Encyclical doubts

            Now let me think.  Abraham was rich.  God used his riches to found a clan that became a nation.  Joseph was kinda wealthy being prime minister of Egypt.  Ester, David, Obadiah, Nicodemus and Joseph of Arimethea—all rich and God didn’t demand they give up everything they had to become better and more faithful. 

            Protestant theology holds that God comes after you, saves you and develops a relationship with you in order to use you to advance His   Kingdom.  There is not necessarily any requirement to give up everything and become a monk.  In fact, there are no Protestant monks.  Not that meditation and dedication to a life of mendicacy won’t help some folks.  It is just not a requirement of faith, that unique individual gift of God that takes you to a better spiritual life. 

            And this is no insult to my Catholic brothers in Christ, but I profoundly disagree with Pope Francis.  Pope Francis said “the 'theology of poverty' is based on the fact that Jesus -- in his divine richness -- became poor; he lowered himself and sacrificed himself to save humanity." Well, he also took the financial support of several rich women in the gospel of Luke.  Would the Pope have told him to decline that support?  Look, I don't want to quibble with Jesus’ humility.  But I do want to quibble with the dogma that one’s faith is not genuine if one doesn’t give away all worldly possessions.  Nor do I accept that one earns eternity by giving to the poor.  I do agree with Luther who cast a jaundiced eye on the riches of the church.  Luther said satirically in one of his 95 theses about the indulgences, “Since the Pope is rich as Crassus, why doesn’t he just buy his own indulgences and unlock all the people in hell?”

            Indeed I suspect that the theology of poverty is a construct to justify asking the peasants to cough up huge sums to fund the gilded sanctuaries.  And indeed the Catholic papacy over the years sided with autocratic monarchs (fellow lords) and tried to quell the nationalist movements of Europe.  Socialism?  That is just another attempt to keep the peasants tied to the manor.  Now our Argentinian Pope doesn’t mind talking up the Peronism.  Yuck! I long for John Paul II and his support for the freedom of mankind.  “You shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free.” 

            But now we get an Papal encyclical on Global Warming.  We are asked to sacrifice deeply to fend off the warmth.  I guess that means we use less fuel and shiver.  And make a huge contribution by sorting our aluminum cans into separate trash barrels.   Well, yes the world does seem to get warmer after each ice age.  Ice cores from Greenland and Antarctica show that every 100,000 years for the last 2.6 million years an ice age has occurred like clockwork.  That’s the period of the earth’s nutation where the axis tilts by varying from 22 to 24 degrees. (think of the spasms of a rotating top) And after each extensive glaciation, our best guess is that the earth warmed to about the temperature it has today   Each time the Warm lasts only a few thousand years and then Earth plunges back into the continental ice caps.  Now the last two ice ages suddenly disrupted this periodicity.  The last ice age began about 70,000 years ago and lasted until about 10,000 years ago.  Some speculate that the mechanism of nutation plus landlocked/sealocked poles is changing. Maybe we don’t get another glaciation for 20,000 years—or not.  So my suggestion to the pope is that he not base his theology on some nerdy computer models of atmospheric chemistry but be a bit more humble in giving God credit for the changes.  Earth seems to be getting colder the last two decades.  Maybe God is still in control.

            Sticking to the gospel would be the best policy.