There is increasing talk about "synodality" and average weather conditions. Now it is an exceptionally cringe and lazy joke, of the kind seen on the eccentric and less frequented corners of the internet, to remark that synodality begins with syn.
Bad, but not, as we have seen, inapt.
It may, at first, appear odd that synodality was chosen as the word to mask doomed attempts to change dogma in the Church, because synod means nothing more than meeting. That makes synodality mean something like meetingly, and so (the other one we hear) the synodal path means the way of the endless meeting.
It only later becomes clear that, because of its infinite flexibility, it is an ideal motte-and-bailey of a word.
For instance, suppose a German bishop whispers to you, "Would you like to venture down the synodal path with me?" You either do, or you raise your hand to smack him upside the head. It's then he retreats to a simpler meaning of the word and says, "Whoa there, big fella! I only meant we should meet and talk about this odd desire." In or out: the word works.
Synodality and its cousins, then, allows its hearer to swap in whatever meaning he finds most comforting, which affords its speaker an opportunity to see how far he can push things.
With all that in mind, let's examine what the man in charge of the Vatican said recently. "There is no going back on the process of synodality," he said.
Now "the process of synodality" could mean something banal, like continuing the recent spate of interminable soul-draining stultifying time-eating unread-report-generating meetings. Or it could mean, to those of a certain bent, the continuing dismantling of all that is True and Beautiful.
In this most current case, "synodal process" was applied to the climate. Not in any metaphorical sense: he meant the weather. Doubtless the cold and brutal winter we are still living with (as I write, the temperature is a fine and breezy 36 F in mid April) will, after the data is suitably processed by Science, be announced to have been part of "One Of The Hottest Years On Record". But never mind that.
The man in charge said it is a sin---not syn---to "not take care of the climate". And that not taking care of the climate is a "form of paganism." This is most curious.
Specifically, it is reported he said, in response to a priest's questions of how minor variations in the earths pseudo-mean artificially defined mean temperature could be tied to evangelization:
"[N]ot taking care of the climate is a sin against the gift of God that is creation.”
“In my opinion, this is a form of paganism: it is using those things that the Lord has given us for his glory and praise as if they were idols,” he continued.
“I think not caring for creation is like idolizing it, reducing it to an idol, detaching it from the gift of creation. In. [sic] this sense, caring for the communal home is already ‘evangelization’.”
Perhaps the most charitable reading of this is that the speaker, like many in rulership positions, defers too readily to Experts. Experts have decreed that we only have a short time left to save the earth from a climate "catastrophe." They say that a small increase in a weirdly defined global temperature composite is an "existential threat", which is clearly false.
Too, they have been saying these things since at least 1971---regular readers will recognize this is one of my favorite radio clips from WLS in 1971 (Substack does not appear allow embedding mp3s unless the post is classed as a podcast; but here’s the link):
https://www.wmbriggs.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/wls.9.23.71.mp3
At this late date, there's little excuse taking Expert's word for anything. In any subject. But especially "climate" Experts, given how poor a track record they have.
Even ignoring that, it's difficult to understand how treating the "climate" with indifference, acting as if, as it were, like the air we breathe, is a form of "paganism."
Rather, worshiping the weather, treating man like he is not part of creation, that he is, instead, a cancer upon face of the earth, is as pagan as it gets.
Even if you don't believe that, there is nothing any person can do to worship the climate. Nothing beyond the quelling the ordinary sins of greed and envy and inuring yourself to material discomfort, which are always good ideas.
How hitting the streets and warning people about a possible few tenths of a degree increase in some arbitrarily defined temperature at some far future date aids evangelization is a complete mystery, though.
Buy my new book and learn to argue against the regime: Everything You Believe Is Wrong.
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Those who wish to get really real about Antipope Francis and his Novus Ordo Antichurch should regularly read the Novus Ordo Watch site and the WM Review site, along with the akaCatholic site.
Popes must be Catholic. But as a pertinacious and public heretic—indeed the most public heretic in the history of the world—Francis has abundantly proven that he’s not Catholic. Indeed he’s shown that he hates actual Catholicism with the white-hot hatred of a thousand burning suns. Hence, for example, he seeks to completely obliterate the actual (“traditional”) Roman Rite. Therefore, because Francis isn’t actually Catholic (recall that baptism is a necessary but insufficient criterion of actual Catholicism; one must also hold the actual Catholic faith, as explained by Pope Pius XII in his Mystici Corporis encyclical), he can’t possibly be an actual pope. One cannot be the head of a body of which one is not a member.
Recognizing this is a matter of logic, of seeing objective reality, not of legal authority. One need possess no legal authority whatsoever to simply recognize reality. One need not be a traffic judge to recognize a speeder. One need be a traffic judge only to convict the speeder. But the factual reality of speeding was pre-existent to the legal conviction. As for Francis, any future legal judgment will simply be an affirmation of the present reality, which is this: assuming he ever actually held the papacy at all, he’s long since automatically fallen from office because of his pertinacious and manifest heresy spitting in our faces daily.
Much has been spoken of the dangers of not following a true pope. It’s time to speak of the dangers of following a false pope. We must, at last, pull our heads out of the sand. We must finally get real, really real, no matter how uncomfortable the demonic really real reality of Francis really is.