Did the Pope Really Say That?

This week's cautionary tale begins with Pope Benedict's New Year message, which is already available at the Vatican web site. Now, recent popes have a well-deserved reputation for being conservative on social issues. But it's less well known that they've been quite liberal on economic, environmental, and military issues. (In 2005 I wrote this article analyzing the radical economic viewpoint of John Paul II. Short version: God created the Earth for everybody, not just the people who own everything.)

So it was something of a shock -- a pleasant shock for anti-environmentalists and an unpleasant shock for the rest of us -- to find this headline in London's newspaper The Daily Mail: The Pope condemns climate-change prophets of doom.

Pope Benedict XVI has launched a surprise attack on climate change prophets of doom, warning them that any solutions to global warming must be based on firm evidence and not on dubious ideology. The leader of more than a billion Roman Catholics suggested that fears over man-made emissions melting the ice caps and causing a wave of unprecedented disasters were nothing more than scare-mongering.

In America, conservative bloggers jumped on the news and crowed about their high-profile new ally in the battle over global warming. At the Pirate's Cove blog, for example, Jebediah Murphy proclaims "The Pope Now a Climate Change Denier" and predicts "all them liberal climahysterics (also known as climahypocrites) are really going to hate the Pope and religion even more."

Right on cue, Pirate's Cove commentor Madmatt attacks the Pope: "This is a nazi, who is pro child molestor, and believes in an invisible man in the sky." If you're a devout Catholic reading this discussion -- or any of the others like it happening on other blogs -- you're undoubtedly offended by this. The popular frame about politics and religion -- religious people are conservative, liberals are against religion -- has been supported.

Except ... the whole discussion is based on nonsense. The Pope's message is about "the human family" as a metaphor for world peace. Of the 15 numbered paragraphs, only 7 and 8 are about the environment, and they express only the most unobjectionable principles. Taken out of the conservative-spin context of the Daily Mail article, the parts they quote are pretty innocuous:

It is important for assessments in this regard to be carried out prudently, in dialogue with experts and people of wisdom, uninhibited by ideological pressure to draw hasty conclusions, and above all with the aim of reaching agreement on a model of sustainable development capable of ensuring the well-being of all while respecting environmental balances.

This is only against the global warming activists if you imagine (as the Daily Mail reporter clearly does) that the Pope is wagging his finger directly under their noses when he denounces "ideological pressure to draw hasty conclusions." Nothing in the Pope's message indicates this. In fact, you can just as easily -- more easily, IMHO -- imagine the Pope wagging his finger under President Bush's nose when he says:

In this regard, it is essential ... to choose the path of dialogue rather than the path of unilateral decisions. Further international agencies may need to be established in order to confront together the stewardship of this "home" of ours; more important, however, is the need for ever greater conviction about the need for responsible cooperation. The problems looming on the horizon are complex and time is short. In order to face this situation effectively, there is a need to act in harmony.

So here's the moral of my story: When the media tells you that somebody said something surprising, don't react, check. Your first response shouldn't be: "How can he say that!" It should be: "Did he really say that?" Very often the answer will be No.

BTW: A legit objection to the Pope's message is what it says about the social issues where we already knew he was conservative. That's already been discussed by dedmonds.