Pell vs Pope
Cardinal George Pell has publicly criticised Pope Francis’ decision to place climate change at the top of the Catholic Church’s agenda.
Cardinal Pell, a well-known climate change skeptic, told the Financial Times the church had “no particular expertise in science”.
“The church has got no mandate from the Lord to pronounce on scientific matters,” he said,
“We believe in the autonomy of science.”
It is now close to all-out war:
Civil war has erupted at the top of the Catholic Church, with 13 cardinals, including Australia’s George Pell, warning the Pope in a letter that the church is in danger of collapsing like liberal Protestant churches in the modern era.
The cardinals say the threat of collapse has been accelerated by the “abandonment of key elements of Christian belief and practice in the name of pastoral adaptation’’.
As well as Cardinal Pell, the Vatican’s Secretary for the Economy, cardinals from Bologna, Toronto, New York, Galveston, Nairobi, Mexico, Utrecht, Durban and Caracas signed the letter, as well as other senior Vatican officials. These included Guinean Cardinal Robert Sarah, the church’s Prefect for Divine Worship, and German Cardinal Gerhard Mueller, the Prefect for Doctrine.
The row centres on the three-week Synod on the Family under way in Rome and being attended by about 300 delegates, mainly bishops, from around the world…
The letter complained the process seemed “designed to facilitate predetermined results on important disputed questions’’. Several of the signatories, including Cardinal Pell, have also raised concerns inside the synod…
One point of contention is whether long-established rules should be changed to allow divorced and civilly remarried Catholics to receive communion…
In a statement released after the leaking of the letter, a spokesman for Cardinal Pell said: “There is strong agreement in the synod on most points but obviously there is some disagreement because minority elements want to change the church’s teachings on the proper dispositions necessary for the reception of communion. Obviously there is no possibility of change on this doctrine.”