The Only Good Catholic Is A Catholic With A Small ‘c'

Scoop

23-05-2025

It's mind boggling, but to a significant degree, the left is placing its hopes for a better world in the new Catholic pope. There is no surer sign of the bankruptcy of insight and ideas from people who still care about the Earth, the poor and the marginalized.
The legacy left is beginning to acknowledge that the roots of the global crisis lie much deeper than political and economic analysis. But liberalism's prominent voices offer only lip service to 'tending to the spiritually exhausted,' repeating bromides about 'the importance of hope and the power of storytelling.'
Those who point out the inadequacy of such philosophical and spiritual shallowness are called 'particularly pernicious climate doomers propagating misery and incorrect narratives about how screwed we all are.' Apparently, the worst sin 'above all, is climate doomers guilty of failing to use their imagination.'
To idealists, imagination is the greatest gift and highest capacity we have as human beings. It isn't, insight is. But imagination is what leading lights of the left believe is the fount of spirituality and a just world. To insist on seeing and remaining with things as they are, is, to an idealist, 'like bringing poison to a potluck.'
Imagining a better world not only prevents one from seeing the world as it is however; it precludes meeting the challenges of the polycrisis, because to project an ideal -- an idea of what should be -- is to escape from facing, understanding and thereby changing what is.
For the comfortably agnostic or the dogmatically atheistic, 'tending to the spiritually exhausted' goes no deeper than 'meditating on an antique violin as a symbol of sustainability.' Such tawdry blather contributes to hopelessness almost as much as Trump's demented policies.
A 'climate doomer,' it turns out, is someone who doesn't subscribe to the theology of hope, imagination and storytelling, but points out that 'embracing uncertainty because history is full of surprises' is self-serving bullshit.
Why is it foolish to believe history is full of surprises? Because life is full of surprises, while human history is variations on the ancient themes of conflict and war, greed and exploitation.
Human nature hasn't changed since fully modern humans emerged tens of thousands of years ago, and the implacable culmination of the egoistic and fragmentary aspects of human nature are what we're up against in the digital age.
Superficial spirituality becomes downright absurd when progressive editors quote Catholic theology in their editorials: 'Every one of us, whether we were born in the United States of America or on the North Pole, we are all given the gift of being created in the image and likeness of God, and the day we forget that is the day we forget who we are.'
Does anyone, even a Mass-attending Catholic, believe that humans 'have been created in the image and likeness of God' anymore? That would make God one small Supreme Being.
Antiquated theological issues notwithstanding, there's an urgent question: Can the left bring new, transformative insight into the relationship between the spiritual dimension and the political dimension?
We can. The problem for progressives arises in trying to cut the global polycrisis to fit the Procrustean bed of inane doctrines such as man was created in the image of God, and irrelevant institutions like the Roman Catholic Church.
On the political level, certainly the idea that a 'leftwing economic populism' can counter rightwing white nationalism is a non-starter. The left does not need economic populism anymore than it needs the theology and leadership of the Catholic Church. It needs new insights that infuse the political dimension with authentic spiritual experiences of wholeness and holiness in the individual.
The irony is that the very progressives who accuse others of a failure of imagination are guilty of it, since they take human nature, and political and religious institutions, as givens, and continue to believe that activism with respect to them will bring about radical change.
Clearly, until we stop giving priority to national governments and religious institutions, nothing is going to change.
With regard to one of the two remaining superpowers, the USA, its pathocracy has become a circus-like diversion from the rapacious power of transnational capitalism. With respect to the other superpower, China, the ruthless suppression of individual freedom belies the fear of losing control. And since control is an illusion, the CCP has reason to fear.
As far as the Catholic Church, I don't see how anyone can take a religion composed of costumed cardinals, bloated bishops and pedophile priests seriously. Even if the Church cleans up its act and gives away its wealth to the poor as Jesus taught, its beliefs and doctrines, rituals and traditions are not spiritual, but antithetical to experiencing immanence.
Politically, the left's boilerplate theology of hope and storytelling is as irrelevant and ineffective in meeting the global crisis of consciousness (manifesting outwardly as the polycrisis), as the core Christian precept that 'we are all created in the image and likeness of God.'
The left is looking to the pope because the world desperately needs an effective moral conscience. However, it's not going to come from any organized religion, or national government or inter-national institution.
Nor is it going to come from AI, which will be smarter but no more intelligent than the human beings who program it.
What can we do? We can ignite a psychological revolution within ourselves, and help create a global body of world citizens of great insight and moral suasion. Whole people who don't identify with a nation or religion and eschew power in perpetuity.
The latter won't be possible without the former. And without a psychological revolution, the foreseeable future is very dark indeed. You don't have to be an oracle to see that.