We call people like this "cafeteria Catholics," and they should be very ashamed of themselves and probably prominent church officials need to start threatening to withhold Communion from them if they don't
immediately reverse their stance:
Conservative distrust of Pope Francis, which has been building in the U.S. throughout his pontificate, is reaching a boiling point over his plan to urge action on climate change — and to do so through a document traditionally used for the most important papal teachings.
For months, Francis has been drafting an encyclical on the environment and global warming which he hopes to release by June or July. Encyclicals are written with the help of a small group of advisers working under strict secrecy.
... and are considered a Very Big Deal. It seems the new Pope is not on board with the Drill, Baby, Drill theory of God's plan for the planet, and if you think the same publicly devout followers of the faith that have stapled themselves to the Church's edicts on abortion and contraception are going to put up with any environmental stance short of what the good people of ExxonMobil have paid for, good luck with that. Those other rules apply to the womenfolk and are thus, of course, reasonable and inviolate, but these
new rules may affect our holy smokestacks:
Even before these remarks, several conservative U.S. commentators had been pre-emptively attacking the encyclical. At Investor’s Business Daily, Forbes and TownHall.com, writers had accused the pope of adopting a radical environmental agenda.
“Pope Francis — and I say this as a Catholic — is a complete disaster when it comes to his public policy pronouncements,” wrote Steve Moore, chief economist of The Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank.
On the other hand, Pope Francis could toss Steve Moore of the Heritage Foundation fifty bucks and both Steve Moore and the Heritage Foundation would put out new statements saying whatever the Pope wanted them to say. (We know what you are, Mr. Moore, now we're just arguing over the price.)
This has the potential to cause considerable grief among the supposedly religious far right, if not outright abandonment of their supposed faith. There are a great many who already were able to shuffle aside the edicts about helping the poor and caring for the sick—you know, the irritating communism-ish parts—but adding an instruction that puts the Pope on the same side of the environmental coin as all those insufferable scientists is likely to be far harder to stomach.