Poll numbers for Pope Francis are not too heavenly
Catholics, conservatives not embracing the “Red Pope”
Despite the fact that poll numbers are tanking so badly for Hillary Clinton that there is a new movement to draft Joe Biden, it turns out she has some competition for biggest drop in favorability!
New numbers from Gallop for Pope Francis show a significant drop in support for the pontiff. The favorability rating is now at 59%, down from 76% in early 2014.
…The drop in the pope’s favorable rating is driven by a decline among Catholics and political conservatives, two groups that have been ardent supporters of the modern papacy. Seventy-one percent of Catholics say they have a favorable image of Francis, down from 89% last year.
Pope Francis’ drop in favorability is even starker among Americans who identify as conservative — 45% of whom view him favorably, down sharply from 72% last year. This decline may be attributable to the pope’s denouncing of “the idolatry of money” and linking climate change partially to human activity, along with his passionate focus on income inequality — all issues that are at odds with many conservatives’ beliefs.
Why the plunge? As an independent conservative who is also Catholic, I must admit I am none too thrilled at the attacks on capitalism as a “structurally perverse” global economic system. I assert that these remarks that are too political and secular for a man who should be focused on more spiritual matters.
I am also deeply concerned about the type of counsel that the Pope has chosen.
Pope Francis’ closest adviser castigated conservative climate change skeptics in the United States Tuesday, blaming capitalism for their views.
Speaking with journalists, Cardinal Oscar Rodríguez Maradiaga criticized certain “movements” in the United States that have preemptively come out in opposition to Francis’s planned encyclical on climate change.
“The ideology surrounding environmental issues is too tied to a capitalism that doesn’t want to stop ruining the environment because they don’t want to give up their profits,” Rodríguez said, according to the Boston Globe’s Crux blog.
Rodríguez isn’t the only source of questionable guidance either. Dr. Martin Fricke, a nuclear physicist who supports efforts to challenge the bad science behind “climate change” activism, did some digging on the people Pope Francis relied on to develop the environmental encyclical, Laudato Si.
Fricke’s findings are chilling.
Hans Joachim Schellnhuber of the Pontifical Academy of Science was the lead climate scientist Pope Francis consulted. Schellnhuber was present on the panel that presented the encyclical to the world’s press.
While I hadn’t seen his name before, I’m a nuclear physicist not a climate scientist, so I asked two of the most widely recognized top climate scientists in the world about him. I haven’t sought permission to forward their opinions elsewhere, so I must refrain from impressing you with their names. I’ll call them Expert 1 Expert 2.
Expert 1: “Schellnhuber is a well-known global warming fanatic, a sort of mirror image of our own Jim Hansen. He runs the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research. I don’t think he knows very much climate science but he knows how to scare people with lurid “impacts.” I am sending a copy of this note to [Substitution: “Expert 2”] who can tell you much more if he has time.”
Expert 2: “Schellnhuber is…a fanatical Malthusian who believes the carrying capacity of the earth is 1 billion people… He apparently boasted that he was responsible for preventing anyone questioning warming alarms from getting access to the pope. He is (or at least was) on the board of the Climate Research Unit of the University of East Anglia [home of the well known email scandal that was instrumental in discrediting the IPCC].”
While I am not going to stop being Catholic over these developments, I must admit that donating to the Catholic Church is going to be more difficult. What Pope Francis and his cronies fail to realize is that the core of capitalism is not profit, but choice. Furthermore, choices must be made with real data and information, not manipulated facts supporting an agenda.
Currently, I have decided to adopt a page from progressives for handing contributions to my church: Go local. My donations will be used for parish support only, and none will be directed to papal efforts at promoting bad science and even worse economics.
Based on his efforts to treat the entire globe as a Latin American socialist nation, the pontiff has been christened by some as the “Red Pope”. If this trend continues, the favorability numbers will continue to blacken.
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Comments
“his passionate focus on income inequality”
This weekly Mass going, Jesuit educated Catholic has no problem with “focus”. I do, however, have a severe problem with the direction of his focus being socialist/marxist “solutions”. Most regrettably, my Catholic Church has zero understanding of creation of wealth, only redistribution of wealth and/or income. It treats wealth and income as a zero-sum game, for which the only “solution” is redistribution. I have committed the grave sin of despair over any hope for them to ever wise up.
“Zero-sum game” — Exactly, Frank. It’s a scandal. The pope should be disliked for teaching the truth, not for pushing Marxism.
Don’t despair. The consistent, and even forceful, teaching of the Church condemns Communism and Socialism by name, but more importantly, defends the right to private ownership of property as inviolable (Pope Leo XIII). Our pastors sold their souls in 1962 when Pope John invited Russian Orthodox leaders (read KGB) to the Council with the promise that there would be no condemnation of Communism. That’s still playing out today.
I’ll speak up for this pope, although I, too, find his selection of advisors and their procedural shortcomings to be pernicious.
His idea of capitalism is the version that exists in South America, and it is very different from yours. Before you get too angry with him, look at those corrupt, stratified systems to our south, and see if you do not agree with him about what is wrong with their version of capitalism. In my view, their idea of both capitalism and socialism are a hot mess, mainly due to pervasive corruption.
He isn’t talking about the US you know, where the poor have subsidized housing and own iPhones and TVs. He also isn’t talking about the nice, clean US with its Clean Air Act, and EPA, and its record of actually meeting pollution reduction goals.
That said, failure to engage this Pope, and tell him what works and what does not work, when it comes to creating a cleaner, more prosperous, and more humane environment, would be a mistake.
Valerie says: “He also isn’t talking about the nice, clean US with its Clean Air Act, and EPA, and its record of actually meeting pollution reduction goals.”
Pope Francis says: “[fossil fuels must be] progressively replaced without delay.”
Sorry, no wiggle room there, no exceptions for the “nice, clean US”.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/the-pope/11682872/Pope-Francis-publishes-climate-change-encyclical-live.html
Valerie says: “His idea of capitalism is the version that exists in South America”
Pope Francis says: “I recognize that globalization has helped many people to rise from poverty, but it has condemned many others to hunger. It’s true that in absolute terms it grows world wealth, but it also increased the disparity and the new kinds of poverty.”
Sorry again, no wiggle room there, no exceptions for U.S. capitalism.
http://ncronline.org/news/vatican/new-interview-francis-strongly-defends-criticisms-capitalism
The guy is a Marxist who has positively impressed Raul Castro, a murderous Marxist, and Evo Morales, who not only seeks to impose Marxism on all Bolivians, but knows a fellow Marxist when he sees one, giving Pope Francis that hideous golden hammer and sickle upon which a crucifix was engraved.
Yikes.
Valerie, now you’re being an apologist for South American communism. Few of their countries have ever been capitalist. They have historically existed under socialist and Communist thugs, including Guyana.
The Red Pope is a Communist with no concern for how Communism has devastated human societies and lives. Given his Communism and embrace of the KGB’s “liberation theology” (the Gospel itself is the true and only liberation theology), I would even question his belief in God. Show me a Communist and I will show you an atheist.
Valerie, don’t you figure there’s something wrong with your rationale when Frank is getting mostly thumbs up and you are getting thumbs down? Think about it…or do a bit of studying the facts…
Unfortunately this pope is on a course to undo the good works of John Paul II and Benedict XVI. Worse yet, his agenda is at odds with his stated goals to relieve poverty. The fact is that access to cheap plentiful energy is the route to raising the world’s poor to a level comparable to what we enjoy. Given his way, he would deny them that access, thereby prolonging their poverty. A misguided soul in the papacy. Too bad.
Pope Francine is the sort of Pope who would have elbowed Goebbels and Himmler out to stand next to Hitler in photo ops! Yeah he is!
Great article, Leslie. I hope I don’t repeat any of your points with these comments.
The Chair of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences who appointed Schellnhuber is Wener Arber. He is a geneticist who received the 1978 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. In the physical sciences, however, a Nobel Prize in one field rarely carries weight in a different one, as the specialization is so great. For example, a Nobel Prize even in the same field of nuclear or particle physics in one energy region would rarely imply competence in another; ditto for different theoretical approaches at the same energies.
So, the Pontifical Academy of Science is obviously puzzled by the physical sciences, thinking that a big name in one field, say biology, knows the best scientists in another field, say meteorology. But, even within meteorology, there are few who know much about the sub-specialty of climate science.
A suspicious influence on the Vatican’s anti-capitalism stance is Pope Francis’ and Cardinal Rodríguez Maradiaga’s Marxist controlled home countries of Argentina and Honduras, since environmental extremism and liberalism/socialism are closely linked. A “Galileo-like train wreck” now seems inevitable.
The here and now impact of the matter is on the poor, as the pope promulgates the elimination of fossil fuel power plants based on the amount of the atmospheric gas CO2 they produce. In this, he is shooting his beloved poor in the foot. CO2 has been conclusively, experimentally, shown to have little if any effect on global warming, and there has no warming for the past 18 years. Further, CO2 has a huge effect on enhancing agriculture, so important to the poor. Lastly, the fossil fuel plants are the only inexpensive way to provide the poor with their immediate and essential energy needs (for heating, electricity, gasoline, and so forth).
Leslie, I, like you, will not stop being Catholic. However, I have stopped contributing money to the Church and will continue to NOT contribute until this farce of a Pope is gone.
The pope is no different than any other Marxist, control is the ONLY thing. Pretending to care is just a tool in the arsenal.
The only thing different between this Pope and any other Marxist fool, is a $500 hat.
Too bad the pope doesn’t read the parable of the talents distributed according to ability. The most able took five and earned five more. The slothful got one and buried it, so the master took his talent and gave it to the more productive.
http://www.renewamerica.com/columns/fischer/100517
Unfortunately our world has turned our gold backed money into fiat paper currency now, and they can throw a trillion a year in the markets to artificially juice them up, and to buy votes with welfare. So we have hedge fund “bankers” influence DC policy for their benefit. Actual efficient productivity is made arduous through regulation, and rewarded most when a conglomerate also has lobbyists in DC, and factories run in communist/corrupt countries where workers come last.
In Venezuela now, farmers are being forced to sell to grocers, where the black market sellers buy it up and sell it at high prices. This seems like the French Revolution, where bakers were forced to sell at a loss, and some got the guillotine for not providing enough. (iirc)
Can’t the Pope see the misery caused by “socialism” in his own back yard?
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/southamerica/venezuela/11754156/Venezuelan-farmers-ordered-to-hand-over-produce-to-state.html
I am Catholic and the graduate of a Jesuit university. I knew the Church was in trouble as soon as I learned Francis was a Jesuit.
When he released those doves from the Vatican parapet and they were immediately attacked by a seagull and crow I knew we were in for trouble.
As the ancient Romans would have said, that augurs not well.
Ref: “As the ancient Romans would have said, that augurs not well.”
That’s for the birds! (LOL)
PS: Nobody else will understand this reply unless they knew about augurs.
I may be a sinner, but I’m a better Catholic than this Pope!
Not a Catholic, but married to one. And of course, the Catholics can have whoever they choose be the pontiff. But, in my opinion, the College of Cardinals choose poorly this time.