‘Catholic’ Climate Movement Activist: Christ didn’t come to Redeem us but to Create Heaven on Earth

Shameless apostate denies Christ died for our sins…

‘Catholic’ Climate Movement Activist: Christ didn’t come to Redeem us but to Create Heaven on Earth

There is nothing wrong with a reasonable environmentalism. God has given us only one planet, and we must make an effort to ensure it will still be inhabitable and fruitful for the coming generations.

Some people, however, have made a veritable religion out of environmentalism, in which the creature is worshipped rather than the Creator (cf. Rom 1:25); and others still have replaced the true Gospel of our Blessed Lord and Savior Jesus Christ with a false gospel of their own, in which our Lord is not the Redeemer who came to save us from sin and show us the way to Heaven but instead came to help us create heaven on earth.

St. Paul warned St. Timothy that “there shall be a time, when they will not endure sound doctrine; but, according to their own desires, they will heap to themselves teachers, having itching ears. And will indeed turn away their hearing from the truth, but will be turned unto fables” (2 Tim 4:3-4).

One of these false teachers, beyond doubt, is a certain Mr. Patrick Carolan, a lay activist who is a co-founder of the so-called Laudato Si’ Movement. The movement was established in the Philippines in January of 2015 under the label Global Catholic Climate Movement, with the support of ‘Cardinal’ Luis Tagle of Manila. The somewhat clumsy name was changed in 2021, and along with it some priorities were readjusted.

Laudato Si’ are the first two words of St. Francis of Assisi’s Canticle of the Sun, and they are also the first two words of ‘Pope’ Francis’ environmentalist encyclical, issued on May 24, 2015.

According to the official web site of the Laudato Si’ Movement, its mission is: “To inspire and mobilize the Catholic community to care for our common home and achieve climate and ecological justice, in collaboration with all people of good will.”

To help achieve that lofty goal, the org has four Novus Ordo cardinals sitting on its advisory council. They are Luis Tagle, John Ribat, Pedro Barreto, and Jean-Claude Hollerich. The Wikipedia entry for the organization notes that they partner with the Vatican Dicastery for Integral Human Development to convene various global initiatives to raise awareness and spark “Catholic” environmental action.

On Apr. 11, 2023, the official YouTube channel of the Laudato Si’ Movement released a 12-minute interview with Carolan, bearing the blasphemous and heretical title: “We are not here to go to heaven, we are here to create heaven on earth” [sic]. The title is a direct quote from Carolan, and that’s not even the worst of what he said.

Take a look, if you can stomach it. We’ve cued up the video to the 10:20 mark, where the blatant and shameless apostasy begins:

For those who may not be able to play the clip for some reason, here is a transcript of some of the egregious things he says:

My view … is [that] Jesus didn’t come to die on the Cross to save us from our sins. God didn’t need to send someone to die to save us from our sins. … So if He didn’t come to die on the Cross, what was the purpose of the Incarnation? And the purpose of the Incarnation would be to create heaven here — not to go to heaven, but to create heaven here. So what we all should be working together on is creating heaven here. … We have to move away from this idea that we’re here to go to heaven. We’re here to create heaven. And we’re here to create a heaven that is inclusive of all of our brothers and sisters.

Blasphemy! Apostasy! With these words, Carolan is spitting on the holy Passion of Christ!

The one good thing about this clip is that practically nobody has watched it. Even though the Laudato Si’ Movement has over 12,000 subscribers on YouTube, the reality is that after roughly 9 days, the total view count of this video is at 149.

It is clear Carolan has no concept of the heinousness of sin, or of the Majesty and Justice of God, or of what our Blessed Lord endured for us out of pure, disinterested Love for us — and not even merely in the last few hours of His earthly Life, but from the very first moment of His conception. The blaspheming activist also does not seem to realize that God has created us for something infinitely better than a few years on this planet. He has created us to see, know, and love Him face to face — for all eternity! “But, as it is written: That eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither hath it entered into the heart of man, what things God hath prepared for them that love him” (1 Cor 2:9).

The repercussions of Carolan’s heretical and blasphemous remarks are staggering. They are too numerous to spell out in this post and, frankly, they are too frightful to contemplate for any length of time.

With what he said in that interview, he has wiped away all of Christianity in just a few disgraceful and callous words. In one fell swoop, he tosses aside the entire Redemption, on the grounds that God didn’t “need to” send Christ to the Cross to save us from sin. The coldness with which the Priceless Sacrifice of our Loving Redeemer is disregarded by this man defies description!

As a remedy, we recommend the faithful recitation of the Holy Rosary and devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, explained and described so beautifully by Pope Pius XII in his 1956 encyclical letter Haurietis Aquas.

We recently addressed Carolan’s apostate remarks in TRADCAST EXPRESS 172, which can be found here:

The podcast is also available as an audio file here. For more such episodes, please see the Soundcloud playlists for TRADCAST and TRADCAST EXPRESS.

Before we proceed, let us look a bit more at the person of Patrick Carolan.

According to his biographical blurb at the so-called National Catholic Reporter, “Patrick Carolan is the Catholic outreach director for Vote Common Good. He was executive director of the Franciscan Action Network since 2010 and is a co-founder of the Global Catholic Climate Movement.” Note the many occurrences of the word “Catholic” — yet he has abandoned the Catholic religion completely!

At Vote Common Good, Carolan’s entry reads as follows:

Patrick has been executive director of the Franciscan Action Network since 2010. He is also a co-founder of the Global Catholic Climate Movement, an organization working on global climate justice issues as well as Faithful Democracy, a faith coalition focused on the issue of Money in Politics, working to educate on the corruptive influence of big money on our democracy. He is a recipient of the 2015 White House Champion for Change Award for his work in the Climate Change arena, a Senior Fellow at the Center for Earth Ethics and is personally dedicated to social justice to bring about individual and societal transformation.

Prior to joining FAN, Patrick worked for the Diocese of Bridgeport as Manager of Advancement/Development for the Stamford Catholic Schools and at St. James Parish in Stratford, where he was involved in developing Faith Formation and Social Justice Programs. Previously he was president of a Connecticut State Employee Union, held senior/executive level positions in Medicaid Managed Care companies, and served on numerous boards and commissions both in Connecticut and nationally, dealing with public policy issues.

(Source)

In other words, this man is deeply entrenched in the official structures of the Vatican II Church.

Carolan is also a contributor at Franciscan Media (formerly named St. Anthony Messenger Press), which publishes some articles of his. On the footer of its web site, Franciscan Media describes itself as “a sponsored ministry of the Franciscan friars of St. John the Baptist Province”, meaning it is officially Novus Ordo.

In the video interview of April 11, Carolan also absurdly claims that his denial of the Redemption “is not coming from me, this is coming from [Saint] Bonaventure, [Saint] Francis, and John Duns Scotus.” He did not provide any proof for this impious claim, so we will simply deny without evidence what he has asserted without evidence.

However, we ought to take a quick look at Carolan’s cavalier assertion that “God didn’t need to send someone to die to save us from our sins”. Is that true?

If we had to give a short answer, we would have to say, no, Carolan’s claim is not true. An in-depth answer is possible, of course, but it is rather complicated. St. Thomas Aquinas treats of this at some length in his Summa Theologica, Part III, question 1, article 2 (concerning the Incarnation) and also in Part III, question 46, articles 1-3 (concerning the Passion).

Beyond the question of whether God needed to “send someone to die to save us from our sins”, the larger point is that He did! Carolan glosses over that entirely — to him the Redemption of Christ seems to have no meaning! He treats it as worthless on the putative grounds that it wasn’t strictly necessary! What a blasphemy! The activist is more concerned about the global average temperature in 2050 than about loving God with his whole heart, soul, mind, and strength (cf. Mk 12:30).

In any case, it is amazing that although Carolan thinks God didn’t need to “to give his only begotten Son; that whosoever believeth in him, may not perish, but may have life everlasting” (Jn 3:16), somehow it has not occurred to this man that perhaps the God who created heaven and earth “doesn’t need us” to create heaven on earth either.

The fact that Carolan can speak such blatant apostasy and no one bats an eye — including the interviewer — shows how low the Novus Ordo Sect has sunk in its apostasy.

In fact, one may suspect that Carolan says out loud what Jorge Bergoglio (‘Pope’ Francis) also believes but cannot say openly. His exaggerated emphasis on temporal concerns, especially the environment, while neglecting, denying, distorting, or minimizing spiritual matters that concern the supernatural goal for which every single human being has been created by God, is right in line with Carolan’s “heaven on earth” idea:

In a blog post published on May 12, 2015, Carolan is happy to quote Scripture, but only very selectively, of course — only those verses he can misuse to support to his apostate beliefs. But of course the same divine authority that tells us that “God is Love” (1 Jn 4:8) also tells us that many shall be cast “into the furnace of fire: there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth” (Mt 13:42; cf. Mt 7:13) if they “do not believe” (Mk 16:16).

Furthermore, St. Paul was divinely inspired to tell the Corinthians: “For I delivered unto you first of all, which I also received: how that Christ died for our sins, according to the scriptures” (1 Cor 15:3). And to the Colossians he wrote: “Therefore, if you be risen with Christ, seek the things that are above; where Christ is sitting at the right hand of God: Mind the things that are above, not the things that are upon the earth” (Col 3:1-2).

The New Testament is filled to the brim with doctrine that contradicts the beliefs of Patrick Carolan. Here are just a few passages that refute the apostate’s false gospel:

For he that will save his life, shall lose it: and he that shall lose his life for my sake, shall find it. For what doth it profit a man, if he gain the whole world, and suffer the loss of his own soul? Or what exchange shall a man give for his soul? (Matthew 16:25-26)

And I say to you, my friends: Be not afraid of them who kill the body, and after that have no more that they can do.  5 But I will shew you whom you shall fear: fear ye him, who after he hath killed, hath power to cast into hell. Yea, I say to you, fear him. (Luke 12:4-5)

And he spoke a similitude to them, saying: The land of a certain rich man brought forth plenty of fruits. And he thought within himself, saying: What shall I do, because I have no room where to bestow my fruits? And he said: This will I do: I will pull down my barns, and will build greater; and into them will I gather all things that are grown to me, and my goods. And I will say to my soul: Soul, thou hast much goods laid up for many years take thy rest; eat, drink, make good cheer. But God said to him: Thou fool, this night do they require thy soul of thee: and whose shall those things be which thou hast provided. So is he that layeth up treasure for himself, and is not rich towards God. (Luke 12:16-21)

Sell what you possess and give alms. Make to yourselves bags which grow not old, a treasure in heaven which faileth not: where no thief approacheth, nor moth corrupteth. For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also. (Luke 12:33-34)

For what things a man shall sow, those also shall he reap. For he that soweth in his flesh, of the flesh also shall reap corruption. But he that soweth in the spirit, of the spirit shall reap life everlasting. (Galatians 6:8)

For many walk, of whom I have told you often (and now tell you weeping), that they are enemies of the cross of Christ; whose end is destruction; whose God is their belly; and whose glory is in their shame; who mind earthly things. But our conversation is in heaven; from whence also we look for the Saviour, our Lord Jesus Christ, who will reform the body of our lowness, made like to the body of his glory, according to the operation whereby also he is able to subdue all things unto himself. (Philippians 3:18-21)

For we have not here a lasting city, but we seek one that is to come. (Hebrews 13:14)

But the heavens and the earth which are now, by the same word are kept in store, reserved unto fire against the day of judgment and perdition of the ungodly men. But of this one thing be not ignorant, my beloved, that one day with the Lord is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day. The Lord delayeth not his promise, as some imagine, but dealeth patiently for your sake, not willing that any should perish, but that all should return to penance. But the day of the Lord shall come as a thief, in which the heavens shall pass away with great violence, and the elements shall be melted with heat, and the earth and the works which are in it, shall be burnt up. Seeing then that all these things are to be dissolved, what manner of people ought you to be in holy conversation and godliness? Looking for and hasting unto the coming of the day of the Lord, by which the heavens being on fire shall be dissolved, and the elements shall melt with the burning heat? But we look for new heavens and a new earth according to his promises, in which justice dwelleth. Wherefore, dearly beloved, waiting for these things, be diligent that you may be found before him unspotted and blameless in peace. (2 Peter 3:7-14)

The apostate thesis of Patrick Carolan is so fundamental and so appalling that any child who has taken the first lesson in the Baltimore Catechism knows how false it is:

Q. Why did God make you?

A. God made me to know Him, to love Him, and to serve Him in this world, and to be happy with Him forever in the next.

(Baltimore Catechism No. 2, First Lesson, Question 6)

There is nothing there about enjoying heaven on earth. This earth is a valley of tears anyway, and no amount of natural human effort will be able to change that. If anything, death will put a definitive end to any and all earthly happiness.

The idea is not to create heaven on earth, however, it is to use the hardships of life, indeed all our suffering, as stepping stones on the road to Heaven. How is this possible? It is only possible through the merits and graces of the Cross of Jesus Christ, which alone can make the bearing of our own cross fruitful unto eternal life: “If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me” (Mt 16:24); “For my yoke is sweet and my burden light” (Mt 11:30).

Man does not exist for the sake of his parents or his children or the environment; he exists to love and serve God in this world to be happy with Him forever in the next. Concern for the environment is well and good and has its place, but if it does not lead to Faith, hope, and charity, it is of no ultimate use to the individual. Creation is not the end of man — the Creator is!

As the saintly Fr. Edward Leen wrote:

The thoughtful ones of earth contemplating the scene presented by a human activity that continually changes its purpose and is powerless to assign itself any purpose that human reason cannot instantly question, must feel the pathos of much well-meaning and humanitarian effort. Great generosity is shown and real kindness is spent in praiseworthy attempts to arrest the ravages of mortality, especially amongst the young. “Save the children” is an appeal that finds a ready response in the hearts of the humane and the kindly. Not with cynicism, but with real sympathy, one may ask, “Save them for what?” Is it for the adult life that frets itself away in vain endeavours to assign itself an adequate reason for living? Is it worth while to preserve children for what any person would logically confess to be not worth while? [Footnote: There is question only of those who have not the view of the aims and objects of life as furnished by the true faith or even by sound philosophy.] Is this charity of the kind-hearted dictated by the hope that somehow life for these children may prove different to what it has been for those who have tried to save them from death and disease? Are there grounds for hope that the little ones when come to adult age will light on, by chance, a solution of the problem of existence that has evaded their grown-up benefactors? What is the use of bestowing health unless there can be given with it the key to such a use of life as will issue in happiness? Life is a precious gift when it is accompanied by the knowledge of how to live rightly and the means to exercise this right living.

[…]

Death is not a break, but a stepping stone by which one passes from one stage to another in the same existence. But man will perversely and blindly strive to effect a cleavage in that line and persuade himself that the good of the human life that precedes death can be different from the good of human life that follows death. The result is that he is necessarily at cross-purposes with God. It is not surprising that the creature, seeking to gain the goal of life — namely happiness — by a use of life’s powers and energies at variance with the design of the Creator, should be continually frustrated in his main object, should enjoy no peace, and should be involved in contradiction and become a prey to perpetual dissatisfaction. What is the way out of this impasse? The way out is through a thorough understanding of the religion of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ and a practice based on such understanding.

(Rev. Edward Leen, Why the Cross? [London: Sheed & Ward, 1938], pp. 23-24,35-36; italics given; underlining added.)

Poof! In just a few sentences, Fr. Leen topples the entire edifice of Naturalism!

Christ did not come to teach us how to create heaven on earth, He taught us how to properly use the things of earth in order to gain heaven. “And if Christ be not risen again, your faith is vain, for you are yet in your sins” (1 Cor 15:17).

Ladies and gentlemen, if what we are witnessing in our day is not the Great Apostasy foretold even in the Novus Ordo Catechism (par. 675), what will eventually be left to apostatize from?

Image source: YouTube (screenshot)
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