The common lectionary of 7 May, year B, includes this tidbit of history from the book of the Acts of the Apostles: “The people in the city were divided, some supported the Jews, others the apostles, but eventually with the connivance of the authorities a move was made by pagans as well as Jews to make attacks on them [the apostles] and to stone them.”  (Acts 14: 4-5, Jerusalem Bible)
It is fair to assume that those referred to here as “the Jews” and “pagans” were not natural allies. The situation is described as the city being “divided” and the event requiring “connivance.” Consider that the Romans who were not Jews, (and therefore, by default, considered “pagans”) had multiple deities all or almost all represented by some man-made imagery, usually sculpture. Compare to “the Jews” who were worshipers of one God and were forbidden graven images of Him, and there becomes evident a natural antagonism.
What brought these two groups together? The very same factor that brings Islam and the Western political left into alliance with each other today: The old adage, “The enemy of my enemy is my friend.” Until the perceived common enemy is vanquished, the alliance is viable and useful, even necessary, harmoniously focused on the common goal.
Consider further that the political left, with its dogma that any dogma is inherently oppressive, compared to the unyielding dogma of Sharia’s minutiae. Sharia declares a death sentence on homosexuals, for example, while the Western political left regards homosexuals and generally “all sexually perverted” as protected under the umbrella of victimhood according to the edicts of political correctness. This is direct opposition, akin to the proverbial “unstoppable force and immovable object.”
Another obvious example is the permission, even admonition, given husbands and fathers, via Sharia, to beat, maim or murder their wives or daughters for even minor perceived slights or gestures considered incorrect.  This,of course, cannot in any way be synchronous with the Western left’s adopted visions of feminism, women’s liberation, or even common decency. Regardless, it demonstrates the almost indescribable intensity of the left’s hatred for all things religiously and politically conservative that they ally themselves with Sharia, the Muslim Brotherhood, et al.
Such intensity of vehemence is daunting to those not of the left’s revolutionary mindset, but who, instead, seek to preserve what we know to be good and right and true. Faced with such opposition, our realistic strategy for prevalence is unification. A unified Christianity is a force that the strength of the gates of hell cannot overcome. The Roman Catholic Church is the spearhead in this conflict, presently. Let us put aside doctrinal differences and petty arguments and disagreements. Our opposition has put aside far greater differences than exist among us. All who wear the name “Christian” must rally together against the legions who seek our demise.  A unified Christianity will constitute a formidable Holy Alliance.

The Church hierarchy, not only in the U.S. but at the Vatican and around the world as well, is fully under the spell of the environmental “green” obsession. It is, of course, only common sense to seek to be good and wise stewards of the earth on which we are born, the earth which we are to subdue and use wisely, but use nonetheless.
This most reasonable concern has been captured and carried to an obscene and deadly extreme by those who answer to an evil master. Just one of the myriad manifestations is “climate change,” (originally “global warming,” until the term was shown demonstrably to be fraudulent). This idea has inflamed the passion of much of the world-wide political left, including the Church hierarchy. A fact worthy of note is that many, if not most creditable climate and meteorological and geological scientists do not believe this phenomenon to be of significance, if it exists at all, and even so, human activity would not be the cause of any climate shift. Rather than being driven by credible science, the “climate change” issue is driven by a political agenda. Any crisis, real or imagined, begs solutions. The believers claim that it is human activity that is responsible for “climate change,” which will, without draconian measures, result in untold horror of heat waves, droughts, rising seas, disappearing islands, flooding of coastal cities, and more.
Describing the desired ends in friendly terms, (“sustainability” is a favorite) wins favorable responses because almost no thought is given to how these ends might be sought. The believers have great enthusiasm for their proposed remedies. These remedies are in two areas: economic shrinkage and population decline. These two efforts work hand-in-glove with each other: A slower economy will only support a smaller population and a smaller population will demand a smaller economy. There also seems a certain gleeful tone in the advocacy of shrinking both economies and population, primarily in the first world and primarily in the United States.
The Church claims that “climate change” will hurt the poor and vulnerable the most. Statements issued by bodies such as the Vatican and the USCCB do not mention the effect that measures to combat “climate change” will have on these “preferential” poor and vulnerable.
The methods of combating “climate change” all come down to this: Consume less. This can only be done by stymying economies or contracepting and aborting significant portions of humanity, or both. Either way, less will be consumed. Either way, it means death to humanity– either partial death to all through a crippled economy and vastly lower living standards, or absolute physical death to those specific individuals who will be contracepted, aborted and euthanized in order to achieve population “control.”
The measures proposed to implement the “salvation of the planet” are so extreme as to seem the stuff of dark fiction, as if they could not possibly be taken seriously. The proponents are, however, quite serious– quite deadly serious. An example from Crisis Magazine will illustrate: The article of 23 March 2012 by Jeffery Clark, entitled Remaking Man to Save the Planet, relates the quite serious proposal by S. Matthew Liao, (a professor of philosophy and bioethics at New York University) that promotes genetic engineering and other ‘biomedical modifications’ of body function for the purpose of reducing greenhouse gas emissions.” Jeffery Clark goes on to observe, “That’s obviously crazy, but it illustrates the absurd lengths to which eco-fanatics will go in the quixotic quest to fix the weather.”  This Huxley-esque image is not even close to the most extreme, but only one in a plethora of the kaleidoscope of nightmares poised for implementation.
Paul Joseph Watson reports, (prisonplanet.com, 3 April 2012) that Oregon University professor of sociology Kari Norgaard asserts “that skeptics of man-made climate change should be ‘treated’ for some kind of psychological disease…” Furthermore, “Finnish environmentalist Pentt Linkola publicly called for climate change deniers to be ‘re-educated’ in eco-gulags and that the vast majority of humans be killed with the rest enslaved and controlled by a green police state, with people forcibly sterilized, cars confiscated and travel restricted…” There’s more: Martin Kreiggeist, another Finnish environmentalist writer, “hails Linkola’s call for eco-gulags… as ‘a solution,’ … Kreitggeist wants fellow eco-facists to “act on” Linkola’s call for mass murder in order to solve overpopulation.” James Lovelock, (the creator of the Gaia hypothesis) has said that “democracy must be put on hold” to combat global warming and that “a few people with authority” should be allowed to run the planet…” Author Keith Farnish calls for acts of sabotage and environmental terrorism in blowing up dams and demolishing cities in order to return the planet to the agrarian age. Dr. Eric R. Pianka, a biologist based at the University of Texas in Austin, advocated (in 2006, in a speech to the Texas Academy of Science) “the need to exterminate 90% of the world’s population through the airborne ebola virus.” These examples are not even close to exhaustive.
What ultimately drives this passion for inflicting death on humanity, whether by economic sabotage or selective murder? What has prompted (and maintains) the shift from reverence for the Creator to idolatry for the creation; (all of creation, that is, except for humanity, for the believers’ own selves)? The proponents of this extremism are in the grasp of what Pope John Paul II named the Culture of Death, and indeed, that is exactly what it is. It is a tragedy that the Church is in alliance with those who promote the very opposite of its most vehement and foundational teachings. That the USCCB, through its bloated, leftist-indoctrinated staffing, is among the most devout “climate change” believers is, sadly, not in question.
In his 2009 Statement for Respect Life Sunday, Cardinal Justin Regali said that the Church should not advocate for the typical population control (read “reduction”) methods but should stick to economic sabotage only. This is from a website called “Catholic Climate Covenant,” which claims “Care for Creation. Care for the Poor.” The same site promotes the adoption of what is called the “St. Francis Pledge”: to wit:

“Pray and reflect on the duty to care for God’s creation and protect the poor and vulnerable.
Learn about and educate others on the causes and moral dimensions of climate change.
Assess how we– as individuals and in our families, parishes and other affiliations– contribute to climate change by our own energy use, consumption, waste, etc. [cf. "Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa."]
Act to change our choices and behaviors to reduce the ways we contribute to climate change.
Advocate for Catholic principles and priorities in climate change discussions and decisions, especially as they impact those who are poor and vulnerable.”

This moral confusion can be traced, at least in part, to a notion that caring for the poor, for the environment ,for the common good, and other leftist causes generally, can qualify as “pro-life.” This is the same phony twisting promulgated in USCCB’s “Forming Consciences…” document a few years ago. It is a deliberate lying and misrepresentation for political ends and much of the Church hierarchy is complicit.
The Trojan Horse has come to us through history as a metaphor for the invasion of destruction into a society disguised as goodness and innocence and well-meaning.
As the Soviet Union was termed “red,” as Communist China is described as “red,” as “red” was so prominent in Nazi Germany, so thoroughly “red” is the environmentalist agenda. In our own time, care and concern for God’s creation, “saving the planet” (from humans, presumably), “sustainability,” and so forth, have entered our society as goodness, innocence and well-meaning. Hidden by their “green” exterior is the fact that their essence, their core, can be symbolized by the “red” of their  tyrannical agenda.
Nowhere is it acknowledged that it is the proposed remedies of this “climate change” which will result in horror, primarily and first of all, visited upon the “poor and vulnerable.”
Nowhere is there an admission that the phenomenon is most likely non-existent and that the supposed “crisis” is fraudulent and imaginary.

There can be no isolated point in time, nor any single pivotal event which occasioned the Church’s confusion of charity with government redistribution of property. To reiterate, this means the taking of one person’s legitimately owned property, the “fruits of his labors,” and its “redistribution” to someone else, not its legitimate owner. In retrospect, one wonders how such a blatant lie ever could have been believed, much less achieved such longevity. Now that the lie is entrenched in modern culture and its axioms almost universally accepted in the popular lexicon, it is rather a bewilderment how to reset the course to “truth.”
Take heart! Do not be afraid! There have been radical cultural shifts before: The Crusades were prompted, nay, were rendered necessary and inescapable by the inherent barbarism and insatiable aggression of Islam. The Protestant Reformation followed an extensive and entrenched pattern of misbehavior by the hierarchy of the Church, not the greatest of which was the well-known wide sale of indulgences.  The Declaration of Independence of Britain’s thirteen colonies was a response to King George III’s oppression, largely economic, of his American subjects.  The American Civil War might well never have happened if the intractable problem of slavery could have been resolved at the nation’s founding.  (The attempts were made but no common ground upon which to compromise could be found.  Indeed, there was none, as the Civil War testifies.)  Hitler’s rise to power followed not only the Versailles Treaty but a complex interaction of unfortunate  social and cultural variables in Weimar Germany.  Many more examples could be offered but these may suffice to illustrate the point.

Let us, then, return to the present dilemma:  Charity is not in any way the same as, nor can it have a substitute, in whole or even in the smallest part, by government’s taxation/redistribution scheme.  Government welfare programs, in all their myriad forms and guises, merely “rob Peter to buy Paul’s vote” (as Rush Limbaugh observed on 16 March 2012).

A sobering realization it is that in any discussion of this scheme we must keep in mind that in a civilized society it is government which alone has a monopoly on the legal use of lethal force.  (Redundancy for emphasis.)  It is this which ultimately permits the perpetration of the crime of theft.

The presently-realized consequences of  government’s intrusion into the operation of Church functions and programs and even into its subsidiary facilities such as hospitals and schools and so forth blatantly illustrate the inherent wrong of government’s involvement in Church activity.

Seeing how blatant is the wrong begs the next question of how to remedy the situation.  A good beginning would be for the Church to accept no government money beyond what is unavoidable and necessary.  Examples of “unavoidable and necessary” include hospitals which treat medicare and medicaid patients.  A college’s acceptance of government-funded or government-guaranteed student loans is an area which should be declined.

As bad as is the government’s nose being into the Church’s business, there is another side to the coin:  Church, in the  persona of the USCCB, should keep its nose out of the secular business of government.  For examples, recent policy statements on agriculture, “global warming,” taxation policy, unemployment insurance, medicaid qualifications and funding, and myriad other such issues, should not be  products of the Church.  Not only has the Church no plenary competence in such purely secular matters, but nor should they– it is not their purpose nor their proper function.

Please, God, let this divorce proceed.

From the development of moral theology over the centuries it is established that one must never do evil that good might result. In other words, ends do not justify means. Both means and desired ends must be good in order for the action to be good. When wrong is done with supposed good intentions, and it actually brings harm, the questions seem settled.
From those “good intentions” having grown out of a “preferential option for the poor,” and an unblinking willingness to sacrifice individual liberty for the “common good,” comes the mindset referred to previously on this site, that of the “expectation” of government assistance having grown into an attitude of “entitlement,” suppressing the reality of the covetousness which fuels it and the theft and plunder which is its (partial) result.
The first evil is covetousness. It is perpetrated and encouraged by the attitude that some are “entitled” to what they think they need and want, simply because they need or want it. With satisfaction of the covetousness, i.e. actual “redistribution” of the goods of one to another, the process has now accomplished theft. That makes two wrongs, so far. Good still has not resulted, as was the purported end. Ah, but it gets worse…. Government dependency exacts a high price of its beneficiaries. Vast numbers of Americans are, after multiple generations of such dependency, effectively non-functional and as enslaved to the government largesse as any of our ancestors may have been to a plantation owner. There is, however, one critical and  unfortunate difference: Now it’s voluntary.
Lloyd Marcus, writing on americanthinker.com (“The Ultimate Devastating Price of Government Dependency,” December 7, 2011) describes the phenomenon from the perspective of an eye-witness:
“Both of my mom’s sisters had five kids each by various men who simply deposited their seed and moved on. Thus, both of my aunts were totally dependent on government. They lived in the projects. …The atmosphere at my welfare-dependent cousins’ home was strikingly different from mine.– a subtle sadness…
“Despite lots of extremely loud talking and laughter in their homes, both my aunts appeared chronically angry and bitter, with short, explosive tempers. A threat of violence constantly loomed over life in government projects inside and outside of the home.”
After more depressing detailed description, Mr. Marcus says in summary, “Nothing in life is free. While my cousins received free cradle-to-grave government handouts, they paid a devastating price for their dependency. They lost themselves– their self-esteem, pride and dignity. They lost the joy of success after failure. They lost the pursuit of their dreams. They lost the experience of developing their God-given gifts and talents.
“…. You government dependency junkies do not get off scot-free. Remember, nothing in life is free. You ultimately pay a devastating price for your class-envy, laziness, hatred and fear. In the process, you lose yourself.” This description by Mr. Marcus could be duplicated in the millions of instances.
Our two wrongs, covetousness and theft, brought us to that level of human self-destructiveness. How have we deceived ourselves so? Two factors have operated in tandem to get us here: A desire to avoid personal responsibility (shifting it upwards to government), and the perversion of language through the re-definition and lack of definition of terms such as “social justice,” “justice and peace,” “fairness,” “equality,” “economic justice,” and simply ” justice.” The portrayal of functional, responsible people who succeed in life and care for themselves and their families as merely “fortunate” or “lucky” also implies release of the lazy and non-functional from responsibility for themselves.
Another example, this one first-hand, further illustrates the truth of the situation: Mr. Thompson Ayodele is a native of Nigeria. He “thinks that overseas aid is making African countries poorer. The statistics he produces… suggest a direct correlation between the receipt of development and assistance and low growth. Foreign aid,” he suggests, “isn’t useless, it’s actively harmful. It discourages enterprise, fosters dependency and bolsters corrupt regimes.” (This from Daniel Hannan, “Stop giving us aid, say Africans,” May19, 2009, on blogs.telegraph.co.uk.) Mr Hannan suggest a solution to the self-defeating programs, which is, alas, politically unfeasible: “The trouble is that if conservatives announced that they were going to cut overseas aid budgets, [t]hey would be accused… of doing it because they didn’t care about people whose skins were darker than theirs.” This conclusion is likely due to the politically correct captivation of the popular lexicon. Mr. Thompson himself describes the situation thus: “The British Treasury is empty. So you are going to be borrowing money in order to give it away. And the countries that get it will be poorer as a result.”
These kinds of  policies of failure and moral wrong are roundly promoted by the bishops and their staffs– to help the poor, of course.
George Weigel, writing in “First Things” (The Evangelical Reform of Catholic Advocacy,” December 2011) offers a gentle chastisement of not only bishops in the U.S. but their staffs as well. In furtherance of the much-needed and, perhaps, long overdue New Evangelization, The Church needs to narrow and sharpen its focus, leaving aside such things as economics, in which it has no plenary competence. As it stands, the bishops have been seduced into promoting various policy positions which are not properly in the milieu of the Church’s concern. A few statements from the ever-erudite Mr. Weigel:
“Those lay Catholics who work in state Catholic conferences… are agents of the Church’s chief pastors, and the restraints the social gospel imposes on the pastors apply to their public-policy agencies and those agencies’ staffs as well.”
“The Church does not have plenary competence in the public sphere.”
“The Church has no competence to suggest that its social doctrine contains clear instructions on what constitute just rates of taxation, and it demeans its social witness (and misapplies its own social doctrine) when it does so through agencies of its pastors.”
“To Suggest [that it does have such competence] not only overestimates the Church’s competence; it also tends to obscure her priorities. When the Church’s chief pastors or their public policy agencies intervene in the public policy process on a vast array of matters that do not… touch on questions of first principles or on areas of the Church’s special competence, they inevitably suggest that all issues are equal in the eyes of the Catholic Church.”
What are “those area of the Church’s special competence?” Weigel again: “The Church most effectively speaks truth to power in the public policy process when it defends and promotes the dignity of the human person, religious freedom, and the integrity of civil society.”
“… as a matter of good defense as well as good offense, a radical change in the work of the Church’s public policy agencies is imperative.”
A good beginning would be to cease the promotion of moral wrongs, knowing that more moral wrong follows. Staffs of these agencies should be hired with a view to eliminating prior indoctrination by the political left.

In the entry immediately prior I stated that individuals, acting morally in their best private interests, would ensure the accomplishment of the “common good.” This, however, begs  questions concerning voluntary self-sacrifice. It happens, of course, and it is usually quite powerful. Common examples include fatal casualties (and even non-fatal) of military operations and martyrdom for the sake of fidelity to one’s religion. Can these be thought of as being in the individuals’ best interests? If so, how so? What is the rationale?
The most readily apparent explanation is that these voluntary self-sacrifices are seen by the individuals themselves as being in their best interests. Perhaps this comes from an awareness of being a part of something bigger than oneself. Such is our innate sense of community– of knowing that, even as individuals, we are for and with others. Therein lies, for example, the impulse toward charity, and empathy, and the expectation that, were roles reversed, one could depend upon and would benefit from the charity of others.
It is a beautiful aspect of humanity.

More on this to follow….