Hypocrisy of Climate Change Advocates’ being Bused to a March (and more!)
There is something incongruous about being bused to a March in Washington D.C., with Catholic endorsement, to promote action on climate change, weather manipulation, and/or the emerging religion of global warming. For what reason do so-called environmental advocates choose to invest about 200 gallons of diesel fuel per bus to be driven (chauffeured, actually) from Rochester to Washington round-trip? The more buses, the bigger grows the carbon footprint. Obviously marchers traveling greater distances also use more fuel. So, perhaps 1000 buses averaging, say, 300 gallons of diesel fuel per bus, might equate to about 300,000 gallons of diesel fuel to protest for the environment! Surely that does not sound like the “ride your bike to work” crowd, does it? Or the “5 cents per plastic bag” crowd either?
Why would the Catholic Church support this anti-Trump march?
This hints that the environmental issue itself is expendable when it suits the objective, and the objective of the Washington march on Saturday, April 29th seems not to be about protecting the environment at all, but about getting attention on a very big financial windfall.
Any teacher who has managed kindergartners knows what ‘getting attention’ looks like, whether they are wearing little pink hats, carrying signs or not. Yet “Catholic” advocates, apparently captivated by the current exhibitionist mentality around leftist issues, will spend thirty hours on a bus just to be there to support or condemn positions about which they are largely unable to speak on the issues knowledgeably, or to proffer arguments on either side. Individuals who have signed up to send their bodies to the ‘front,’ i.e. in front of the cameras, know exactly what they are hoping for: attention.
Hypocrisy beyond the carbon footprint
But an accusation of hypocrisy (or at least disordered judgment) extends well beyond the political correctness of clean air and getting attention, to an emerging environmental idolatry. What we must be warning about is that the secularist agenda for environmental and climate / weather issues risks evolving into a substitute for religion. Actually, it already has morphed into elevating the created above the Creator.
When I wrote the book “Half a Dialogue,” as a reply to Pope Francis’ invitation to discuss, dialogue and debate his Encyclical, Laudato Sí, I had three purposes in mind, although they further clarified during the writing:
- Give testimony to God’s being in charge of the weather and that, of all the things He put into man’s hands, weather and climate were not included. The arrogant but not necessarily erroneous Elihu, in Chapter 37 of Job, says about God’s holding weather in His Hands (verses 7, 13): “He seals up the hand of every man, that all men may know His Work … Whether for correction, or for His land, or for love, He causes it to happen.” God is in control, and He has varied purposes for using weather, and no one can doubt it came from Him because man does not have control, only the ability to respond, repair or complain.
The bible is full of God’s using nature for His purposes; can we cite three witness verses in which power and responsibility for weather and climate are given into man’s hands? Two verses? How about just one? Yes, man is given an obligation to be a good steward of the environment. Not polluting or mistreating animals would be evidence of good stewardship, but not evidence of controlling the weather. At perhaps a subliminal level is just that desire to control that which is not ours to control, as the end-time threats abound with disasters such as earthquakes, and man seeks the power he has always sought, to control God. How, then, has man gone so wrong as to think he does have (or can get) the power over weather and climate? The Book of Wisdom (verse 13:9) asks the question and shows the internal contradiction about the very elite climatists who presume to preach their own gospel, based on computer projections: “…for if they had the power to know so much that they could investigate the world, how did they fail to find sooner the Lord of these things?” This is a very basic question which Catholics should be asking before taking up the climate/weather flag.
- Point out to those who hadn’t noticed that the wanton desire to substitute aspects of environment for the True God, didn’t die out with annihilation of the pagan Canaanite tribes. The right-ordered desire to worship a Supreme Being is readily seduced into patronizing fake gods who have resumés attached: a god of fertility, god of agriculture, god of rain and floods etc. At least one false god covers every need, even a “household god,” except for the bona fide need to worship the True God in righteousness and obedience.
What is particularly attractive about home-made gods is that they are what the individual wants them to be, so the concept of sin becomes distant or non-existent. When a tribe, a community or even a city state can agree on “their” gods, it binds a community together, and either everything is tolerated, or what is disagreeable in another’s belief eventually gets dropped by the wayside for the sake of political correctness.
Christians weren’t persecuted by Rome because they offered “another” god, it was because they offered the ONLY true God, making all the others into worthless idols. (Notice how a community rose up against Paul when his preaching threatened the finances of the fans of the goddess Artemis in Acts 19: 23– 41. Verse 26 sums up the charge: “And you see and hear that not only at Ephesus but almost throughout all Asia this Paul has persuaded and turned away a considerable company of people, saying that gods made with hands are not gods.”) What has not changed in the world is that those who profit from false gods still resist the Word of the True God. The True God does not “COEXIST” in that same bumper sticker verse, nor does He tolerate false gods diluting His Glory. And that is exactly the agenda of the purveyors of false gods, i.e. to drive away the True God as people unite in beliefs about the importance of recycling, but not of the Eucharist.
There are great amounts of money to be made in this ‘new industry’ – funding the undoable, a self-renewing project that never reaches its objective, because it has no proofs, objectives or measurable goals for results; a plan for an ‘endless project.” There is, and will be, just a continual flow of cash to the undoable projects. There is also the irony of knowing that God punishes by using the very things which offended Him. In Wisdom 11:16 we read: “…that they might learn that one is punished by the very things by which he sins.” At least in part this would seem to be a valid answer to the implicit question: “If there is no global warming, why have there been so many weather-related disasters in recent times?”
To turn the true religion to the false gods of climate and weather, a change in vocabulary is precedent. This is one of the problems I discussed in “Half a Dialogue“, i.e. Pope Francis’ imbuing secular words with religiosity. To me, Chapter V on Syncretism is the scariest one in the book. (Religious Syncretism is the fusing of diverse religious beliefs and practices.) Laudato Sí uses terms such “sins against creation,” “ecological conversion,” “accept the world as a sacrament of communion,” “covenant between humanity and the environment,” “sacredness of the world”, “Trinitarian dynamism,” “crucified poor.” I doubt I could ever be convinced that this Encyclical, accidentally or deliberately I can’t judge, isn’t laying the groundwork for Catholics melding environmentalism into the Faith beginning with our language, and diluting the adoration due to God. Among the most outrageous writing is paragraph #160 of the Encyclical, which includes in part: “Leaving an inhabitable planet to future generations … dramatically affects us, for it has to do with the ultimate meaning of our earthly sojourn.” No. That is NOT the “ultimate meaning” of my “earthly sojourn.” Not at all!
3. The reality is that false gods do not satisfy, but do foster growth of evil. There is something additionally insidious about the make-believe gods, which are the creation of man’s hands and minds, whether a god of the environment, climate or weather or something else, driving the hearts of the people away from the True God. Mere creed or joyful song becomes insufficient for such a ‘religion,’ because false gods are (in the final analysis) agents of the evil one. He may open the door to a brotherhood which despises coal plants or styrofoam, but falls quickly into much more that is untrue, sinful, degraded. The father of lies needs people to choose the false gods first, and to dilute, then abandon the True God, in order to engineer the twisting of words like mercy into euthanasia, healthcare into contraception and abortion, love into same-sex relationships and God’s creation of the human body and concomitant call to modesty (even Adam and Eve knew enough to grab the fig leaves) into an agenda of transgenderism, an ultimate rejection of the Creator. Evil is working on multiple fronts, and bus rides are not the defense. They are the distraction.
Again, we can turn to the Book of Wisdom to reinforce these perceptions of what happens when trying to control weather and climate are manifestations of false gods. Wisdom Chapter 14, verses 12 and 27 states: “… for the idea of making idols was the beginning of fornication…. For the worship of idols not to be named is the beginning and cause and end of every evil.”
Thus, the program to be implemented in the name of global warming and climate control, is to be funded by huge populations of people who do not appreciate that its very objective is to eliminate billions of people (as preached by the very speakers invited to speak at the recent Vatican Conference). Such programs inevitably coalesce into a “People’s Voice,” pressuring those who would espouse freedom of conscience, free will and religion. And that pressure to conform, my friends, flies under the cover of socialism and the related -isms. For that reason, people hold marches for public display and to pressure others to succumb to the group mindset. The less one knows about the real issues, the easier a person is to manipulate. Even the name choice of “People’s Climate March” is reminiscent of Tiananmen Square, and marxist manipulation.
Is the Hierarchy fulfilling its obligation to souls?
My answer would be ‘no,’ – not by preaching climate change when so much more vital teaching is needed. Aside from an embarrassing but non-binding papal encyclical on the environment, how can the Catholic Church, a bishops’ conference, or even a local parish, all of which should be steeped in the Church’s traditional teaching for 2000 years, be seduced into advertising and supporting a march for climate and weather, with a prominent “Catholic” endorsement, with clergy or diocesan employees even taking a leading role? And what is Catholic Charities doing in the mix, an organization which is broadly funded by contributions from Catholics, not all of whom agree on the climate and weather issues?
- Priests in the Pulpit: On many Sunday mornings Catholics are manipulated by ad hoc preaching on optional, prudential judgment issues, drawing attention away from more important issues of moral and doctrinal teaching. Prudential judgment issues are those matters on which the Catholic laity is entitled to make their own decisions, taking into account all that the Church teaches. It differs from the required adherence to the dogma and doctrine intrinsic to the Faith, often called the “non-negotiables.” For example, the teaching against abortion is a “non-negotiable”, the immigration question and border security issue is a matter for prudential judgment.
- One only has to listen to the 8 minute homilies to sense the difference between ‘feel-good generalizations’ about a sometimes wimpy Christ figure hijacked out of context for the message of the week, and the warrior Christ Who gave everything to save our souls. Which is a message to die for? Which one to live for? It may even be that some sense of being manipulated is an unspoken reason for dropouts from the pews, when personal opinions are preached to a captive audience. Unfortunately, too often the prudential judgment issues are presented from the pulpit as if we in the pew are obligated to obey the priest’s own prudential judgment.
- The Elephant in the room is the threat of schism. Similarly, the key issue today in the Church, the one which could throw the entire Church into schism (and which needs serious prayer) is badly misunderstood because it is barely addressed. It is as if many priests are afraid to confirm what Christ taught “in case” the Pope changes the teaching. He can’t, because Christ taught it, and heroic Cardinals are saying so. We know that if we are ashamed of Christ and His Teaching, He will be ashamed of us. In Mark 8:38 we read: “For whoever is ashamed of Me and of My words in this adulterous and sinful generation, of him will the Son of man also be ashamed, when He comes in the glory of His Father with the holy angels.”
- We face the biggest hierarchical split since Arianism and the silence is deafening. When bishops at a Synod are split on what the Church has taught for 2000 years, the laity is in danger and confusion. Those dissidents should have been immediately demoted from their offices, and rehabilitation efforts sincerely made. Rather, they were allowed to keep heretical speculations alive, rumors rampant, and now look at the despoiling that has resulted, still without clarification. Heroes are desperately needed in the Church today, from the lowest to the highest levels, but heroes are rarely welcomed by those who aren’t. I am convinced that putting effort into something virtually meaningless, like global warming, is more comfortable for the preacher / teacher, to avoid difficult discourse. Silence festers ambiguity and fear.
- We cannot expect much of the Conferences of Bishops either. Pope Benedict XVI (as Josef Cardinal Ratzinger) was quoted in The Ratzinger Report about the weaknesses and lack of power of any national conference of Catholic Bishops. That is a key explanation of why the national conference in Germany was unable to muster a stand against Hitler. Heroes do put themselves at risk one-by-one. Clones and drones wait to see which way the wind is blowing, determine financial impact, temporize their writing, and stress ambiguity for the sake of broader appeal, often taking a position “together” as a group. The USCCB has done its share of wrist-slapping of the Trump administration, especially on their prudential judgment favorite programs, particularly immigration and border security. However, none seems to have read Nehemiah, in which God called for a wall to be built around Jerusalem and the Temple for the safety of His people.
- Whether at a Synod or from a rural pulpit, oneness should be a mark of the Church on the non-negotiable issues. Truth is not a matter of consensus, as so clearly articulated by Archbishop Sheen. It is especially tragic when the Church allows herself to be dragged into ambiguity and lose-lose issues, like global warming and climate change. It is reminiscent of Pope Urban VIII’s proselytizing on behalf of the theory of the Earth’s being the center of the universe. Lose-lose. No Pope or President, United Nations assembly or Paris Treaty committee is capable of making truth out of a lie. It is very unfortunate that the Catholic Church, at any level, even tries to legitimize the effort by asserting truth for that which is still unproven, and supporting the political opinions of the moment. The dependence on government funding may be part of the anesthesia that prevents a studied presentation of the real issues.
Conclusion:
Every time the USCCB or Catholic News Service or a parish bulletin reports a prudential issue as “Catholic,” as if they had the voice of 60 million people, it cheats Catholics from their obligations to discern. It is time to more fully exercise our prudential judgment issues in the public square. http://www.cleansingfire.org/2017/03/something-is-very-wrong-at-the-usccb Otherwise when this fomenting issue of global warming and climate change pours out the sluiceway, it will be taken by those still remaining in the pew as either dogma to be obeyed, or a reason to leave the Church. Tainting Church Teaching with the illusion of doctrine in prudential judgment areas does a great disservice to souls, and is a stumbling block to evangelization.
So, when the bus buses roll out of the driveway of a Catholic Church for a People’s Climate March, there is much more at issue than our Catholic Charities dollars at work. The god of environmentalism and climate change is on its march to One World Religion, leading souls away from the True God and true teaching. In a saner time, Catholics might have been forbidden to participate in such activity. Now they bring home tee-shirts from the bus-ride.
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