Separating the men from the boys

A rare example of a grown-up voice in today's media:

Cardinal Pell replied scathingly that church leaders should be allergic to nonsense. "My task as a Christian leader is to engage with reality, to contribute to debate on important issues, to open people's minds and to point out when the emperor is wearing few or no clothes," he said.

And what precipitated this outburst of common sense?

Canberra Bishop George Browning, the Anglican Church's global environmental chief said Cardinal Pell was out of step with his own church and made no sense on global warming.

Heaven forbid - "out of step"! The cardinal* vice of the post-modern Christian!

Archbishop Pell recently applied a tincture of scientific scepticism to Browning's pet cause - global warming - and has even questioned the motives of the statist quasi-moralists who have crowded into it.

"Radical environmentalists are more than up to the task of moralising their own agenda and imposing it on people through fear. They don't need church leaders to help them with this, although it is a very effective way of further muting Christian witness," he [Cardinal Pell] said.

Like all paganism, the pagan cult of environmentalism is ultimately motivated by fear and the spirit of slaves, as its consistent tone of panic and irrationalism ("act now, think later") shows. Its purpose is to create an environment where clear thought and open discussion is impossible, and to achieve a political majority that can trump rational argument.

Browning's strategy of harnessing Christian faith to this unequal partner is bound to end in tears. The spirit of slaves and a spirit of sons can have nothing to do with each other, and sooner or later we must choose.

If there is a global warming problem (and that still is an 'if', because surveys of climate scientists show a diversity of views on the subject) we will face the challenge far more effectively if we employ Cardinal Pell's cool scepticism than if we succumb to Bishop Browning's agitprop.

Who do we have more confidence in: the man or the boy?

* Yes, pun intended. Sorry.