Odd, it seems, that when Pope Francis extols a fundamental Judeo-Christian sentiment — in this instance, that we might want to think twice or thrice about pooping in our own nests, befouling Mother Earth, and in general defiling God's little blue-and-green planet — right wingers, who are forever urging us to return to theological truths, dump all over him and portray his Christian convictions as just so much hocus-pocus:
As Francis prepares to deliver what is likely to be a highly influential encyclical this summer on environmental degradation and the effects of human-caused climate change on the poor, he is alarming some conservatives in the United States who are loath to see the Catholic Church reposition itself as a mighty voice in a cause they do not believe in….
Maureen Mullarkey, a painter and writer, said in the conservative journal First Things that "Francis sullies his office by using demagogic formulations to bully the populace into reflexive climate action with no more substantive guide than theologized propaganda."
And God bless 'em, the Koch brothers, speaking through their climatologically hostile and theologically clueless Heartland Institute, believe "The Holy Father is being misled by 'experts' at the United Nations," and "Though [his] heart is surely in the right place, he would do his flock and the world a disservice by putting his moral authority behind the United Nations’ unscientific agenda on the climate."
The Koch brothers, with a camel so overloaded it can't even crawl to the bloody needle, are now lecturing perhaps the finest human example of Christian virtue on "moral authority." But of course this is nothing new, and therefore nothing particularly odd, I suppose. Just read Max Weber.