Aware of all internet traditions

I wasn’t familiar with Bellarmine, you don’t link to anything about him, and Google doesn’t link to a biography especially prominently, so here is a link to the Wikipedia article about Bellarmine; one relevant paragraph is:

In 1616, on the orders of the then pope, Paul V, Cardinal Bellarmine summoned Galileo Galilei, notified him of a forthcoming decree of the Congregation of the Index condemning the Copernican doctrine of the mobility of the Earth and the immobility of the Sun, and ordered him to abandon it.[2] Galileo agreed.[3] When Galileo later complained of rumors to the effect that he had been forced to abjure and do penance, Bellarmine wrote out a certificate denying the rumors, stating that Galileo had merely been notified of the decree and informed that, as a consequence of it, the Copernican doctrine could not be “defended or held”.[4] Cardinal Bellarmine was himself ambiguous about heliocentrism, personally noting that further research had to be done to confirm or condemn it. (In 1633 Galileo would again be called before the Inquisition in this matter.)

Of course, the reason that the Wikipedia article about Bellarmine is a bit low on the Google page is the more prominent position in the search results given to Bellarmine University, a Catholic “liberal arts” school in Kentucky, along with Bellarmine college and several prep schools and other lower-level schools. The mind is rather inclined to boggle at the inappropriateness of naming educational institutions in honor of someone who was an enemy of rational thought even by the standards of organized dogmatic religion.

It is sad to see that he was canonized by Pope Piux XI, about whom I know very little. Popes Pius IX and Pius XII were absolute and utter bastards (naturally, they are both up for canonization under the current pontificate), so it would really be more fitting if one of them had conferred the title of saint onto Bellarmine.

See Kim Stanley Robinson’s Galileo’s Dream for more on Belllarmine.

I’m relatively surprised that the senior Catholic Church leader in Australia is a global waring denier. Churches or often supportive of environmentalist causes, and critical of the consumer society and materialism. That man should not damage God’s Creation is a common argument. And I thought that the Catholic Church, while socially reactionary, were less likely to be reproducing right-wing talking points on this kind of issues than for instance American Evangelicals.

It’s probably difficult to combine young earth creationism with the use of paleoclimatic data in climate science, though, so southern US protestant fundamentalists are probably not in the forefront of combating global warming. But my impression was that the Catholic Church recognizes evolution theory, and that the views that Cardinal Pell is expressing on global warming are contrary to the views of the Vatican?

The level of this debate is low. Really irritating.

Well, thanks for raising it with your ad hominems and SHOUTING.

@ David G

The level of this debate is low. Really irritating. For example, “Norwegian Guy” (hei nordmand!) thinks it relevant to mention American creati0nists, of whom he probably knows little,

The level of your comment is very low.

Like many an ideologue you begin from the assumption that the only possible reasons someone could hold contrary views are ignorance or stupidity or both. Thus you appear to believe that it suffices for you to comment on what you take for a fact without providing any evidence to explain, let alone support your view.

I don’t know quite why you imagine such a difference between two groups of authoritarian, power-mad theologians? The Catholic church agrees with evangelicals on so much: hatred of women, hatred of homosexuals, opposition to abortion, considering women to be second class, hatred of gays, hatred of those who question their right to speak for God, hatred of women, hatred of opposed sects and of course the hate.

The fact that two groups of people hate each other does not always make them different, often it makes them more alike. I can’t quite remember the doctrinal differences between Marxist-Leninists and Trotskyites, but they certainly mattered to the individuals concerned. Most outside observers would lump both groups together as ‘communist’.

Sky pixies win the internet.

. For example, “Norwegian Guy” (hei nordmand!) thinks it relevant to mention American creati0nists, of whom he probably knows little, while simultaneously wondering how the Catholic Church can recognize evolutionism but not “global warming .. What [global warning] has to do with ev0lutionism is unclear at the least.”

If you think the Earth was created ca. 6000 years ago, you’re unlikely to deal well with, as Norweigian Guy pointed out in their comment, paleoclimate data, given the whole paleo part. Also, as again pointed out in that comment, American evangelicals – at least the rightwing ones – are largely a wholly owned subsidiary of the Republican Party, which at the moment is balls-deep in AGW-denialism; the Catholic Church is presumably less compromised by that. It’s true that there’s no reason to think that the Catholic Church has any specific expertise in the science behind either evolution or global warming, which is why it makes sense for them to accept the massive, overwhelming consensus of the scientific community in regards to the latter as it more or less has done with the former.

Quiggin, if you are so worried: move to the bush, build a well and a windmill, and SHUT UP!

Unless Quiggin is responsible for a significant percentage of humanity’s output of greenhouse gases, it’s unclear why you think this would seem like a reasonable reaction. That’s kind of the point when it comes to AGW; random and scattered individual acts of environmental purity aren’t really going to help; organized and systematic action is what’s needed.

There is no such damage to the climate from human action. CO2 is plant food.

And water is plant drink, but that doesn’t mean that more is always a good thing – either for the plant, or for anyone living nearby. Warmth is necessary for plant growth, as well, as the daffodils in my yard point out, but kick the average temp up a few degrees and while some plants are gonna flourish – a bunch are going to be very sad indeed.

Heck, bullshit is plant food too, and … well, they must love global warming denialism!

Man-made CO2 is a fraction of a fraction of the atmosphere.

And man-made radioactive isotopes are a fraction of a fraction of all stuff on earth, but …
Or: I take a full cup. I add a tablespoon. The cup runneth over! How is this possible?! Or: I place that cup at the very edge of the table. It sits there. I give it a teeny-tiny nudge. It falls off! Smash! Splash! How could that have happened?!

There is no man-made climate change. Quiggin hates to hear this, I don’t know why. Truly not. Unless he really, really hates his fellow-men.

“Oh no! There’s a giant asteroid heading straight for Earth!”
“Nope. No giant asteroid heading straight for Earth. After all, there’s tons of asteroids out there.”
“What? What does that have to do with anything? Quick! We’ve got to do something before it’s too late!!”
“Yawn. Well, if you’re so worried why don’t you hide in the basement or something?”
“Wha – are you mad? Don’t you get it? Giant asteroid! Earth!”
“Look, there’s no giant asteroid headed towards Earth. You obviously hate to hear this. I don’t know why, unless you really hate your fellow-men.”
Unless the idea is that he must hate them to order to think they’re capable of causing climate change through adding massive amounts of greenhouse gases to the atmosphere. Which doesn’t make sense. I think that my baby daughter fills her diapers with fairly noxious substances requiring fairly prompt action to avoid damaging our very local environment. I also love her. The two aren’t mutually exclusive. Indeed, not bothering to change her diaper would very quickly get us into harmful neglect territory. Likewise letting her toddle around a house littered with reeking and flyblown dirty diapers might get me a spot on a TLC reality show, but would not be a demonstration of my love for her – in any sane sense, at least – any more than regularly changing her and dumping them out is indicative of some supposed deep loathing towards her.

OT:
“In 1616, on the orders of the then pope, Paul V, Cardinal Bellarmine summoned Galileo Galilei”
It seems that Bellarmino wasn’t particulary culpable of Galilei’s treatment (wich anyway was mild for the standards of the times).

See, I threw a ball out here — sorry for the caps, Quiggin — and I get snark back. What I expected. A lot of irrelevant trash-throwing and zero argument.

Still, thanks for not deleting my post. Some leftists have a shred of dignity left (was that a pun? Not deliberate.)

Dan S. says. “American evangelicals – at least the rightwing ones – are largely a wholly owned subsidiary of the Republican Party, which at the moment is balls-deep in AGW-denialism.”

Apart from the crudity, I see no argument in that petulant sentence, other than what Dan S. chooses to believe. What does he know about “American Evangelicals”? Probably as much as I, which is to say, very little. And anyone who knows anything about the Republican Party, that assemblage of, permit me, gutless drones, knows that the GOP establishment would rather die collectively than endorse any part of the “Evangelical” agenda.

“Denialism”! You mean people who don’t subscribe to the Green orthodoxy, that is, that humans are capable of influencing global climate; that this influence is bad (in some not quite clear way); and that these same bad humans also have the power to influence climate in a “good” way.

I find such claims so indescribably arrogant that I can hardly even counter them. Of course human beings have some influence, locally, on the environment. But on climate? You have to be kidding.

Thanks again, Quiggin, for your tolerance. I appreciate it.

Of course human beings have some influence, locally, on the environment. But on climate? You have to be kidding.

Argument from incredulity.

Saint Bellarmine

There really should be no cause for surprise about Cardinal B making it into the company of the Church-approved saints. The criteria aren’t that hard to achieve, certainly much easier than winning a Nobel, even the Peace Prize, which they’ll give to any war criminal, it seems. In fact, as it becomes more evident year by year that I’m probably not going to ever be President, or Pope, or even win the Nobel Prize, I’ve lowered my sights, and am seriously considereing making a run at sainthood.

What trips people up here, and makes them think that sainthood is so unattainable, is the difference between the popular concept and the technical definition the Church uses. Lay people tend to imagine that some incredibly elevated spirituality, or some amazingly altruistic and effective service to one’s fellow man is required. Actually, the Church is quite modest about what it means to be a saint, and how it decides if someone is likely to be a saint.

A saint is simply someone who is saved, who has gone to Heaven after death, rather than the other place. This can include all sorts of quite ordinary people. The trick is that the Church will not declare anyone a saint without empirical evidence that they are among the Saved.

But you don’t get the recognition by the Church without evidence that you are now sitting on the right hand of the Lord. The criteria considered by the Church in making this determination are but two:
1) proof that you lived a holy life
2) proof that you have cured people’s ilnesses after you died.

The second criterion is easier to explain. While it might seem to indicate a Church fixation on miracles and other spiritualistic claptrap, it’s actually based on an admirable empiricism. You see, you don’t get points for allegedly having worked miracles while alive. The Church takes a very, very dim view of alleged miracle workers who are still alive, because, frankly, we’re talking about competition if the miracle worker is still alive and could, after the Church says he’s the real deal, then go off on some embarrassing jag and denounce the Church as worldly, etc. Wait until someone is dead though, and if people achieve an otherwise impossible (okay, “unlikely” will do) cure by praying to the proposed saint, and if the story holds up, then the reasoning is that that person must be among the Saved sitting at the right hand of the Lord, or he couldn’t intercede successfully. So the Church sends out people to investigate the claim of such cures.

The first criterion might seem to get us into that popular concept territory, but you don’t have to do anything extraordinary to live a holy life by the Church’s lights. You really just have had to have not done or said anything doctrinally embarrassing while alive, and they send out investogators to do a sort of oppo research on you, just to make sure the Church doesn’t sign off on the sainthood of someone who later proves to have written in some blog about what a wart the Pope is, etc. (Dante ain’t never making saint on those grounds.). It’s even alright to have committed all sorts of sins, and have been an unusually bad person — and even have said the Pope is a wart — as long as there is some sort of conversion or reform before death, and you don’t say the Pope is a wart after receiving Christ.

You shouldn’t have a discussion about sainthood without quotng the Devil’s Dictionary, so:
“SAINT, n. A dead sinner revised and edited.
The Duchess of Orleans relates that the irreverent old calumniator, Marshal Villeroi, who in his youth had known St. Francis de Sales, said, on hearing him called saint: “I am delighted to hear that Monsieur de Sales is a saint. He was fond of saying indelicate things, and used to cheat at cards. In other respects he was a perfect gentleman, though a fool.”

On such foundations I base my own hopes for official sainthood. I haven’t committed any noteworthy crimes, if only out of sloth. I will start going to church again some time before I die. Those two elements have the holy life thing covered. For the second criterion, I have left careful instructions with friends and relatives about what diseases to concentrate on in their efforts at attributing miracle cures to my intercession after I’m gone. Some maladies are prone to spontaneous remission no matter what is done or not done for them. I took credit for such cures as a doctor while alive, why not continue the practice after my death?

“

Apart from the crudity, I see no argument in that petulant sentence, other than what Dan S. chooses to believe. What does he know about “American Evangelicals”? Probably as much as I, which is to say, very little.

”
Your honesty is commendable. On the other hand, while assuming ignorant internet interlocutors is generally a good bet, it works better in some places (youtube or local newspaper comments) than others (ever spent much time over at Making Light?). And as the saying goes, “On the internet nobody knows you’re George Barna”. Which I’m not, of course, but I’m American, literate, online, of necessity interested in the subject, and have some spare time (as long as I don’t sleep much…). Seriously, unless you’re a small child, you don’t really have any excuse for thinking that just because you don’t know something, no one else does either! That’s silly.

(You could start by looking at polls, and move on to political commentary. And to be fair, “largely a wholly owned subsidiary of the Republican Party” is rather imprecise and un-nuanced. (There are exceptions, of course – but of course, they’re … exceptions). Some folks would put the ideological relationship the other way round, even, but that… hasn’t been quite right, though we’ll see how things go.)

Crudity? Well, if we stick with crude, we’d be drilling down to the heart of the matter …

And anyone who knows anything about the Republican Party, that assemblage of, permit me, gutless drones, knows that the GOP establishment would rather die collectively than endorse any part of the “Evangelical” agenda.

Seriously. And hey, I’m grateful that they’re such a stalwart bulwark against the nuts who constantly try to attack reproductive rights. I’m glad for their steadfast work making sure we don’t have to face endless attempts to redefine rape or get 9-week fetuses to “testify” in favor of outlawing post-detectable-heartbeat abortions or seemingly legalize the assassination of doctors or defund Planned Parenthood or slash international family planning funds or … Oh. Wait.

(And while David Kuo – the American one – complained about the Bush administration’s cynical use of faith based initiatives, it’s very interesting to see how it did – and has – worked out, with (mostly white, right wing) evangelicals getting gov’t assistance and an increasingly freer hand when it came to less powerful groups, from compulsory proselytizing of prisoners to blocking low-income reproductive healthcare.)

I find such claims so indescribably arrogant that I can hardly even counter them. Of course human beings have some influence, locally, on the environment. But on climate? You have to be kidding.

As Satan Mayo basically points out in their comment, it may help to recognize that when it comes to modern industrial society, our ‘local environment’ is the Earth.

Arrogant? For much of the second half of the 20th C, we faced the possibility of a fullscale nuclear exchange that could have had massive repercussions on complex life on Earth, as well as possibly bringing about a rather unpleasant nuclear winter. I know it’s easy to forget, but … And then there’s the bit where we blew a hole in the planet’s ozone layer as an unanticipated side effect of just a few decades of keeping food cold, people cool, and aerosols aerosoling – and note that remarkably prompt and concerted action only stopped things from getting much worse; a full recovery is still expected to take decades.

Arrogant? I’ve read that after the passenger pigeon went extinct, many folks insisted that it couldn’t be true, that of course people couldn’t have actually wiped out an entire species – and such an incredibly numerous one at that – that surely there were more left just a little further out … As wikipedia notes: “In 1857, a bill was brought forth to the Ohio State Legislature seeking protection for the Passenger Pigeon. A Select Committee of the Senate filed a report stating “The passenger pigeon needs no protection. Wonderfully prolific, having the vast forests of the North as its breeding grounds, traveling hundreds of miles in search of food, it is here today and elsewhere tomorrow, and no ordinary destruction can lessen them, or be missed from the myriads that are yearly produced.”… Fifty-seven years later, on September 1, 1914, Martha, the last known Passenger Pigeon, died in the Cincinnati Zoo.”

the Green orthodoxy, that is, that humans are capable of influencing global climate; that this influence is bad (in some not quite clear way); and that these same bad humans also have the power to influence climate in a “good” way.

You’re reading way too much moralizing into the science (although it’s true that people don’t need much too start moral-izing stuff). Really, it’s the same way that people are capable of influencing global biodiversity, that this influence can be bad – in the sense that mass extinctions and ecological destabilization and suchlike are bad – or good – in the sense that conservation and preservation and reintroductions and suchlike are good.

Still, thanks for not deleting my post. Some leftists have a shred of dignity left.

Hey, we don’t eat babies, either! Nor do we spend most of our time in decadent drug-fueled orgies. Well …. at least I don’t …

From a Catholic point of view George Pell is really an extreme outlier, a Wojtyla sycophant who espouses obnoxious positions well beyond what Wojtyla himself would have been guilty of. He has also attained notoriety within the Catholic church for his sabotage of the ICEL attempts to produce a decent liturgical text and replace with the hideous abortion that is being imposed on anglophone Catholics around the world.. I’d be hard pressed to name an American Catholic bishop at or near his level who resembles him — one might think of Chaput in Denver, but Chaput (who, unlike Pell, is a personally appealing person in some ways) has a good record on issues such as immigrant rights.

By the way, as a young Catholic what I learned about Bellarmine, other than the excellent (and fashionable) Jesuit school in San Jose, was that he had said that God gave us the scriptures to tell us how to go to heaven not how the heavens go. I don’t want to argue about Pius XII, who certainly should not be canonized but I think was a better man than his detractors admit, but Pius XI was a complex and interesting pope, who did bad things like the Concordat with Mussolini but good things, especially at the end of his life, such as Mit brennender Sorge. His more wordly successor unfortunately moved away from his condemnations of racism (in which he included, at least tentatively, anti-Semitism).

And there was a great deal of probably tactical saint making in the 30’s, such as Joan of Arc and Thomas More and Bishop Fisher. I understand that More managed to get canonized without the required miracle, which led to the Oxford joke that he had been excused the practical examination.

Apologies for the length of the comment.

Gene O’Grady,

I am aware that Mit Brennender Sorge is considered a humanitarian, anti-racist document, but I think this is a serious overstatement.

The encyclical seems mostly concerned with urging German Catholics to resist government interference with the Church, and to encourage them not to place national loyalties or racial views ahead of religious faith. Still it does not actually condemn the former:

8. Whoever exalts race, or the people, or the State, or a particular form of State, or the depositories of power, or any other fundamental value of the human community – however necessary and honorable be their function in worldly things…

And again:

34. No one would think of preventing young Germans establishing a true ethnical community in a noble love of freedom and loyalty to their country.

As for references to Jews, there is, first, a passage stating that the Old Testament is “a substantial part of his Revelation.” Well, OK. But then comes the reminder:

16. Whoever wishes to see banished from church and school the Biblical history and the wise doctrines of the Old Testament, blasphemes the name of God, blasphemes the Almighty’s plan of salvation, and makes limited and narrow human thought the judge of God’s designs over the history of the world: he denies his faith in the true Christ, such as He appeared in the flesh, the Christ who took His human nature from a people that was to crucify Him;

Remember, this was to be read in German churches in 1937.

So while the encyclical was a strongly worded statement in defense of the church in Germany, it seems to me that the case for it as a condemnation of Nazi racism is weak.

Once again cutting through the snark, I wish Gene would elaborate on this. I suffered the ICEL translation for decades in the U.S. It is despicable, flat, totally unspiritual, and lacking in all devotion.

Perhaps they could improve it with pictures of naked children.