Responding to hostile climates

Of the thirty or so comments to my Catholic World Report piece on climate change, all but two or three could be characterized as angry at me for writing it, angry at CWR for publishing it, or angry at anyone who takes climate change seriously (which I suppose includes Pope Francis and Benedict XVI).

Some call me a Marxist or despicable. Some include links to reports that show climate change is not happening, of that if it is, it is natural. Some call me to task for seeking to redistribute wealth (even if I didn’t mention any specific solution). Many are anonymous.

I told one theologian about all this and she smiled. “Bill, I think you’ve pushed many of the readers at Catholic World Report well past the edge of their comfort zone.”

All I was trying to do was offer a bridge between those in the Church who are engaged in the issue and those who deny it. After all, disunity is not what Our Lord wishes. Rather, it is a sign of the work of our ancient enemy.

Here’s a sampling of the comments:

• Get over it.....it's called WEATHER....sometimes hot, sometimes cold, sometimes just right. Chicken little's we don't need.
• You have to hand it to the Marxists (sic). This politicization of weather is the most clever scheme yet devised to redistribute wealth and crush capitalism. Now the leftists in the church are taking it a step further and making it a moral issue, all the way up to the Pope.
• I hate to tell you this, … but I attended an anthropology conference in Amsterdam a few years ago and spoke about this issue with a wide variety of scientists, from dendochronologists to mathematicians, who have studied the so-called climate change models. About 2/3 of them told me they think it is all bunk, but they cannot get published, because scientists must go where the grant dollars are, and journals have become as group-think in the sciences as they are in the humanities. There are plenty of scientists who think climate-change is a hoax. But they are drowned out by the media.
• And according to this guy if we don't buy into the notion that human activity is destroying the world through "climate change," we're violating the natural law. That, Mr. Patenaude, is despicable.

I haven’t engaged the comments at CWR, although I may.

What needs to be recognized here, however, is the extent to which climate change is a dangerously polarizing issue in the general population and, it seems, more so in the Church. And so we must continue our work to bring an authentically Catholic understanding of it to the world.

That’s what I try to do in my posts and other writings, which is why the editor of CWR likes my take on ecology. But this isn’t always appreciated by the readers, as those comments show. (Then again, sometimes my offerings aren’t appreciated by those in the Church on the other “side” of the issue. I’ve been told that some Catholics engaged in ecology may think I am "too pious"—what with my talk of novenas, grace, and what have you.)

No matter, it’s onward and upward for me. I will be leaving for Mass momentarily and will pray for guidance and for the intentions of all those who aimed their hostility against me. And as always, I pray for all of you, too.

May God bless us all, keep us safe, and bring us into one family with respect, understanding, and love.