But is a nuclear Iran really just a man with a knife?

Martino comments on the prospects of a nuclear Iran:

A leading Vatican official expressed support for the development of a nuclear energy program in Iran, as long as it serves peaceful purposes.

"Nuclear energy is something that can do good for humanity" -- a principle that "is certainly valid for Iran, too," said Cardinal Renato Martino, president of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace.

Cardinal Martino spoke Oct. 23 at an interreligious gathering in Naples, Italy. His remarks, reported by the Italian news agency ANSA, came as Iranian and European officials met in Rome to try and resolve growing tensions over Iran's nuclear capability.

Cardinal Martino defended the right to develop a peaceful nuclear energy program, and said any risks of improper use of nuclear technology "depend on the intentions of those who manage the program."

"Anything is possible, in the sense that I can use a knife to cut bread but also to kill someone," he said. (underlining mine)

In dealing with such questions at a global level, the cardinal said, the international community must balance the need for peace and security with the necessary development of populations. (CNS)

I am in agreement with the Cardinal that nuclear energy can be a good for humanity. I further agree that it can be a good for the people of Iran, because they, too, are a part of humanity. Similarly, it is of course reasonable to note that the risks associated with nuclear energy depend on the intentions of those running the program.

No one is disputing any of these premises. The entire debate is actually focused on the prudential question as to whether or not the Iranian program is purely for peaceful purposes.

Martino's example of the man with a knife is useful for demonstrating that a neutral object can be used for good or evil purposes, even though I would argue that nuclear energy has a far greater moral weight about it than a knife. But every analogy limps.

More to the point in this debate is the character of the man holding the knife. And in this case, the man with the knife runs an organization that has been known to covertly kill people with knives in the past and despite all requests to the contrary, he insists on hiding his knives underneath his coat while simultaneously claiming that he needs those thousands of knives to ... cut bread.

It's not hard to see why I don't think this kind of man needs any more knives.

A little support for my opinion:

• The UN has offered a tremendous incentives package to Iran to suspend its nuclear enrichment program for considerations of transparency. These incentives would directly and immediately improve the quality of life for Iranians - and yet the President of Iran vehemently refuses. [AFP]
• Iran's new best friend is Russia, who is building a nuclear power plant for Iran. Putin met with Ahmadinejad recently and gave the impression that Iran had every right to go nuclear - without transparency to the international community. [CNN]
• Wikipedia has a great deal of information on the Iranian nuclear program.

Now, I'm not absolutely ruling out (yet) the possibility that the Iranian nuclear program could be peaceful. But I find that extremely unlikely based on everything I've or come across so far.

Further, even if their intentions were only peaceful, the fact remains that the inherent instability of the region and the Iranian government in particular would seem to make the case prudentially that there should not be any extra nuclear material lying around for the taking.

Finally, in what I find the most convincing argument I've come across, is the fact that Iran is obstinately trying to produce weapons-grade uranium (which requires a far greater percentage of refinement) as opposed to industrial-strength uranium. Alternately, over time a nuclear power plant produces Plutonium which is automatically suitable for weapons. In short, you can't have a peaceful nuclear power program without also having the ability to produce weapons, and at any rate, Iran seems to be taking the fast-route for immediate weapons-grade uranium production.

Add to all of these fears the fact that Iran appears less-than-ready to be reasonable, and I worry.

I think this is an important debate to have, especially with the real possibility of a U.S. strike on Iranian nuclear-production facilities in the future. If anyone has helpful links or good evidence one way or the other, please post it below. Thanks!

No love lost between Gore and Martino

John Thavis of CNS reports:

The Vatican has a long memory, and that helps explain its less-than-enthusiastic response to Al Gore’s Nobel Peace Prize.

The day Gore was announced as a winner, the Vatican newspaper covered the story in a single sentence, buried on an inside page.

Then at a Catholic meeting in Pisa last Friday, Cardinal Renato Martino let slip a rather caustic remark. “Allow me to express well-founded puzzlement over how and to whom the Nobel Peace Prizes are assigned – even if they have gone to very worthy people in previous years.” Ouch. He never mentioned Gore by name, but the message was clear.

Why the antipathy? [Find out.]

The Driving 10 Commandments as revealing a "failure of catechesis"

Via MOJ, a better way of expressing what I attempted to briefly say earlier:

[Catholic Ramblings:] More significantly, however, I think this document points up something troubling: the failure of catechesis on a general level. The Decalogue, and the embodiment of the Word in Jesus Christ, are the sum of the moral law. The Church in its Catechism and in its Tradition have already provided and continue to provide moral teachings needed to form solid consciences, and for this purpose, the Catechism, for example, outlines the various implications and demands of each particular Commandment. Yet as individuals endowed with free will, we are charged with exercising a well-formed conscience in particular situations, since no human document or body of documents could provide clear answers for every human contingiency. And besides, certainly the “rules of the road” or the “Ten Commandments for Motorists” are implied in the moral law already: be charitable to others, do not kill or recklessly endanger another, do not flagrantly risk the lives of your passengers, do not become enraged. I suppose my point simply put is that the same charitable task could have been more seriously accomplished by reminding the faithful of the application of the moral law–of the Decalogue and the Great Commandment–to all our activities, including our driving. This would have provided the faithful with assurance that our daily choices are morally significant and that the Church has a genuine interest in them, while simultaneously avoiding the needlessly flippant and even pedantic form of Martino’s document. [More...]

CNS's excellent coverage of the Vatican's seminar on global warming

I'd like to copy the whole article, but I'll restrain myself and just pull about every other quotation, along with my comments in italics. Hopefully this adds some clarification to the discussion. You can read for yourself here.

First, things got somewhat rowdy:

VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- Despite being held in a cool, climate-controlled conference room, some early discussions at a Vatican-sponsored seminar on global warming and climate change got pretty heated.

The rifts and tensions still dividing the global debate on the causes of and remedies for drastic climatic shifts were gently simmering in the small microcosm of the two-day Vatican meeting.

The seminar, sponsored by the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, gathered some 80 experts representing the scientific, political, economic and spiritual sides of the climate-change debate at the Vatican April 26-27 to discuss "Climate Change and Development."

"I have to commend the planners," said Lucia Silecchia, a professor of environmental law at The Catholic University of America in Washington, because "nobody can accuse them of bringing in a group of people who will agree with each other."

Disagreements even spilled out into the corridor during the closed-door seminar's first morning break when a Vatican official had to use his pastoral prowess to calm one participant."

The scientific community has been so divided and so bitter" over the climate-change debate that experts who disagree with each other don't talk to each other, Silecchia told Catholic News Service.

Martino made some good clarifications to reporters (that weren't presented in most MSM reports I read):

Nonetheless, he [Martino] said, the Vatican is cautious about what sort of pronouncements it makes about global warming.

Church leaders are aware scientific findings can sometimes be skewed by special-interest groups or overblown by an audience-hungry media.

This tendency to take ambiguous scientific findings and skew them for gain comprises about 100% of my disagreement with the enviromentalist lobby.

The church does not want to curb sustainable development, especially in impoverished nations, nor does it see population control as a way to conserve dwindling resources. There is a middle ground, many church leaders say, that sees sustainable economic growth, the environment and human development as partners, not enemies.

But when 5 percent of the world's population gobbles up 20 percent of the earth's resources, lifestyle changes are important, said Cardinal Martino and Pope Benedict XVI.

I can agree with all of these points. So often, however, environmentalists propose exactly "curbing sustainable development, especially in impoverished nations" and "population control" (think the United Nations and their horrible-coercive programs) as the solution to limited resources (and I would add "failures in distribution" to the causes of global hunger and poverty).

Silecchia [ professor of environmental law at The Catholic University of America in Washington] said in some ways the environmental movement "has become its own new religion," and this could be offset by a wider recognition of the church's own tradition of God asking people to be stewards of creation.

That's right. The best way to oppose the growth of this "new religion" is to demonstrate how the Christian tradition and Catholic church already provide guidance on issues of economic and ecological responsibility. We have the principles within our tradition and don't need to be frightened by fear mongers.

Australian Bishop Christopher Toohey of Wilcannia-Forbes said the church's message of hope and love of life can offer direction and inspiration, which "is somewhat missing" in the world debate.

"The church is not just another voice telling people to conserve energy and preserve the planet. It has the potential to bring its vast tradition to shed light on a troubled human family," he wrote.

The church can "provide motivation, inspiration, love for life itself and for the earth and all of creation, to genuinely love those things and care for them," he told CNS.

Instead of letting disagreements in the global warming debate continue to stall decisive action, "we have a Christian duty to live simple, responsible lives whether climate change is happening or not," he said.

Amen. Whether climate change is happening or not (I remain unconvinced by those who argue that it is, drastically, and by demonstrable recent human activity), we do need to be good stewards of our property.

As a postscript, this AP coverage seems to have Martino admitting that global warming could actually be beneficial to humanity, or at least acknowledging that many people are of that opinion:

VATICAN CITY: Vatican officials closed a conference on climate change Friday that heard from scientists, ministers and religious leaders about the negative — and sometimes positive — impacts of climate change.

"Not all the scientific world is crying disaster," Cardinal Renato Martino, who heads the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, told Vatican Radio at the start of the two-day conference he hosted.

"There are a good number of scientists who consistently don't view these climactic changes in a negative light, and in fact say that these phenomena recur over the course of years and eras and sometimes they can have favorable results for agriculture and development."

That said, some of the invited panelists were of the view that a warming planet is not all bad.

Among them was Craig Idso, chairman of the Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change. The organization publishes the weekly online newsletter CO2 Science, which often reports on what it says are the benefits of increased carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

Other invited guests disputed any benefits, saying the increase in global temperatures was dangerous to the Earth and its most vulnerable people. [More...]

Well, I'm happy to see that both sides of the debate were represented at the J&P's conference.

Pope Benedict, climate change & Cardinal Martino.

Reuters ran a story today entitled, "Pope should talk climate change with Bush: cardinal".

I realize this is a sensitive issue with many people, but it's important and I'm interested.

Going on what the article says, Cardinal Martino said that he "believes the Pontiff should raise the dangers of climate change and global warming with U.S. President George W. Bush when the two meet in June."

Admittedly, Martino was careful with his remarks, saying "It's not for me to say what the Pope and President Bush should discuss but certainly they will discuss current issues and therefore I imagine and I hope they will (discuss climate change)," [continuing:] "It certainly merits it."

Martino's council for justice and peace is hosting a conference on "climate change and development" this weekend, which prompted the Reuters story as well as a message from the Pope, in which he said that he hoped studies could lead to "lifestyles and production and consumer methods that aim to respect creation and (aim for) sustainable progress." All very fine and good.

Of course, I'd like to see his full message (and this is the cue for industrious readers to pop me an email or drop a link in the combox!) so I can see whether the Pope actually came out and said anything about "manmade global warming." My understanding is that to this point he has not.

Martino went on to claim that willfull damage to the environment is a sin. Now, I have no problem with this statement, as long as it is specified. Burning down trees needlessly or contaminating drinking water can be wrong, but I've often seen the concept of good stewardship twisted into some sort of moral imperative that we all (to randomly pick an example, but not an extreme one) use halogen lightbulbs or buy electric cars.

And I get especially nervous when Martino says that (according to the Reuters article) "all religious groups should be involved in environmental causes and raise awareness about global warming." I also don't feel comfortable when he makes comments like this:

"We have to start at the level of elementary schools, to make sure children are taught to respect nature and be aware of the problems of the world. We can't wait until they are older. This has to be done naturally in religion classes, in religious groups everywhere," Martino said.

In a perfect world we could educate children about anything and everything. But I think that in practice, especially in elementary school, the lion's share of time in religion class should be spent on, well, God, the Sacraments, the Saints, Virtues, Commandments, and the list goes on for quite awhile. Nevertheless, we'd all count ourselves successful if kids manage to receive even an entry-level formation in those areas.

I'm not saying that Cardinal Martino is suggesting global warming and ecology replace these subjects, but I do think that in elementary education, Cardinal Martino's set of issues are actually far down on the list of objective priorities, especially in religion class.

Let the parents spend their time fighting about global warming and CO2 emissions.

I'm sure this isn't my last post on this topic, so we'll leave it here for now.

Update: From Gabe in the comments:

I think Cardinal Pell's comments on global warming in which he calls global warming "superstition," "nonsense," and "semi-religious" make a lot more sense than Cardinal Martino's comments.

I'm glad I just got finished saying in another post that it is "always well worth listening to Cardinal Pell", because it just came true again. And I knew I had heard someone else credible (and episcopal) describe the enthusiasm of global-warming advocates as being "semi-religious."

Update 2: Zenit has released some partial coverage of the conference here.

[photo: Alessia Pierdomenico/Reuters]