Cardinal Pell, and rock of ages, say hello to passing rock ...

It was thoughtful of the long absent god to introduce a touch of spice and dice into the planetary system, and the way Asteroid 2005 YU55 will narrowly miss the earth in the near future - as opposed to the direct hit by the asteroid that did over the dinosaurs and created the Chicxulub crater - suggests that craps was the deity's favourite game ...

Roll those dice, watch worlds collide, see mass extinctions, and then present as a loving, caring god ... it's a win win routine.

Well that's as good a way as any to introduce the deeper thoughts of Cardinal George 'climate change science is a bandwagon like the Y2K bug' Pell, as he broods on the meaning of it all in his week old ramble for the Sunday Terror, Your Kingdom Come:

In the prayer Jesus taught us, we begin by praising God. In old Australian parlance are we simply buttering up God, before we get down to the serious business of asking Him for help with our needs? Are we like young selfish children who are always asking their parents for some gift or help? "Dear God, help me and my family: we four and no more".

Uh huh, so the perfect family is four and no more, and four and no less. But let's get down to the meaning of the kingdom of god, and the science thereof:

Today we have many views on the meaning of the cosmos and all history.

A few scientists believe that the cosmos is a vast, meaningless fluke, where humans too are simply like the froth on a wave.

A few scientists? Would that be the few scientists who accept the evidence for the theory of evolution, as opposed to the vast majority of steadfast scientists who believe in creationism?

Would that be the few scientists who think that, even if life is a fluke, it is perfectly within the rights of humanity to determine and explore meaning, without the assistance of prattling meddlesome priests blathering about froth on a wave? As if humanity didn't need to thank the sturdy pioneers who, aeons ago, abandoned life in the sea and frothing on waves for the good life on land?

Just because the house is rigged doesn't mean you can't walk away from the crap shoot with a handsome payout. And then you die, but that's the way it goes.

Others see God as a great watchmaker, who creates and winds up a watch (the universe) and then leaves it to run itself. This God is distant, non-interfering and uncaring.

Really? When She took care of the dinosaurs so humans wouldn't have to battle the raptors, except in the movies and creationist museums?

(Above: Raquel Welch spots a dinosaur. Inserted to elevate the tone of the discussion of nineteen sixties frock design).

But I guess Cardinal Pell is right. The long absent lord has shown a distinct aversion to appearing in person these last few thousand years (for all each generations's millenarian fantasies), has certainly been non-interfering (even in matters of genocide, but then as a god inclined to genocide that's probably being only fair), and most definitely is uncaring.

How else to explain putting a climate sceptic at the head of the Catholic church in Australia? God's will is most peculiar ...

Many in ancient Greece and from the Eastern religions regard history as a series of events moving in circles. History simply repeats itself and the ancient dramas are re-enacted.

What, like the way the church has repeatedly denounced provocative scientists who disagree with the posture of the church, repeated today when the likes of Pell pretend to be experts in climate science, so repeating the history of the church in relation to Galileo and Copernicus, and so re-enacting ancient dramas?

The Jewish and Christian approach to history is different again, because we believe history is like an arrow moving towards a target called "the day of the Lord" (Amos 5:18), or the Kingdom of God, mentioned in Jesus' prayer the "Our Father". This gives direction and meaning to history and has helped billions to find purpose in their lives.

An arrow moving towards a target? Well that's a killer metaphor of a military kind, but thankfully a few people have managed to resist the giant Ponzi scheme peddled by the Catholic church. Come on down Albert ...

It was, of course, a lie what you read about my religious convictions, a lie which is being systematically repeated. I do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly. If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it ... I have repeatedly said that in my opinion the idea of a personal God is a childlike one .... (here)

I guess at some point that informed scientist Cardinal Pell must have stumbled across the likes of Einstein:

... daily life and world history are a bewildering mixture of good and evil, blessing and misfortune, hope and despair. All is not well with the world and God does not seem to be in full control, even when we allow for human free will. Where do the many natural disasters fit into the divine scheme?

Indeed. An out of control god and an out of control set of carbon emissions. Where does Cardinal Pell, climate scientist, fit into this peculiar divine scheme?

Is he like those pesky, wayward, aircraft-carrier sized asteroids?

Seems the long absent lord couldn't even design a decent solar system, without introducing an element of randomness into events. How much simpler it was when the sun revolved around the earth. What an elegant solution it was.

Well it will come as no surprise that Pell, who seems so definitive about climate science, at the end of his piece fudges his bets, with some easy rhetoric about the meaning of God's kingdom:

Two such theories can be set aside easily. The first sees some earthly kingdom, the exercise of political power, as God's Kingdom e.g. the Holy Roman Empire. The Communist workers' paradise was a secular version.

Uh huh. The Holy Roman Empire. That'd be the one where the pope gave the ruler the title Emperor of the Romans, and the pope did the crowning and the Catholic church and the pope were in the thick of the political scheming like rats up a drainpipe. Thank the absent lord we can now leave aside those meddling popes ...

So where does that leave the Catholic Church, which sees no earthly kingdom, though by golly if you head off to Vatican City, you might find all the trappings of an earthly kingdom, including a monarch, courtiers and vast amounts of worldly treasures, looted from the Romans (so that's where all the marble ended up), and the rest of the world? (Call it a clerical version of paradise ...)

Well it seems nowhere much in Pell's theological world, because we're left with the notion of the heavenly kingdom inside ourselves, as if all that investment in bricks and mortar and putting the church and rectory on the best hill in town was a complete waste of time and money, and perhaps even vanity, vanity of vanities:

Others claim the Christian churches and especially the Catholic Church identify themselves too closely with the entirety of God's Kingdom. A more accurate understanding sees the Kingdom of God as present in the hearts of believers and good people, but only imperfectly because Christ the Redeemer has not finally returned. His Kingdom will only be completed at the last judgement.

The last judgement? Frequently postponed, and subject to change, but isn't it grand to see a climate scientist like the Cardinal off with the millenarians waiting the apocalypse and the rapture, while rubbishing climate science for talking of an apocalypse and a rupture ...

Perhaps Christ is riding that asteroid, and next time round, he'll send it smack dab right into the Mediterranean, thereby sorting out a few of the long absent god's original design flaws ...

Why it's as random and as weird as heading off to the Catholic Encyclopedia to check out the Catholic view of the Kingdom of God and being confronted by an advertisement for Herbert W. Armstrong.

Sheesh, is god weird and perverse, or what, or is Google ad placement the closest thing we can get to replicating a random god? (You might remember Herbert as the preacher who identified the Catholic church as counterfeit Christianity given over to doctrines inspired by Satan ...)

Ah well, it's Sunday, and the best thing that can be said about the Pellist text is the way it's likely to send the Sydney Anglicans into yet another frenzy.

Yet, as a reader noted, when it comes to the matter of gays and women, the Jensenist nepotics and the Pellist heresy are as twin peas in a pod ...

So it goes, and meanwhile, if you want to know more about the rock passing our way, instead of visiting Cardinal Pell's page, why not head off to climate change endorsing NASA, and their asteroid watch, and their near earth earth object program ...

You might find it a refreshing change ... that's if you think science might offer a few more insights into climate change, frothing waves, the universe and the whole damn thing than frothing priests ...

Now put on a cosmic show, lump of carbon rock ...