In Nairobi, the pope calls for “eliminating carbon use” on a continent where tens of millions of poor families burn wood to heat their homes and cook their food.
(He somehow failed to note that Jesus cooked fish for his apostles over burning coals).
Meanwhile, U.S. bishops join their colleagues to demand a binding global agreement on global warming, while the pope’s feckless Peronist sidekick insists that opponents of such an agreement are evil Tea Party members who make their living selling oil.
Not to be outdone, New York’s Cardinal Dolan, faced with the most antiCatholic administration in living memory, pleads with Obama: “Mr. President, we want to be with you, we want to be strong” – in fact, he insists, America’s bishops long to be Obama’s “cheerleaders!”
Is it any wonder that thirty million Catholics have left the church?
And why would the successors of the apostles want to be “Cheerleaders for Caesar”?
For fifty years, America’s bishops have avoided the tough, unpopular issues that go against the grain of the popular culture while they embrace the “Social Justice” causes of the welfare-state agenda. This practice is called “clericalism” – when a bishop abuses his religious authority to assert that his political opinions are “Gospel.” It is a defect – condemned by the Church for centuries, because it is such a strong temptation.
The Catholic Church places all decisions regarding social and political policy firmly in the hands of the laity, not the clergy. And it’s no sin when the laity disagree on those particulars – even with bishops.
What to do?
Perhaps the laity might demand that their bishops preach not politics, but the truths of the faith, on which many of them have become strangely silent.
Consider: in recent years, Catholic bishops have received tens of billions of taxpayer dollars from the federal government for the bureaucracies that run their NGO’s. Catholic hospitals and colleges receive billions more.
And that door swings both ways, as Howard Baker used to say. In fact, years ago Obama got his first community organizer grant from the Catholic Church. And left-wing Catholic lobbies now brag that Obama has returned the favor, increasing the taxpayer funding of Catholic NGO’s.
So … was Jesus a polluter? Or should we follow the money?
Draw your own conclusions.
11:17 am on November 27, 2015
