The pope appears to have decided to score some easy points with those who are currently whooping the climate change thing. I have mixed emotions. On the one hand, I can’t stand it. Hitching our collective guilt wagon to the bogus science of climate change?
But on the other hand, this does do my Protestant blood good. He should take another swing at Galileo while we’re at it. Ten years from now when academics are running fingers around the inside of their collars and saying heh heh, I guess it did get colder I will think back on these days with fondness. Any way to put a dent in the doctrine of papal infallibility is fine by me. And yes, okay, spare me the comments about how not all the pope’s pronouncements are supposed to be infallible. Yes, I do know that. For example, none of the glaring mistakes are, for starters, which is kind of convenient. And so here we are, with the pope telling us that conforming to all the current balloon juice about global warming is a moral issue. I hope he starts doing this a lot. My suggestion for the next encyclical would be to declare that the Federal Reserve should lower the prime interest rate by one and three quarter percent to fight unemployment, which is, when you look at it from a certain angle and squint, a moral issue.
Of course, this whole carbon neutral thing makes a great deal of sense from a theological point of view. Rome loves the merit system in deeper ways than even Scott Clark does, and this whole business of selling carbon offsets is just Tetzel all over again. Got a bad conscience over eating beef from a cow that passes too much methane gas? Do you ever fly in airplanes, you creep? Do you idle your Hummer conspicuously at stop lights? Feeling uneasy about all that stuff? Someone is there for you, and they are happy to free you up from your guilt . . . for a fee. That’s how St. Peter’s got built — soothing consciences all over Europe, kinda. I am glad that some folks see the incongruity in all this.
Always remember, a guilty people are a malleable people. And if you can’t work with real guilt, false guilt can work just as nicely. When it comes to the manipulation of crowds, false guilt is like a margarine spread on the toast of . . . of . . . sometimes metaphors get away from you.