Posted on 10/20/2021 3:41:34 PM PDT by ebb tide
In Glasgow, at the United Nations conference on climate change to be held from October 31 to November 12, Francis will not be there. He has removed the trip from his schedule. But if he is not going - Father Thomas Reese, former editor of the Jesuit weekly “America,” proposed to his confrere Pope - why not include Greta Thunberg in the Vatican delegation? Why not give none other than her the pope’s seat? Not outside the conference, to demonstrate with the people oppressed by the politicians’ vacuous “blah, blah, blah,” but inside, face to face with the powerful of the earth, to say to their faces all that must be said.
It is no mystery that Francis, author of the environmental encyclical “Laudato si’,” admires the young Swedish activist, whom he met briefly in St. Peter’s Square on April 17, 2019. But it is just as well known that Greta rivals him on the public stage worldwide, as a figure of reference for the defense of nature.
Angelo Panebianco, professor of political science at the University of Bologna and one of the most authoritative analysts of contemporary society, has focused on the Greta phenomenon and implicitly on the Greta-Francis binomial, a question of great import, in “Corriere della Sera” of October 8:
“Is Greta not perhaps proof of the fact that even post-religious societies - as most Western societies now are, those of Europe foremost - are in need of prophets and prophecies?”
Between the two prophecies - Panebianco maintains - there are similarities and differences.
One similarity between the religious and the post-religious ages is that in both the prophecy breaks through when old beliefs are exhausted, be they religious or civil, as in the case of our Western civilization.
But the strongest similarity - in Panebianco’s opinion - is that both prophecies on the one hand denounce the imminence of the catastrophe, and on the other indicate the way to salvation.
In the religious age, the impending catastrophe was God’s judgment on the wicked conduct of men - it’s enough to think of the New Testament accounts of the preaching of John the Baptist. While “in our post-religious age the catastrophe proclaimed is the fruit of nature’s rebellion against human manipulation”.
In both cases, “prophecy is successful if and when it addresses questions of meaning, of significance. By accepting the prophecy, people give a new meaning to their existence, they feel, at least in part, different from how they were before knowing it and making its message their own.”
But it’s just here that the difference kicks in. “Religious prophecy offered to humans, to each individual human, answers, and therefore consolation, regarding the ultimate meanings of existence: the meaning of life and death, as well as the reasons for suffering in earthly life. Religious prophecy anchored individuals to a set of beliefs that by giving each human the awareness of his place in the world also gave him the strength necessary to confront the struggles of living.”
But what is to be said, in a post-religious age, about a purely environmental prophecy with its exclusively earthly message? “Can it have as much power and capacity to give meaning to the existence of individuals?” Panebianco recalls the precedent of Karl Marx, with the link between his message and the ancient Hebrew prophecy, which in effect for a long time “gave meaning to the actions of millions of people.”
In the short term, amplified by the global communication system, even Greta’s prophecy “proves to be powerful.” But it is by no means a given that it is capable of “satisfying a demand for meaning in the long run” and as a result of “making a lasting change in the way individuals, or many of them, live out their presence in the world.”
That does it for Panebianco’s comparison between the two prophecies, religious and post-religious.
Instinctively one would therefore think that Francis is the bearer of the religious prophecy. But he’s not. On October 4, right when Greta was in Italy to contest the “blah, blah, blah” of the leaders and to mobilize the protest of the “Fridays for Future,” the pope took part in a meeting at the Vatican between religious figures and scientists organized by the embassies of Great Britain and Italy to the Holy See, in preparation for the conference in Glasgow.
The meeting culminated in a solemn appeal for the safekeeping of nature signed by, in addition to Pope Francis, ecumenical patriarch of Constantinople Bartholomew I, Moscow patriarch Kirill, the grand imam of Al-Azhar Ahmad Al-Tayyeb, Rabbi Noam Marans, and representatives of Buddhism and other religions.
Well then, in the 2,350 words of the appeal the word “God” does not appear even once. Nor do the words “creator,” “created,” “creature.” Nature is defined as “a life-giving force.” The sole timid, vague reference to transcendence is in the line recognizing in the natural world “the signs of the divine harmony.”
Too little, or rather nothing at all, to stand up to the challenge of Greta’s exclusively earthly prophecy, imitated to the point of banality even in its excesses, for example where the appeal of Francis and other religious leaders asserts that “there might be only one decade left to restore the planet.”
Two years ago the lay professor Panebianco published together with his colleague from the University of Bologna Sergio Belardinelli, a Catholic, a book analyzing the current state of European civilization and Christianity.
The criticism that the two authors lodged against to the Church today was that it was “too human” and “scarcely eschatological,” too silent about God as “creator and lord of heaven and earth,” when instead this “prophecy” should be its absolute priority, “as was quite clear to Joseph Ratzinger.”
Since this is how things are, the idea of sending Greta to Glasgow in the place of Pope Francis is by no means far-fetched.
Blessed are the low carbon emitters, for they shall inherit a carbon tax rebate.
That’s the one.
I have taken a lot of flack, here, so I won’t say what I think...this time...
-----‐----------------
She’ll milk it for all its worth
-----‐---------------------
Tit for tat,no doubt.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.