By DEACON ANTHONY BARRASSO
(Editor’s Note: Deacon Barrasso serves in a Maryland parish.)
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Aristotle (384-322 BC) wrote that “time is the measure of change” (Physics IV, 10-13). We who live in time are certainly aware of change. The seasons, our own age and development, and many other things remind us of time and change.
Climate change is also a reality that we experience every day, but it is not the reality of doom as portrayed by some scientists, many who govern, and a misinformed citizenry. Climate is a condition of the weather at any given time. It has to do with nature which is defined by Webster’s (1979) as “the inherent character or basic constitution of a person or thing” or “a creative and controlling force in the universe.”
Those who demand that the government become involved in changing the climate are ignoring the reality of the limitations of humanity. Francis Bacon, English jurist and philosopher (1561-1626), said: “Nature is commanded by obeying her” (The New Dictionary of Thoughts, 1954, p. 418).
Swedish behavioral scientist Magnus Soderlund suggested that eating people after they die could be a means of combatting climate change (Swedish TV 4, September 6, 2019).
The following month on October 4, 2019, Cong. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D., N.Y.) held a town-hall meeting at the Queens Public Library. One woman at the meeting cried out that babies must be eaten to change the climate.
(The woman was a prankster, but as Dexter Duggan reported in The Wanderer of October 17, p. 1A, “Ocasio-Cortez never responded to rebuke the stranger for suggesting cannibalism, but just said the crisis isn’t quite that severe.”)
Persons who suggest that cannibalism can solve any problem may have lost the command of their own human nature. This is not an unusual phenomenon. Humanity can be led into error especially when those who should speak the truth refuse to do so out of fear of losing the favor of men, or being cast down from a lucrative position. There are many who profit from deceit.
Deceit leads to corruption which eats away the foundations of society. Drug use becomes a deadly reality. Marriage is redefined. Baby organs are harvested and sold. Children claim they do not know whether they are male or female. Suicides escalate. Corruption and greed are flourishing in governments and other institutions. The dignity of the human person is swallowed by the rule of the mob. And Nature does rebel at the sight of unnatural human behavior.
Climate change is not only a reality, it is a necessity. But the only “climate” that we can change is that which we find in our homes, our schools, our politics, our media, and our religion. Our reasoning has become bizarre, grotesque, distorted, to the point at which darkness has become light and we believe that governments can change weather, stop hurricanes, and establish heaven on earth.
There are many who see this as an opportunity to gain control of the very freedom and dignity of the human person — and they are succeeding. We call it Communism and Socialism. When we assume that we have rights that contradict human nature and dignity, then we can be certain that nature will rebel.
Paul, who once thought he had all the answers, wrote a letter to Timothy, his fellow traveler, concerning what broken human nature is capable of:
“People will be self-centered and lovers of money, proud, haughty, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, irreligious, callous, implacable, slanderous, licentious, brutal, hating what is good, traitors, reckless, conceited lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, as they make a pretense of religion but deny its power” (2 Tim. 3:2-5).
“Climate” change is a necessity, but it is only possible in the hearts and minds and dignity of persons with consciences formed and filled with truth. Noah built an ark when most ignored the truth.
The winds and floods came; the ark proved to be way and life. The houses built on sand were washed away.
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