The following is an excerpt from my upcoming book, Clueless:
The emotional plague is a malignant social disease that is highly invasive from person to person and from one social institution to another. Because of the massive shift to the left in people’s thinking not only in the West but worldwide, religious mysticism in the masses – people’s faith in a better afterlife – has been replaced by secular mysticism – people’s longing for a better life in the present, in the here and now. This mystical need on the part of armored human beings gives freedom-peddling ideologists on the left an enormous political advantage.
Religious mystics on the political right, see the handwriting on the wall and realize that if they do not embrace some of the popular political ideas promoted by leftist ideologues soon, they will be left without a power base, their congregation.
In addition to being sympathetic to the world’s poor, an ideologically painless way that religious mystics on the right can become involved in secular matters is by going along with leftists on their political stand on the environment.
The Catholic Church would usually condemn blatant politicization of theological documents such as Pope Francis’ encyclical on May 24, 2015, Laudato si.’ But this time it did not. In his encyclical, he critiques people’s relentless destruction of the environment for which he blamed apathy, reckless pursuit of profit, excessive faith in technology and political shortsightedness. He unambiguously accepts the purportedly scientific consensus that climate change is largely man-made and warns of unprecedented destruction of ecosystems if climate change mitigation efforts are not taken mainly by reducing fossil fuel emissions.
Then, when President Obama announced new Clean Power Plant regulations “to help mitigate climate change” on August 3, some 170 evangelists, pastors, religion professors, non-profit directors and others, sent an open letter to the president “to offer our support and encouragement for your efforts to overcome the climate change.” President Obama responded in true faith healer style: “As Pope Francis made clear in his encyclical last summer, taking a stand against climate change is a moral obligation.”
Neither Left Nor Right
The Emotional Plague
Charles Konia, M.D. 