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It never really is enough. Accommodate the zeitgeist a little, and more is always required. And the letter to the editor of the Post-Dispatch, below, is today's proof.

The church and climate change

Pope Benedict XVI's displeasure with the diplomats' actions at the recent "climate change" conference in Copenhagen was appropriate in view of published results. But the setting in which it was given seemed contradictory.

The ornate Vatican room, the throne for the pope, the expensive medieval garments on both the pope and his cardinals all were ornate and expensive.

Climate change, when it is more obvious than it is now, will effect the poor far sooner than the well-off. A board-room setting with modern clerical dress with the pope at the head of the table would have been more appropriate.

And, although controversial, population growth is at least one of the major contributors to world pollution. The world population is almost 7 billion. In 20 years, it will be about 10 billion. The Catholic church objects to man-made birth control.

History continually changes. We must change with it, or we will be history.

D-- R--, Chesterfield

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Well, I certainly can't find anything wrong with that logic, can you? I mean, that really is the hallmark of the Church I know. We spent 2,000 years bouncing from doctrine to doctrine in order to keep everybody happy. How else did we avoid DR's sound warning and escaped becoming history?

Let's see, the Pope's dress would have improved his words, without altering them one jot or tittle. Appearances are everything to some on the "progressive" side, because caring enough covers a multitude of the real damage done by their policies.

But leave that aside and just look at the numbers: Catholics comprise less than 1/7 of the world's population. And only 10% of Catholics obey the Church's teaching against "man-made birth control". That means approximately 100 million people worldwide are knowingly following the Church's teaching on contraception. That's 100 million out of 7 billion, or 1/70. Yet it is the Church that is to blame for "overpopulation" and the resulting contribution to global ills.

Tell that to all those Hindus, Buddhists and Moslems in the parts of the world that still have children. It is the Catholic Church's fault.

Of course, as the West contracepts itself to death, it realizes that it must go further. It must protect its hegemony of power, and because it won't reproduce, the poorer nations' children must be prevented from being, or, failing that, must be killed.

This seems to me to go against the preferential option for the poor we hear about from D.R. and those like him, but what do I know?