Dave Neese’s Provocations: The Pope goes secular
As the sounds of Christian worship echo in the empty pews of the churches, Pope Francis continues to stress a message of secularism. Might there be a connection between the two trends?
The Pontiff’s message, very much of this world, wins effusive kudos from the secularists. But will his words win any points for the faith? Dwindling Christianity perhaps shouldn’t bank on it.
His Holiness is hailed for preaching the gospel of Saint Albert the Great. No, not the Dominican bishop, the other Saint Albert the Great — Al Gore.
Francis maintains, as does Saint Al — the one from Tennessee, not the one from Bavaria — that Earth is going to hell in an emissions-emitting handbasket.
Sinners therefore must repent and get right not necessarily with God, but with the Paris Accords and the Kyoto Protocol.
This unavoidably will entail digging deep and shelling out more for gas and electricity, with the aim of reducing consumption of carbon fuels and — supposedly — of stopping global warming, or climate change, to use the term preferred nowadays.
And resisting climate change will further entail accepting the hardships of a faltering economy, along with likely brownouts and gasoline supply shortages in the bargain.
America, the Pope is suggesting, must forfeit its hard-won energy independence for the common good of the world. As opposed to sharing the wealth, this is a program for sharing the scarcity.
The sacrifices he urges are for a higher power. But no, not that one. For the other higher power. For governmental regulatory authority.
The Pope has returned repeatedly to his secularist message. Contrary to what you might expect, he urges that apocalyptic warnings be heeded, but not necessarily those of the scriptures — rather, those of science.
Christianity teaches that mankind has an obligation to exercise responsible stewardship of the environment, citing such scripture as Psalm 24:1, “The earth is the Lord’s and everything in it.”
To give the Pope the benefit of the doubt, maybe this is why he harps on climate change.
But crippling the world economy with stifling economic edicts is not synonymous with responsible stewardship. It is more likely synonymous with sanctimonious virtue-signaling.
The Pope is not saying, mind you, that all science should be heeded — just the alarmist part of “science” whose assessments are mingled with a transparent political agenda.
Virtually all discussion of “climate change” today is infected with an alarmism that follows the script of party talking points.
Meanwhile, though, some cool-headed science manages to go on outside the circus ring of politics.
There is, for example, a scientific focus today on the Pliocene Epoch, the span of time 5.3 million to 2.6 million years ago, Science News tells us. The interest in this period is that carbon dioxide levels then were similar to today’s levels.
Need it be pointed out there were no SUVs, no coal-fired power plants and no ExxonMobil in those distant times?
While real science continues to research the complex dynamics of global climate trends and debates the implications of limited data, Francis recently issued his own unilateral decree on the matter.
“It is evident that climate change not only upsets the balance of nature but causes poverty and hunger, affects our most vulnerable, and sometimes forces them to leave their lands,” he pontificated.
It is, of course, part of the
Pontiff’s job description to pontificate — but on spiritual matters, not scientific ones.
In speaking of “our most vulnerable,” the Pope did not mention the world’s 1 billion unfortunates who have no access to electricity and therefore are deprived in this modern era of even the most basic of sanitation and health measures.
He leaves unsaid how these wretches are likely to fare in a world economy hobbled by wind turbines, solar panels and other “green” regimens that can supply only a fraction of current and projected energy needs.
The U.S. Dept. of Energy projects that even by 2050, non-carbon “green” energy sources will be capable of supplying only half of our electricity demands. And electricity demands account for only a third of total energy needs.
Alarmists of a progressive bent are forever hectoring us to “heed the science.” Yet they ignore the one certain fact science tells us about climate — that is, that climate has always changed, throughout the geologic eons. Even when there were no freeways, power plants, refineries or fracking.
Austrian scientist Gernot Patzelt, one of the world’s leading glaciologists — no flat-earther, he — tells us that over the past 10,000 years Earth was warmer than it is today 65 percent of the time.
Which is not to say that human emissions are having no effect on climate at all. It is only to say that precisely how much effect is hard to say, scientifically speaking.
And meanwhile there is no known, realistic, practical substitute for oil, gas and coal — other than, that is, nuclear, which the neo-Luddites of environmental activism strenuously, if not rabidly, oppose.
While the effect of human emissions on climate continues to be researched and debated, science does know for certain that various natural factors significantly impact climate.
These include solar activity, oceanic-atmospheric exchanges, volcanic activity, periodic fluctuations in the tilt of Earth’s orbit and Earth’s plant and animal respiration and decomposition.
There are certain strident, nagging political activists who insist, however, that satanically avaricious and indifferent titans of capitalism — evil, cackling, comic-book, mustache-twirling villains — are bent on warming up the planet to oven temperatures.
But widely accepted scientific estimates are that some 80 percent of carbon dioxide emissions stem from the energy demands of our own jobs, homes and cars.
Around 20 percent of “greenhouse” emissions are attributed to industry. But industry, of course, is not some dark, alien, sinister, outside force. It is a crucial category that provides paychecks and products we depend on.
On climate change, the Pope goes on echoing the un-thoughtout, superficial blather of political sloganeering.
What, meanwhile, are the dwindling faithful to make of the old biblical stories?
When the Nile turned blood red and the Pharaoh was confronted with plagues of locusts, surely this must have been the result of man’s degradation of the environment, not an indication of the might of the Lord.
Ditto, evidently, as regards, the afflictions Job suffered. The deaths of
his children and cattle were not a test of his faith after all, apparently, but surely an indication of what happens when you fail to respect the political imperatives of environmentalism.
Just how far is Francis willing to go to ingratiate himself with the forces of progressive secularism?
Sooner or later, it seems likely, the secularists are going to demand that he acknowledge the
environmental degradation they insist is attributable to over-population.
They’re likely going to demand a papal endorsement of birth-control measures, including abortion.
That surely will infringe upon the Pope’s wheelhouse.
Sooner or later, it seems likely, the secularists are going to insist the Pope re-adjust his spiritual dogma to accommodate their worldly dogma.
Here’s the big question: By then will it be too late for the Church, after its flirtations with the agenda of progressive secularism, to stand its own ground?