A Blog for Dallas Area Catholics

Our planet doesn’t face an ecological crisis, but a spiritual one August 31, 2015

That’s the thought that jumped to mind when I read Dallas Bishop Farrell’s latest blog post, wherein he repeats without criticism or caveat the sacred shibboleths of the “green” movement, that humankind is destroying the world, that “global warming” is significant and caused mostly by man, and much else besides.  He also attributes to skepticism on the part of some well-informed individuals, and recalcitrance on the part of governments, to being owned by the “polluters,” I guess through nefarious financial incentives (and where else have we heard that recently?).

But as one looks around most of the world, except for those locales where utterly unaccountable socialist governments hold sway or have recently, environmental standards have substantially improved in many areas.  In fact, standards keep getting made more and more stringent in many categories of pollutants in order to justify continued, massively expensive intervention.  Western countries have led the way in implementing these increasingly stringent standards, so that while some unfortunate exceptions remain, the air, water, and soil are generally much cleaner than they were 40-50 years ago.

Bishop Farrell acknowledges none of this.  From this blog post, one would have to conclude there has never been much of anything done to improve the environment and that the world stands at a most dangerous precipice (my emphasis and comments – if you want to skip the fisking, maybe just jump down to the conclusion.  I do go a bit long in my comments below):

As politicians and other wannabes pussyfoot around the two-ton gorilla that is the ecology crisis for fear of losing the financial support of the polluters, religious leaders of many faiths are playing a prophetic role in naming the gorilla and calling out those who created it. [I’m sorry, I think this is a cheap and gratuitous insult to millions of concerned souls and, yes, scientific experts, to claim that all that don’t share Pope Francis’ (or whoever’s) fears and policy prescriptions (whatever they are) are beholden to the fossil fuel industry.]

In earlier blogs I have written of the partnership between Pope Francis and Bartholomew, the Orthodox Ecumenical Patriarch that has resulted in the Pope endorsing and adopting the Orthodox observance of a World Day of Prayer for the Care of Creation, which will be celebrated for the first time on September 1, 2015. Other religious leaders, less impeded by political correctness, are also raising their voices. [I’m sorry, Bishop Farrell, but what color is the sky in your world?  In my world, where the sky is blue, those who most prosecute souls with politically correct tyranny are the very same who hold the most extreme, doomsaying environmental views]

Indeed, a world-wide chorus of concern that our planet is on the threshold of a catastrophic climate change has arisen among leaders of world religious bodies, Christian and non-Christian.  On Tuesday Muslim leaders issued an Islamic Declaration on Global Climate Change, which observed that, “Our species, though selected to be a caretaker or steward of the earth, has been the cause of such corruption and devastation on it that we are in danger of ending life as we know it on our planet.”…… [This is an utterly unsubstantiated viewpoint.  There is absolutely ZERO basis for this claim in science, and yet Bishop Farrell saw fit to include it in his post, which ought to tell us a thing or two.  I think islam ought to spend all its energy curbing the murderous extremists in its midst rather than thundering on prudential issues of science they plainly do not comprehend]

……..Earlier this year, in anticipation of the publication of the Holy Father’s encyclical Laudato Si’, a group of 403 rabbis signed a Rabbinic Letter on the Climate Crisis which noted, “Although we accept scientific accounts of earth’s history, we continue to see it as God’s creation, and we celebrate the presence of the divine hand in every earthly creature. Yet in our generation, this wonder and this beauty have been desecrated — not in one land alone but ‘round all the Earth.” [First of all, the “Shalom Center” is an extreme left wing org. Secondly, they have been roundly criticized by more orthodox Jews for many of their stands.  Third, 400 rabbis is a tiny fraction of the number in the US today. Fourth, if you read the statement at the link you will find it is riddled with factual errors, utterly unsubstantiated claims and extremist rhetoric.  Finally, appeals to authority and numbers are logical fallacies, without which Farrell’s blog post falls to pieces]

The rabbis point out that, “The worsening inequality of wealth, income, and political power has two direct impacts on the climate crisis. On the one hand, great Carbon Corporations not only make their enormous profits from wounding the Earth, but then use these profits to purchase elections and to fund fake science to prevent the public from acting to heal the wounds. On the other hand, the poor in America and around the globe are the first and the worst to suffer from the typhoons, floods, droughts, and diseases brought on by climate chaos.” [The linked declaration contained dozens of paragraphs, but this one, full of little but leftist fever dreams and utter calumny, this is the one Bishop Farrell pulls out to select.  Yes, Bishop Farrell is telling us some very important things, but not the ones he thinks.  I think we can very easily discern which way the wind is blowing in the Church.]

In May, A Buddhist Declaration on Climate Change was published stating that, “Today we live in a time of great crisis, confronted by the gravest challenge that humanity has ever faced: the ecological consequences of our own collective karma. The scientific consensus is overwhelming: human activity is triggering environmental breakdown on a planetary scale.” [Is Bishop Farrell encouraging Catholics to accept the heretical concept of karma, which is the diametric opposite of Grace?  Isn’t at least some kind of caveat needed here?]

Calling for significant changes in the structure of economic systems, the Buddhist declaration points out that, “Global warming is intimately related to the gargantuan quantities of energy that our industries devour to provide the levels of consumption that many of us have learned to expect. From a Buddhist perspective, a sane and sustainable economy would be governed by the principle of sufficiency: the key to happiness is contentment rather than an ever-increasing abundance of goods.” [Look, that last bit in particular is reasonable and fine – it’s about the most reasonable thing in the entire piece, which ought to send us screaming in terror. The point is, Bishop Farrell, and the rest of these groups, are not telling the full story and they are engaging in the worst kind of scare-mongering and propagandizing.  They do not say: “Oh by the way slashing fossil fuel consumption would cause prices of basically all items to skyrocket, even on the order of 400 percent or more current levels, would likely precipitate mass starvation and greatly decreased life expectancy worldwide – all of which suffering the poor would bear disproportionately (which is suffering that can be accurately forecast, not fake projections of nebulous bad effects from gerbal worming.  They pretend the choice is between evil oil profiteers and saintly enviros, without mentioning the COST of their favored policy prescriptions, nor the very close relationship between the environmental movement’s leadership and dedicated communists (they are one and the same).]

Prophets are never popular because they dare to speak the truth. [No really, HE REALLY SAID THAT!  Worldly statements for worldly political ends from false religions are now “prophetic!”  And the Baby Jesus cries every time a well is fracked. Even more, once again, reality is inverted.  Radical enviro-advocacy is one of the current shibboleths of the dominant left-wing elite around the world, it has the backing of powerful governments, the UN, many huge NGOs, wealthy individuals, and more.  In fact, calling for reason and true science (science by consensus has always been a complete fallacy, virtually all scientists once believed in the efficacy of leeches, that there was no such thing as germs, and that heat was transmitted by a mysterious substance known as “ether”) is the non-conformist, counter-cultural position.  Global warming claims, in point of fact, have never been less supported and under more attack within the scientific community than they are now. For instance, Michael Mann, inventor of the totally discredited “hockey stick” graph upon which so much global warming alarmism depends, has been all but totally discredited. Any experience with non-propagandist/warmist literature would make the flimsiness of warming claims abundantly clear]

Such dire warnings from across the religious spectrum echo the words of Pope Francis in Laudato Si’, the earth “now cries out to us because of the harm we have inflicted on her by our irresponsible use and abuse of the goods with which God has endowed her. We have come to see ourselves as her lords and masters, entitled to plunder her at will [I would simply add that neither Francis, nor any of those quoted above, have any knowledge of science or charism to comment with authority on these matters.  I’m waiting for Pope Francis to dogmatically declare that ]

All the above is really beside the point, however.  Environmental studies, environmental controls, remediation, research, “offsets,’ and the like are already a multi-trillion dollar a year industry worldwide.  These topics get constant attention in the press.  But what does not get constant attention, what more and more souls (including, it seems, even within the hierarchy of the Church) almost entirely forget, is the moral pollution that afflicts the vast majority of people and the enormous spiritual crisis that is rapidly leading mankind to a most cruel reckoning.  There are very few voices in Church officialdom who will bring these topics to the fore with the kind of energy and fervor that Bishop Farrel displays above, and yet there is no more grave crisis facing the world today than that of the mass apostasy of peoples and nation’s and God’s growing wrath.

I must really ask, both in respect to Bishop Farrell’s missive and Laudato Si, where is the faith?  Where is the idea that God will always provide for us if we are faithful to Him in the context of what the Church has always prescribed for sanctity?

If we spent more time encouraging souls to be truly virtuous and, by some great miracle, could work a great conversion on the culture, all these purported worldly crises would disappear into the ether. Environmentalism doesn’t make souls holy, but being holy by default would produce souls who have all the necessary characteristics to insure proper care for the environment.

Instead of conversion and trust in God, what we are confronted with, generally speaking, in the above is a vision of an enraged Gaia preparing to smite mankind for our offenses against her.  It is amazing that the same men who can hardly find a breath to criticize fornication, pornography, contraception, etc. – that is, real sin – can get so exercised over imaginary ones like this.  But really, I shouldn’t be amazed at all, because it’s entirely the point.

I’ll just repeat, Bishop Farrell’s words above are most revealing, but not for the reasons he may think.  Those with eyes to see, let them see.