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RUSH: The pope. Now, I realize it’s risky to discuss the pope because it could be misunderstood as talking about Catholicism in a theological way, and I’m not doing that. I think the pope has entered the realm of politics with this encyclical and so my reaction is likewise political. I’m not at all entering the world of Catholicism in order to discuss this.

But it was just yesterday on this program that I, your beloved host, just your average guy on the radio here, suggested that the pope’s encyclical on climate change was nothing more than Marxism, nothing more than communism. Well, get this from the National Catholic Reporter. “Pope Francis: Concern for poor is a sign of the gospel. It’s not communism.” Now, I do not believe that Il Papa nor the Vatican are responding to me. I think they are responding to what they assume a lot of people are going to think about his encyclical.

“Focusing on poverty and sacrificing for the poor are the heart of the Gospel, not signs of communism, Pope Francis said at his morning Mass. Furthermore, if Christians don’t dig deep and generously open up their wallets, they do not have ‘genuine faith,’ the pope said Tuesday during the Mass.”


Folks, I’ve not heard this before, that faith, genuine faith is tied — I mean, I know about tithing, don’t misunderstand me here. I’m not a neophyte. But I’ve never heard it put this way. If Christians don’t dig deep and generously open their wallets, they do not have genuine faith, and that’s in quotes, genuine faith is in quotes. So people’s faith in God, religious faith is now, according to the Vicar of Christ, directly related to how wide open their wallets are. Now, wait ’til you hear what opening up your wallet means. And I’m reading here from the National Catholic Reporter.

“He said people often hear, ‘Oh, this priest speaks about poverty too much, this bishop talks about poverty, this Christian, this sister talk about poverty. Well, they’re a bit communist, aren’t they?’ But ‘poverty is precisely at the heart of the Gospel. If we were to remove poverty from the Gospel, people would understand nothing about Jesus’ message,’ he said, according to Vatican Radio.

“Being fully Christian means being rich in spirit, faith, the Word, wisdom and zeal — things that Jesus has taught and offered all people, he said. Make sure, however, that this huge amount of ‘wealth in the heart’ also impacts the wallet, he said, because ‘when the faith doesn’t reach your pockets, it is not a genuine faith.'”

Uh, okay. This went on. “Pope Francis said the ‘theology of poverty’ is based on the fact that Jesus — in his divine richness — became poor; he lowered himself and sacrificed himself to save humanity.” Look, I don’t want to quibble with any of that, but… anyway, “Christian giving goes beyond plain charity, which is good, but isn’t the ‘Christian poverty’ believers are called to embrace, he said. ‘Christian poverty is: I give to the poor what is mine, not the excess, but also what is necessary’ for one’s own well-being.”

In other words, you can’t just give your disposable income to charity. You have to give money that you yourself actually need, and until you give up what you need for yourself, you are not being charitable. That’s what Il Papa is saying. Anybody can give disposable income. That’s no big deal. You’ve gotta give up what you need. In other words, instead of paying the electric bill or buying whatever, that money needs to go to the poor. And if it doesn’t, you’re not genuine. Your faith isn’t genuine.

Now, maybe this is not communism, I don’t know, but it’s scary, and it’s a little out there. Remember what all this is related to is climate change, folks. Every bit of this is related to climate change.

Now, we had a Now, back to the pope. Ladies and gentlemen, I have always, from the earliest days of this program, when discussing the environmentalist wackos, I’ve always pointed out that the modern environmental movement actually got going with the fall of the Berlin Wall. It was around and it was doing what it was doing, the anti-pollution crowd and the militants, they were always there, but with the fall of the Soviet Union, communism needed a new home.

And I told everybody, I predicted that militant environmentalism will become the new home of communists, and it has. And it was, by the way, that insight which has, or which did lead to what has become a popular characterization of environmentalist wackos. Green on the outside, red on the inside. If you wonder where that came from, that came right from this program. Now, the pope seems to have fallen for this.

A man of religion, the Vicar of Christ, seems to have fallen in with the communist way of doing things: Controlling mankind through command-and-control governments backed by police or military power. This is what the pope is essentially calling for. The problem is, human beings suffer under collectivist or communist regimes. They do not prosper. That’s the history of the world. The history of humanity is tyranny, and the people who live in tyranny do not prosper, by definition.

Now, the pope goes on to say — and we just touched on it here — that giving from your disposable income’s not enough. You’ve gotta give and you’ve gotta give and you’ve gotta keep on giving until you’re no longer rich! Nations must do this in order to save the climate. I’m not making any of this up. It’s all in this story, the National Catholic Reporter. You can’t just give your disposable income to charity. You have to give money that you actually need. That is genuine sacrifice. That is genuine faith.

You have to give until you, too, are poor. The pope said the following: “When people strip themselves of the material…” For those of you in Rio Linda, that means when you give away your big screen, when you give away your Samsung Galaxy S5 Edge, whatever. When you give away your Harley-Davidson, you are finally becoming a person of genuine faith.

“When people strip themselves of the material,” and give that money to the poor, “‘Jesus works within’ them and they are enriched…” You get rid of your big screen, get rid of your Galaxy S5 Edge, get rid of your Harley, and “Jesus works within” you. “[W]hen people give to the poor, Jesus is also working in the poor, ‘in order to enrich me when I do this,’ the pope said.” When it comes to environmentalism, here we are again with an objective truth, and the objective truth is:

In addition to communism keeps people poor, makes people poor, it impoverishes people, militant environmentalism seeks the identical thing. Militant environmentalism is anti-progress. The militant environmentalists will openly tell you they want to roll back all kinds of technological progress and others because it’s all poisoning the planet. The really extreme environmentalist wackos will tell you that humans must begin to commit suicide in order to save planet.

There are too many of us. Paul Ehrlich, Population Bomb? Totally discredited, totally discredited in a book he wrote back in the 1970s! I mean, nobody could have been more discredited than this guy, and he’s still the gospel to people on population control. Militant environmentalists. Where is there real poverty? In the Third World. I am going to give this example again because it happens to be truthful. Let’s say… Let’s make up little African county.

Let’s call it Abudin, and let’s say Abudin is a Third World country with pestilence, locusts, dry riverbeds, rotting vaccination. It has a Regime kind of government, big military. The people literally have nothing, barely enough to clothe themselves. And then one day oil is discovers in Abudin. Oil is a fossil fuel. Oil equals wealth. Oil could single-handedly elevate our imaginary country of Abudin from poverty to wealth overnight. Who do you think shows up to stop that from happening?

Greenpeace, the Sierra Club, the Environmental Defense Fund? Take your pick. Any and all environmental activist groups show up. They hate fossil fuels. They hate oil. What happens with militant environmentalism: Third World countries are not allowed to innovate. If they don’t have electricity, they’re not allowed to get it. I’m not making this up. If coal happens to be discovered in our little makeup country of Abudin, it’s gonna stay in the mines.

The militant environmentalists are not gonna allow anybody to go get it. So the people stay poor. Why? To “save the planet.” Yeah, because if little Abudin was allowed to go out and drill for its oil or mine its coal? Pshew! It would just further global warming and climate change. That’s how it happens, folks. This is what the pope has signed on to here. It’s a shame. It’s just a shame.

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