Friday, May 05, 2006

Pell's bells a pealing for hell on earth.

It's really sad to see a supposedly responsible Catholic leader, Cardinal George Pell, come out with a polemical litany against the Koran, western democracy's slow breeders, childless Europe's, "pagan emptiness" and those making "hysteric and extreme claims" about global warming among others.

The Koran is riddled with "invocations to violence", western democracy is suffering a crisis of confidence because fertility rates are dropping and pagans are panicing because we can't control the weather anymore:

"In the past, pagans sacrificed animals and even humans in vain attempts to placate capricious and cruel gods. Today they demand a reduction in carbon dioxide emissions."

Cardinal Pell must be overlooking the fact that Christians once sacrificed themselves. The early Christian church was built upon the blood of martyres until it was adopted as the official Roman state religion. But what I don't like is this implicit notion that anyone who demands a reduction in carbon dioxide is necessarily a pagan. I may not be church going but I had my child baptised, not in George Pell's diocese thank god, but the one next door. He can make his own choice about religion when old enough but George Pell is hardly an advertisement. From his address at the Legatus Summit, Naples, Florida U.S.A.:

"Although I had possessed a copy of the Koran for 30 years, I decided then [after Sept. 11] to read this book for myself as a first step to adjudicating conflicting claims. And I recommend that you too read this sacred text of the Muslims, because the challenge of Islam will be with us for the remainder of our lives - at least."

Well, yes, if Australia's most influential Catholic keeps propagating Islam as a "challenge" to US Catholic business leaders. But I am not buying into this mundane 'controversy'. I just make the point that the consequences of foisting further ignorance on devout Catholics about the global warming going on around us now, and of that still in the pipeline, will be with our children, and our grandchildren, and their's, for the remainders of all of our lives.

The Times of London reports UN climate scientists, not pagans, as saying that Earth's danger point, 3C hotter, is going to happen:

The world will warm by 3C (5.4F) even under emissions projections for 2050 that leading scientists consider optimistic, the United Nations group that studies global warming has said.

The increase, which would cause drought and famine for 400 million people and devastate wildlife, is predicted by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in its most confident assessment yet of how greenhouse gases are affecting global temperatures.

It would be far more responsible for George Pell to be using his influence to further the Christian concept of stewardship, as strictured in Genesis 2:15. And if he wants to promote common cause with the Muslim world, he should exhort the key Muslim obligation of khalifa, or stewardship in Islam.

Source :::[George Pell address: Islam and Western Democracies]

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