In discussing the theme of Church-State relations in class, I offer students examples of constitutions of various countries, those founding documents that shape the laws and mores of the nation. As the refrain against (apparently) unjust laws has it, ‘it’s unconstitutional!’. Many constitutions still bear the trace of the country’s original religion, evoking its principles as the basis of law – even if many nations have strayed from their roots. Few such constitutions are more explicitly religious, and Catholic, than that of the Irish, who were not ashamed of the Faith of their fathers. That is, until recently. It all may fall apart next summer, when, as John Duggan points out, they hold a referendum on a radical secularization of their constitution. Read Duggan’s description, and weep. The Gaels – especially the legions of brainwashed millennials – have already been primed by decades of secular, anti-Catholic barraging by the media and the schools. When we add to the ambivalence and apathy of the Church, along with the myriad of scandals, we should not be surprised to see the once-valiant Irish vote for abortion and same-sex ‘marriage’. The snakes that Patrick drove out are returning with a vengeance. I vaguely recall a prophecy by the mediaeval monk Saint Malachi that Ireland would be inundated by the sea before she completely lost the Faith. So make that pilgrimage to the Emerald Isle soon!
Or perhaps not. At the G20 summit, where the leaders of the twenty ‘elite’ nations fly in legions of private jets to bewail and lament the effects of excess carbon emissions, our benighted potentates have unanimously agreed to global Covid vaccine passports which, if fully implemented, would mean the loss of the right of freedom of movement to those deemed to be ‘unvaxxed’. I say ‘deemed’, for the requirements for being ‘fully vaxxed’ keep extending and shifting, with boosters upon boosters, and no end in sight. The unvaxxed may well end up prisoners of their own country – or worse. One woman recently admitted to me in hushed tones at a medical office where mask mandates were in place, that she got the ‘two shots’, but is for sure not getting anymore. We will see, as the screws may tighten. She may as well have gotten none, for two will soon not be enough – it already isn’t at Notre Dame university, with the booster required just to enroll. It’s going to be three, four and more galore. Draw your line in the sand now for the pharmaceutical balrogs, and no farther.
Meanwhile, at the same hip conference, climate change zealotry has infected the minds of too many, worse than a physical virus. Fear not him who can kill the body, but we should have some concern for those who can harm the soul, and turn the mind into mush. One can almost see the swirling discs in the eyes of the Just Stop Oil zombies, like in those cartoons with a hypnotized Bugs Bunny – or was that Daffy Duck? – doing the bidding of Elmer Fudd. Alas, this is all too real life, and these iconoclasts, gluing themselves to roadways and artwork, are all for mayhem and destruction. From oil paintings to pipelines, it’s all gotta go to ‘save the planet’. I don’t think they quite know what nature ‘red in tooth and claw’ means, without all that we know as ‘civilization’. And much of that civilized culture requires a steady supply of energy. In a recent interview, one of these zealots, in his twenties, claimed as ‘proof’ for runaway, apocalyptic global warming, that London was ’40 degrees last summer!’. Hmm. Has England’s capital never had a heat wave before? Was this spike in temperature really caused by too much carbon and oil? Are there other factors at play?
To ask questions of this or any sort is to be labeled a ‘denier’, worthy of the worst. David Suzuki thinks they should all be locked up. He’s worse than the inquisition, which was at least concerned with truth, and offered people a trial. The climate crusaders have become almost fully unhinged from science, and are now full-bore into religious mania. Peruse, amongst any number of examples, a certain Michael Robbins, talking apocalyptica from a secular perspective, and claiming as an absolute certainty that the planet is on a runaway train to irrevocable heat death. Of course, if this does not transpire – and I predict with more certainty that it won’t – they can just claim the climate changed a different way, like it always does, heating up and cooling down, over days, weeks, years, millennia and aeons, from ice ages to rain forests to tundra and savannah. The temperature currently swings ten to twenty degrees in a day where I live. Might all this fluctuation have something to do with that million-mile-wide-and-three-million degree nuclear inferno we call the Sun?
A final thought: If the oceans are going to rise by a few feet in the next few years, inundating everything for many miles inland, why are all million/billionaire climate zealots snapping up prime waterfront in Florida, New Zealand and other heliophilic locales? And why is China permitted to continue to burn millions of tons of coal? Might they know something they’re not telling us – or, more to the point, selling us?