Pope fiddles as faith goes up in flames

By Dave Neese
Trentonian
December 09, 2018

https://bit.ly/2Gbb6Rj

In this file photo, Pope Francis caresses a child Photo by Gregorio Borgia

Not to tell the Holy Father how to do his job, but aren't there more troublesome issues facing the Church than, say, climate change and Trump's wall? Just asking.

Francis himself has said, "I like it when someone tells me 'I don't agree.' There is a true collaborator." Taking the Pontiff at his word then, let us dare to proceed.

Pope Francis has declaimed on various worldly topics, sometimes at great length. Meanwhile, the lawsuits and indictments stirring up a ruckus over clergy sexual abuse proliferate, even as the number of worshippers in the sanctuaries dwindles.

Declining attendance at worship applies to the Christian flock generally, including Protestants, and to Jews as well.

Only 39 percent of U.S. Catholics attend Mass weekly, according to the Pew Research Foundation's polling.

Only 33 percent of Protestants show up for their churches' weekly services. And a scant 19 percent of Jews can be found in the temple on a regular basis.

Clearly, religion seems to be going the way of such fleeting phenomena as the eight-track player, PDAs, Silly Banz, Cabbage Patch Kids and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Good news to the ears of the secular humanists but maybe less so to the rest of society.

Even among those who identify themselves with a religion, doubt is rampant. The Pew survey reports that only 64 percent of Catholics, 66 percent of mainline Protestants and 37 percent of Jews are "certain" that there is a God. (By stark contrast, 88 percent of U.S. Muslims say they are certain there is.)

These sound like urgent issues for the Judeo-Christian legacy. And this is not even to mention the eradication, by brute force, of Jews from the birth places of Judaism, where Christians are now confronted by the same trend in their own ancestral lands.

In Europe, Christianity and Judaism have been reduced to little more than historically quaint sects, the former tasked mainly with maintenance chores at great cathedrals now serving principally as tourist attractions.

Francis has given this matter some attention, but not to the extent you'd think it a priority. Which brings to mind the words of 1 Timothy 3:5: "For if one does not know how to manage his own household, how will he care for God's church?"

Meanwhile, the Pontiff goes on pontificating about the menace of homosexuality among the thinned-out flock of Christians, even as he equivocates on measures to address sexual abuse and coverups in the Church hierarchy.

He does, however, manage to toss in, regularly, sentiments lamenting income inequality, urging "the redistribution of economic benefits." Idol-worshipped free-market capitalism, the Pope laments, is today's "new golden calf." But here at least he can invoke the words of Jesus, who did, after all, observe that a camel has a better chance of squeezing through the eye of a needle than a rich man of entering the kingdom of God.

As to homosexuality, Francis ruminates, ruefully, that it seems to have become "fashionable." It seems not even the Church is invulnerable to the fad, he suggests.

If that is so, the Williams Institute at UCLA, which tracks such matters closely, has reported no evidence to support the papal observation. (The Williams Institute reckons that a mere 3.5 percent of the population identifies itself as gay, bisexual or transgender.)

Previously, Francis seemed to take a live-and-let-live view of the matter. "If a person is gay and seeks God and has good will," he said, "who am I to judge?" (There were remnants of old-line Catholics who replied: "You're the Pope, that's who!")

Does mandatory clergy celibacy and the Church's males-only tradition unwittingly encourage the scandals convulsing the priestly ranks? Among the dwindling flock the question no doubt will persist in being raised. Whatever the case in celibacy's favor, it was not until the year 1139 — more than a thousand years into Christian history — that the Church divined a heavenly imperative for it.)

Meanwhile, Francis has detected an even greater menace than "fashionable homosexuality" — namely, "anthropogenic climate change," or global warming as it used to be called.

Scientists are still researching — and debating — the dynamics of climate and influences on it. Many natural factors produce or enhance carbon-dioxide or "greenhouse" emissions. These include solar activity, oceanic-atmospheric exchanges, hydrological feedbacks or the effects of moisture in the atmosphere, the decay of biological and botanical matter and so on. It remains unpinpointed to what extent human activity fits into this complex, overall picture. Yet in his papal encyclical "Laudato Si'" the Pontiff does not shy away from declaring the unknown known.

Climate change existed long before such human afflictions as electricity and internal combustion engines.

But the continuance of climate change into our time is "a failure of conscience and responsibility," Francis insists.

To say that humankind has a moral obligation to exercise responsible stewardship of the environment is one thing. It is another entirely to insist that humankind has an obligation to take drastic, possibly reckless, actions based on a speculated apocalypse and an ideologically-tinged political agenda.

About this debatable topic this much is known: "Green solutions" — solar panels and other such "sustainable" energy sources — can be imposed only at significant economic cost, condemning undeveloped parts of the world to ongoing poverty with all of poverty's many afflictions, not to mention ever-higher taxes, energy prices and possible economic decline for the more affluent countries.

The Pope seems totally clueless to this major downside of his pontifications. Perhaps he is striving to appear "with it," in compensation for his unyielding, line-in-the-sand stand, so dismaying to the "progressive" brethren, that abortion is "a crime" and "an absolute evil."

In any event, you'd think, given the Church's history regarding science, that Francis would be a little less inclined to offer his two-cents worth on global warming and the anthropogenic factors supposedly contributing to it.

When Galileo declared that the earth revolves around the sun," the "known scientific truth" of the time was just the opposite. The Church hauled him before an inquisitional tribunal, which declared his view "foolish and absurd." The Church proceeded to suppress similar observations by Copernicus for 200 years.

Today, Francis seems eager to take the side of what's asserted to be "science." But it is the very nature of science not always to be on the right side itself — to be constantly challenging itself.

There's yet more bad news for the Pope from the Pew surveys: Nearly one-half of Christians say their faith has only some, a little or no significance at all in their daily lives.

And a whopping two-thirds say they derive only some, a little or no guidance at all from their faith in distinguishing right from wrong.

Yet here a virtue-signaling Francis is, secure behind the walled Vatican, railing against Trump's proposed border wall as "un-Christian."

Nonetheless, despite his forays into mundane issues, there might still be some hesitation to tell the Pope how he should go about doing the job. He is, after all, the Pope. And on occasion, among his off-the-cuff comments on worldly affairs, he has worked in words of wisdom on spiritual matters.

Let us, then, summon the timely and insightful observation of Ecclesiastes (10:1-3): "A little foolishness spoils great wisdom and honor." Actually, Francis may have summed it up best himself when he said, "The people of God want pastors, not clergy acting like bureaucrats or government officials."