioners tells us quite a few things. First, Al Gore and most Catholics have no idea of what truly being a Catholic means. Secondly, the point of the Catholic religion has ceased being about salvation and is now about social activism for humanitarian causes both real and concocted. As Al Gore continues:


GORE: Now I was taught in my church that the purpose of life is to glorify God and if we are heaping contempt on God's creation, then we're not living up to the...

RAUSCH: Right.

GORE: -- duty that God is calling us to.

And so this -- the way we live our lives is definitely connected to this. It is -- it's not a political issue, it is a moral and spiritual issue. And thank you for bringing that up.

Thus, Fr. Rausch agrees with protestant Al Gore that the purpose of life is to glorify God. I’m delighted to hear that both Al Gore and Fr. Rausch have already saved their souls and are simply working on God’s glorification at this point. However, as we learned in our Baltimore Catechism, to save our souls, “we must worship God by faith, hope, and charity”; and “we shall know the things which we are to believe from the Catholic Church, through which God speaks to us.” The last I heard, the Catholic Church teaches that abortion, homosexual acts, and attempting to change one’s gender are intrinsic evils whereas extracting coal from a mountain is not. However, like many Catholic teachings, you wouldn’t know this from listening to the Pope. This in itself is the foundation of the true spiritual crisis.

For a humorous yet detailed analysis of Laudato Si from a Catholic perspective please see the article ”Why I’m Disregarding Laudato Si and You Should Too.” It is the key to recognizing that climate alarmism is simply another manufactured crisis the left uses as a pretext to further globalism, population control, abortion, uncontrolled migration, and government control of our daily lives. Pope Francis, wittingly or unwittingly, has become a mouthpiece for this pretext. No wonder Al Gore is so pleased. Don’t buy it. The sky will not fall, but if we allow ourselves to make fake climate science our god, we will.

See Al Gore speak to Fr. Rausch at 14 minutes in, below:

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Last modified on Wednesday, August 2, 2017

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