Being the product of a relatively sequestered New Jersey Catholicism, I wasn’t aware that men like Father Michael Pfleger existed. Silly me. Power Line points us to video of Fr. Pfleger preaching—not at a Catholic church, it seems—about the duty white Americans have to make reparations for slavery. His tone–red-faced, screaming–is not something I’m accustomed to seeing from the more staid priests in my orbit.

Nor is his message, which seems to be that white people are all the beneficiaries of slavery and that we must abandon our 401K funds, throw away our trust funds, and leave the jobs which we were handed by the old boys’ network in order to atone for “what our ancestors did.” He rails against “white entitlement” and “supremacy.”

It may come as little surprise that Fr. Pfleger is a supporter of, and friend of, Barack Obama. Or that Fr. Pfleger invited Rev. Wright to deliver a blessing from his church, Saint Sabina, in March, during the height of the controversy over Wright’s bizarre and hateful racism. He uses “damn” as an expletive in the course of charging Hillary Clinton with being a racist.

If only the Catholic Church really was the conservative, absolutist organization that its liberal critics charge it with being . . .

The current issue of the Jesuits’ international monthly Popoli features a blistering attack on Magdi Cristiano Allam and the circumstances of his conversion. The author is the prominent Italian Jesuit Fr. Paolo dall’Oglio, of the Deir Mar Musa monastery in Syria, who warns that Muslims will view efforts on behalf of freedom of religion and freedom of conscience as a “Trojan Horse” whose aim is to cause Islam to disintegrate. Fr. dall’Oglio won the “Euro-Mediterranean Award for Dialogue,” and explains his view of Islam and the West here. The piece has not appeared in translation, and it seems worthwhile to make some excerpts available to English-speaking readers.

The editors of Popoli explain, “The baptism of the noted journalist Magdi Allam administered by Benedict XVI during the Easter Vigil has aroused many comments, including in the Catholic world. In consequence, we publish some considerations of Father Paolo Dall’Oglio . . . a regular contributor to Popoli. The article seems interesting above all for the particular point of view that it expresses, from someone who has carried out years of apostolic activity in the Muslim world, and in position to understand the sensibilities and to intuit the possible repurcussions and ways in which the event might be exploited.”

Below are excerpts from Fr. dall’Oglio’s article, translated with as much fidelity to the writer’s Italian style as I can manage:

Title: Eclipse of the Sun

We hope that we are dealing with an eclipse of the sun. Monsignor Fisichella, who “personally followed the spiritual path of acceptance of the Christian faith” of the deputy editor of Corriere della Sera, Magdi Cristiano Allam, through to his baptism by the Pope on the Easter Vigil, characterized this as a “special event” (evento riservato). But it was not a suburban parish priest who baptized him, but the successor of St. Peter.

The mind turns naturally to Oriana Fallaci, the notorious Islamophobe and great writer who died recently. She was a friend of the Monsignor as well as of the deputy editor, and an important representative of Italian “Islamo-pessimism” in the defense and reconstruction of Judeo-Christian identity in Western civilization. In her view the most dangerous enemy of this civilization is Islam, much more than materialism, secularism and the liberal mentality….In the mirror of Fallaci’s thinking, Muslims feel frustrated in their spiritual aspirations and stuck in an anachronistic caricature, which causes them to drift towards terrorism…

The moon of urgent concern for freedom of conscience and religion has blocked the sun of charitable discretion, of respect for Muslim feelings, and of the renunciation of proselytism (and we have already had the incident about praying for the conversion of the Jews in the re-approved Latin liturgy for Good Friday). It has overshadowed the Copernican Revolution of the Second Vatican Council which also went in favor of Islam, and the renewal of official dialogue between the Holy See and important Muslim organizations. It discouraged numerous efforts to construct harmony and friendship, in the quarters of European cities as well as in the countries, for secular and peaceful Islamic-Christian coexistence. It neutralized attempts to defuse inter-religious violence and to show how far the Church is from the neocolonialist logic of the Western hegemonic powers (strapoteri), and how a great majority of Muslims are opposed to the logic of hostile confrontation….

Before the world, and on the occasion of his baptism, Magdi Allam has declared his intent to affirm “the authentic religion of truth, of life and of freedom” against the “the root of evil is inherent in an Islam that is physiologically violent and historically conflictive.” In this fashion he confirmed the Muslim impression, intentionally or not, that there is a an objective strategic convergence of Christian neo-proselytism and the blasphemous actions against the holiest realities of Islam promoted by the northern European media. In other words it is difficult to escape the impression that the sacred banner of freedom of conscience is being used by the West to introduce a Trojan Horse into Islam with the aim of causing it to disintegrate.

Mr. Allam and his catechists should remember that Christian history frequently has registered inconceivable cruelty in the repression of apostasy and heresy. Even recently, to save “Western civilization,” horrible crimes have been committed against the integrity of individuals and against freedom of conscience by regimes who define themselves as defenders of the Church.

Despite the “science is settled” and “consensus” claims of the global-warming alarmists, the fear of catastrophic consequences from rising temperatures has been driven not so much by good science as by computer models and adroit publicity fed to a compliant media. The lack of solid empirical evidence is striking. The theory is thus highly vulnerable in two ways. One is the accumulation of evidence that appears to falsify it, and the other is a public opinion that is no longer susceptible to media alarms. There are signs that both of these events are happening.

On the theory that rising CO2 emissions should lead to increased temperatures, we should have been experiencing steadily increasing warming, as we have certainly had steadily increasing CO2 discharged into the atmosphere. But the contrary has happened. Global average temperatures have been flat for the past decade, since 1998, and actually declined somewhat last year. Skeptics have been pointing out for a long time that there is no correlation in the historical record between CO2 and global temperature.

Just recently, Nature, which has been generally supportive of the warming alarm, published an article from German researchers predicting that the temperature would decline for another few years. That finally got media attention and produced some overdue questioning of the alarmist scenario. The authors were quick to point out that their article predicted that the heat would start rising again after 2015 or so, and that the big worry was still on. Others pointed out that 1998 was an unfairly chosen base year from which to measure that flat temperature, because a significant El Niño event that year made temperatures unusually high.

But, skeptics reply, if we start instead from 2001, we still get that flat or declining graph. And they are asking, Well, what kind of evidence would you accept as falsifying the reigning global-warming thesis? Another ten years of flat or declining temperatures? A comeback of arctic sea ice (which is already happening in both polar regions)? What? And the answer, as for all true believers, is that those who have staked their reputations on global-warming alarm are going to stick by their claims, because true believers cannot admit to being wrong.

Meanwhile, public support for measures meant to curb so-called greenhouse emissions is noticeably waning, especially in Europe, where “green” taxes are beginning to bite. The Labour government in Britain is under particular attack for effectively raising the costs of fuel for driving, heating, and generating electricity, costs that weigh most heavily on families of modest means. Labour is feeling the public’s disapproval at the polls, notably where it lost the race for mayor of London to a Conservative who beat a Labour incumbent running loudly and explicitly on a “green” program. Elsewhere in Europe, business leaders are warning that industries like steel, cement, and other large emitters of greenhouse gasses will leave the continent and take their jobs with them. They warn of Europe’s declining competitiveness in world markets across the board. The United States has yet to feel the full backlash against anti-global-arming schemes, and all three presidential candidates are still proclaiming their fealty to the alarm.

But the rumblings in Congress are increasing; and one can bet that any legislation, if it succeeds at all, will try very hard not to harm the American economy. The corn ethanol subsidy program has already turned sour, and the public and the politicians are on the alert. Stand by.