Hilaire Belloc – Noël! Noël! Noël! Noël!

A Catholic tale have I to tell! And a Christian song have I to sing
While all the bells in Arundel ring.

I pray good beef and I pray good beer
This holy night of all the year,
But I pay detestable drink for them
That give no honour to Bethlehem.

May all good fellows that here agree
Drink Audit Ale in heaven with me
And may all my enemies go to hell!
Noël! Noël! Noël! Noël!

May all my enemies go to hell!
Noël! Noël! (Hilaire Belloc – The Four Men, 1912)

This from Belloc makes me laugh despite how much I hate the funny part.

I much prefer Tolkein’s Noel.

J.R.R. Tolkien – Noel

Grim was the world and grey last night:
The moon and stars were fled,
The hall was dark without song or light,
The fires were fallen dead.
The wind in the trees was like to the sea,
And over the mountains’ teeth
It whistled bitter-cold and free,
As a sword leapt from its sheath.

The lord of snows upreared his head;
His mantle long and pale
Upon the bitter blast was spread
And hung o’er hill and dale.
The world was blind, the boughs were bent,
All ways and paths were wild:
Then the veil of cloud apart was rent,
And here was born a Child.

The ancient dome of heaven sheer
Was pricked with distant light;
A star came shining white and clear
Alone above the night.
In the dale of dark in that hour of birth
One voice on a sudden sang:
Then all the bells in Heaven and Earth
Together at midnight rang.

Mary sang in this world below:
They heard her song arise
O’er mist and over mountain snow
To the walls of Paradise,
And the tongue of many bells was stirred
in Heaven’s towers to ring
When the voice of mortal maid was heard,
That was mother of Heaven’s King.

Glad is the world and fair this night
With stars about its head,
And the hall is filled with laughter and light,
And fires are burning red.
The bells of Paradise now ring
With bells of Christendom,
And Gloria, Gloria we will sing
That God on earth is come.

So I wanted to copy a section of “The Gift of the Priestly Vocation” from www.clerus.va to post on some news coverage of it.

So first I tried to copy the text from the browser and nothing would tranfer to the clipboard. Tried a different browser same problem. So since this a PDF document I downloaded it tried to copy the relevant text again.

Imagine my surprise when I got this message.

Wow did I accidentally go to the Secret Vatican Archive where copying text is verboten?

So of course I tried “password” – no luck. What secret password would the Congregation for the Clergy use? Maybe the Russians know. Oh well.

Still it is all rather hard to fathom why they would publish this with the “Enable Copying of content” unchecked? Is there such a concern regarding copying Vatican documents?

Okay so annoying. But what about those with low vision problems, could they read these documents with screenreader? Would it show up in internet searches.

So I loaded the document into Voice Reader on iOS and it could read back the text to me. In fact I was then able to also copy the pertinent text. A Google search for a specific paragraph returned results. So if this was some intentional copy protection – it is a pretty weak one.

Maybe it was an unintentional publishing setting which seems the most likely scenario. I guess we will see with future Vatican documents or maybe just ones published by this Congregation. Certainly hope it is unintentional.

What prompted all of this was the following story from The Daily Caller.

Roman Catholic pontiff Pope Francis has quietly embraced human-engineered climate change in a series of studies and announcements, culminating in a new papal order last week that makes it a mandatory subject for all priests in seminary.

In a statement that was little noticed by the establishment media — but heralded by a prominent Catholic website over the weekend — the pontiff issued “new guidelines” for educating priests: while “reaffirming the requirement that seminarians study Catholic social teaching, the document says the education must include a study of climate change and other environmental threats.”

On Facebook I had previously seen a reliable Dominican priest saying that the document doesn’t say this.

So what does it say?

172. A sufficient number of lectures should be dedicated to teaching the Social Doctrine of the Church. This is because the proclamation of and witness to the Gospel, to which the priest is called, has significant implications for human society, and aims, among other things, at building up the Kingdom of God. This implies a deep knowledge of reality and a reading of human, social and political relations, which determine the lives of individuals and peoples in the light of the Gospel. In this perspective one finds important themes pertaining to the life of the People of God, treated at length by the Magisterium of the Church ²⁵⁸, such as the search for the common good, the values of solidarity and subsidiarity among peoples, the education of the young, work and the rights and duties connected with it, the meaning of political authority, the values of justice and peace, social support structures, and the accompaniment of those most in need.

For some time now, experts and researchers, active in different fields of study, have turned their attention to the emerging planetary crisis, which is reflected strongly in the current Magisterium regarding the ‘ecological question’. Protecting the environment and caring for our common home – the Earth – belong fully to the Christian outlook on man and reality. They constitute in some way the basis for a sound ecology of human relations. Hence they demand, today above all, a “profound interior conversion. It must be said that some committed and prayerful Christians, with the excuse of realism and pragmatism, tend to ridicule expressions of concern for the environment. Others are passive; they chose not to change their habits and thus become inconsistent. So what they all need is an ‘ecological conversion’, whereby the effects of their encounter with Jesus Christ become evident in their relationship with the world around them. Living our vocation to be protectors of God’s handiwork is essential to a life of virtue; it is not an optional or a secondary aspect of our Christian experience” ²⁵⁹. Therefore, it will be necessary for future priests to be highly sensitive to this theme and, through the requisite Magisterial and theological guidance, helped to “acknowledge the appeal, immensity and urgency of the challenge we face” ²⁶⁰. This must then be applied to their future priestly ministry, making them promoters of an appropriate care for everything connected to the protection of creation.

Nothing mentioning climate change or any of the other silly euphemisms used for it. Can you read between the lines and infer that they are referencing this – possibly. It would not be surprising considering it is obvious the Holy Father and probably an large contingent of Vatican staff does believe in anthropogenic climate change. But it is bad reporting to report that a document says something that is not directly spelled out. Most of section for 172 pretty much says what other documents have said. Sure some of it is stated in a way up for debate like the sentence quoted from the L’Osservatore Romano. Still I consider the reporting exaggerated.

Now I myself am a skeptic of anthropogenic climate change. But I am also a skeptic of myself being skeptical and have been wrong plenty of times. My skepticism comes naturally from being burned by all the impending environmental catastrophes I was raised on. Modern predictions have not faired better.