Last week a Roman Catholic bishop from San Diego, California, Robert W. McElroy, claimed that climate change is worse than abortion– which is responsible for the murder of more than 60 million children.

He said, “the long-term death toll from unchecked climate change is larger and threatens the very future of humanity.”

In a lecture on a “guide to faithful Catholic living,” given at the University of San Diego, McElroy said both abortion and climate change are “core life issues in the Catholic Church.”

Well, according to the Catechism of the Catholic Church, which members must follow, this does not appear to be the case.

According to the Vatican’s own website, the Catechism of the Catholic Church states: “From the first moment of his existence, a human being must be recognized as having the rights of a person — among which is the inviolable right of every innocent being to life.”

Abortion “is gravely contrary to the moral law,” it states. Anyone who has an abortion can be excommunicated from the Church “by the very commission of the offense.”

Yet, the Catechism is does not say anything about “climate change,” which was previously called “global warming.”

Also according to the Vatican, in Laudato Si, Pope Francis did call for a “forthright and honest debate” on climate change and other ecological questions while respecting “divergent views.”

While insisting that climate change has “grave implications” and “represents one of the principal challenges facing humanity in our day,” Pope Francis said “the Church does not presume to settle scientific questions or to replace politics.”

Last year, Bishop McElroy refused to support a movement by other U.S. bishops at their annual meeting to declare abortion as the “preeminent” moral issue of the 21st century.

McElroy said he disagreed that they should single out abortion as the “preeminent priority because it directly attacks life itself,” arguing such a move was “discordant, if not inconsistent” with the teachings of Pope Francis.

“It is not Catholic teaching that abortion is the preeminent issue that we face as a world in Catholic social teaching. It is not,” McElroy said.

Former Philadelphia Archbishop Charles Chaput rebutted McElroy’s claims, insisting that claiming abortion is the “preeminent priority” is necessary and does in no way conflict with Pope Francis’s teaching.

“I am against anyone saying that our stating that [abortion] is preeminent is contrary to the teaching of the Pope because that isn’t true,” he said. “It sets up an artificial battle between the bishops’ conference of the United States and the Holy Father, which isn’t true.”

“I don’t like the argument Bishop McElroy used because it isn’t true,” he added, to which other bishops applauded.

Regardless of Francis’ teachings or not, the Bible, not the Vatican, is quite clear on the matter of killing preborn children.

His remarks were also political, declaring the need for a $15/hr minimum wage and suggesting that the 2020 Election would be “inevitably be hijacked by partisan forces to propose that Catholics have an overriding duty to vote for candidates who espouse that position,” [that abortion is more important than climate change.)

According to the San Diego Union-Tribune, McElroy declared that President Donald Trump’s decision to abandon the Paris Climate Accord “is a far greater moral evil” than federal health centers providing contraception.

He also said contraception is “intrinsically evil”– however, “it is a far greater moral evil for our country to abandon the Paris Climate Accord than to provide contraceptives in federal health centers.”

Tell this to all of the women on birth control– and condom users– what they are doing is intrinsically evil.